Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Charley Pride were all successful country artists born in the 1930s. Cash had the biggest career of the three, while Haggard's was limited because of his more traditional style and Pride's because of his race. All three benefitted from country music's widespread popularity during the postwar boom, and each made significant contributions to the genre.
Both Johnny Cash (1932-2003) and Charley Pride (b. 1938) got their starts in Memphis, Tennessee, at Sun Records, while Merle Haggard (b. 1937) was born in Bakersfield, California, where more fundamental country musicians congregated as Nashville started to attract a more mainstream sound. All three were popular recording artists, but Cash made best use of television to build his career, including hosting a TV series on ABC-TV for several years.
While Cash built his reputation as an "outlaw," only Haggard had a real criminal record, which was later expunged when he became famous. Pride actually had ambitions for a career in sports, but music turned out to be the key to success for all three men.
Cash's musical influences were the broadest of the three, ranging from harmonica-playing Wayne Raney to bluegrass singers Karl and Harty and rockabilly musician Carl Perkins, while "Cash himself had a repertoire full of country laments, gospel, rockabilly, blues, sentimental songs, patriotic favorites, protest songs, and insane comedy pieces" (Wolfe 227). Haggard's influences included Lefty Frizzell and Emmett Miller. His "songs of poverty and alienation were welcomed as authentic vignettes of life on the other side of the tracks" (Cobb 78). Stephen I. Thompson calls Pride one of "a handful of black performers" who have been successful in country music (260). One of his major influences was Hank Williams, but, Barbara Ching notes, "Pride the performer embodies and uncomplicated optimism that is antithetical to hard country . . . with a se...