About The Song
At about the same time Pride was taking over the mantle of reigning royalty in country music, Ben Peters was taking a drive in his car. Peters was quickly becoming one of Nashville’s top songwriters. A music veteran, he had played in rock bands as a saxophone player before joining the Navy. He tried his hand at writing while in the service and eventually found his way to Nashville. He worked at his craft for nearly two years before his first song was published. It was only after Peters landed a job running a small music company that things began to take off for the songwriter.
Ben and his wife had become the parents of a baby girl. They named her “Angela” and she was the most special thing in their lives. Ben couldn’t leave the house each day without kissing his daughter and saying good-bye.
As he was driving to work one morning, Peters started thinking about how blessed he was. With a beautiful wife and daughter, he couldn’t imagine himself being any happier. As he drove along thinking about all those things, he began to develop a song based around his personal feelings and emotions about life.
One of the first lines that came to Ben was “Kiss an angel good morning.” After all, that was what he did each day when he picked up his daughter Angela. The song almost wrote itself from that point. Within two months of Ben’s morning drive, a demo of “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” found its way into producer Jack Clement’s hands. When Charley Pride heard it, he couldn’t wait to get into the studio to cut the song.
Pride’s positive response to the tune was based on his relationship with his wife Rozene, whom he had married in 1956. The love that Charley felt for her and for the way she had supported him through the long period of his pipe-dream of becoming a professional baseball player and the tense, early years of his country music career, were all expressed in “Kiss An Angel Good Morning.” This was the kind of positive country music that Pride wanted to continue to do. His desire would work out well for Ben Peters, as the singer would go on to cut more than 20 of Ben’s compositions with seven of them becoming major hits for Charley.
RCA released “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” in October, 1971, at about the time Pride was accepting his Entertainer Of The Year trophy from the Country Music Association. The record nestled into the #1 position of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on December 4th and stayed there for five weeks, making it one of the decade’s biggest country hits. It even placed at #21 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart, a surprising tally for such a country-sounding recording. In a career that spanned more than 60 chart singles and 29 number one hits, “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” would become Charley Pride’s top seller and his signature song.
Perhaps no entertainer ever made a career choice that would have seemed more inappropriate than Charley Pride. His sister’s early warning of, “You’ll never make any money singing like that,” would have seemed to be very sage advice. Yet Pride ignored race and prejudice and considered only what he felt in his heart. With a strong marriage and positive outlook to anchor him, he remained true to himself and became loved, honored and revered in a world that could have closed its doors to him. Without saying anything, he opened up people’s minds and short-circuited old ideas. As the first black man to walk the country music stage as a genuine star, Charley not only represented himself and his race well, but became an icon that everyone in country music was proud to embrace. “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” stands out as Pride’s most successful hit, while Charley stands out as one of country music’s greatest acts.
Video
Lyric
… When ever I chance to meet, old friends on the street
They wonder how does a man get to be this way
Always got a smiling face, anytime and any place
And every time they ask me why I just smile and say
… ‘Cause you’ve got to kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home
… Though people may try to guess, the secret of our happiness
But some of them never learn it’s a simple thing
The secret I’ma speaking of, is a woman and a man in love
And the answer is in this song that I always sing
… ‘Cause you’ve got to kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home
… Kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home