In September 1992, Charley Pride walked into a recording studio and recorded a song that millions of country music fans already knew by heart. It was one of Johnny Cash’s most recognizable hits, a song that had helped define country music nearly three decades earlier.
But Charley Pride’s version never reached the public.
The recording remained on a reel of magnetic tape in a Dallas studio archive. Years passed. Country music changed. Charley Pride continued performing, recording, and entertaining audiences around the world.
Then, on December 12, 2020, Charley Pride died at the age of 86.
For more than four years after Charley Pride’s death, most fans had no idea that this particular recording even existed. And when it finally surfaced in 2025, the story behind the discovery was almost as interesting as the song itself.
A Familiar Song in an Unexpected Voice
The song was “Ring of Fire,” the country classic written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore and made famous by Johnny Cash in 1963.
Johnny Cash’s recording was unmistakable. The driving rhythm, the dramatic mariachi-style horns, and Johnny Cash’s deep, commanding voice turned “Ring of Fire” into one of the defining songs of the era.
By 1992, Charley Pride had already built an extraordinary career of his own. Songs such as “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” and “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)” had made Charley Pride one of country music’s most beloved voices.
Yet Charley Pride had always been comfortable singing material associated with other artists. Charley Pride could approach a familiar melody with the smooth, unmistakable vocal style that longtime fans knew so well.
That September, Charley Pride recorded a version of “Ring of Fire.” The performance was preserved on a professional two-inch multitrack tape.
What happened next remains less clear. The recording was not released at the time, and no publicly confirmed explanation establishes why it stayed in the archives for so long.
What is certain is that fans would have to wait more than 32 years to hear the finished recording.
The Reel Marked “R.I.N.G”
The most intriguing detail of the story concerns the tape itself.
Decades after the original session, the recording was rediscovered among the materials preserved in Charley Pride’s Dallas studio archives.
The two-inch multitrack reel carried a simple identifying label:
“R.I.N.G”
Those four letters identified a performance that had remained unheard by the general public since September 1992.
Unlike a finished record ready for store shelves, the recording still needed production work before it could be released.
The recovered performance was mixed and finalized under the supervision of Billy Yates, the Nashville songwriter, recording artist, and producer who had worked with Charley Pride during the later years of Charley Pride’s career.
The result was something country music fans rarely receive: a previously unreleased studio performance from a legendary singer, recorded during a different chapter of country music history.
It was not a newly recreated vocal performance. Charley Pride had sung the song back in 1992. The voice listeners would hear in 2025 had been waiting on that original tape.
Another Surprise From Charley Pride’s Final Recording Sessions
The discovery became part of a larger project called Cover Story, a collection of 22 songs associated with other artists that Charley Pride had recorded over several decades.
Among the collection were recordings of “Always on My Mind,” “Sea of Heartbreak,” and “Me and Bobby McGee.”
But “Ring of Fire” was not the only previously unreleased performance.
The collection also included “Heartaches by the Number,” the Harlan Howard composition made famous by Ray Price and Guy Mitchell in the late 1950s.
That recording carried another remarkable piece of history.
Charley Pride recorded “Heartaches by the Number” during studio sessions in January 2020, the final year of Charley Pride’s life. During later recording projects, Charley Pride sometimes began sessions with a familiar country standard to warm up and establish a comfortable atmosphere with the musicians.
“Heartaches by the Number” served that purpose during those final sessions.
Its inclusion meant that Cover Story brought together performances from two very different moments in Charley Pride’s life: a recording preserved since 1992 and another captured during Charley Pride’s final year.
Thirty-Two Years Later, the Music Finally Arrived
On June 20, 2025, Music City Records released Cover Story, finally making Charley Pride’s recording of “Ring of Fire” available to the public.
The date came more than 32 years after the September 1992 session and more than four years after Charley Pride’s death.
There was something especially fitting about hearing Charley Pride sing a Johnny Cash classic. Both artists had helped shape country music through voices that were instantly recognizable, and both left behind recordings that continued to find listeners long after their original release dates.
For anyone who grew up listening to Charley Pride and Johnny Cash, the discovery offered a rare opportunity: hearing a familiar song through a voice they thought they already knew completely.
And perhaps that is what makes this recording worth remembering.
Somewhere in a Dallas archive, a reel labeled “R.I.N.G” had preserved a small piece of Charley Pride’s musical life for more than three decades.
Charley Pride was no longer here to introduce the recording. But in June 2025, country music fans finally got to hear it.