The woefully underrated Ray Price, who revived country music not once, but twice, has every right to be bitter.
He’s rarely lumped in with the titans of twang, who have more colorful, mythical names such as Lefty, Buck and Merle, and yet Price is perhaps more influential than anyone in the country field besides his former roommate Hank Williams.
As a bandleader, Price has given gigs to such up-and-comers as Willie Nelson, Johnny Bush, Johnny Paycheck and Roger Miller and yet the Cherokee Cowboys name does not pack the nostalgic clout of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys.
Even after beating back the Elvis explosion in the 1950s by inventing the country shuffle, then helping usher “the Nashville Sound” to prominence the next decade, Price wasn’t inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame until 1996.
“Well, it’s about time,” Price said when he finally received the award.
No one could begrudge Price his vitriolic toast, followed by the sweet chug of redemption. After all, the singer, still performing regularly at age 80, had been so vilified by country music traditionalists when he brought strings and choral backing to country radio in the ’60s that he moved from Nashville back to East Texas in disgust in 1970.
Never mind that such lush ballads as “Make the World Go Away,” “Danny Boy” and “For the Good Times” expanded country’s fan base; Price became a sellout in the eyes of those who wanted to keep country in coveralls.
Revolutionized country music
Meanwhile, the mainstream music fans he helped drag over to the country aisle, had no idea that Price revolutionized country music in 1956 by introducing the highly danceable 4/4 shuffle on “Crazy Arms,” which spent 20 consecutive weeks at No. 1. Another little known fact is that in 1963 Price recorded the first country concept album, built around Willie Nelson’s “Night Life.”
Dozens of books have been penned about Hank Williams, who died at age 29, but none have been written about his former protege, whose career took off only after he stopped walking in Hank’s musical boots.
If Price does decide to write his memoirs, he’s already got a title in mind.
“I’m gonna call it `For the Good Times … My Ass!’ he said last month, sitting in his tour bus parked in a garage on his working farm 12 miles outside Mt. Pleasant. The constant crowing of roosters — Price has raised gamecocks for more than 30 years — sounds like a laugh track in the background, as Price self-effacingly reflects on his five-plus decades as a recording artist. Through it all, he has remained tight with Nelson, who got his first songwriting gig as staff writer for Price’s Pamper Music publishing company in 1961 and also played in the Cherokee Cowboys for a year and a half. Even after Nelson got a $20,000 check when his “Hello Walls” hit big for Faron Young, he toured with Price for $50 a night.
“I took Willie out on the road as my bass player and after a few gigs he said `I bet you didn’t know I’d never played the bass before,'” Price recalled. “I said, `I knew the first night.'”
“Willie’s been a great friend through thick and thin,” he continued. They’re so close that when Price was busted in 1999 for possession of marijuana — “Willie weed” — eyebrows remained level. “I helped him when he was starting out and he’s helped me out quite a bit through the years.”
Price, Nelson and Merle Haggard have just recorded an album of the songs that inspired them when they were growing up. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard in years and years,” said Price, who sings a couple of songs by Bob Wills, who inspired him to make his music danceable. “In Nashville in the ’50s, they didn’t use drums — we had to sneak a snare onto the Opry. But in Texas you had to have drums because the Texas Playboys did.”
Enter Elvis, the `Hillbilly Cat’
But the music scene was about to change in a big way. At a 1955 show in Memphis, Price got a threatening glimpse of the future when Elvis Presley, the swiveling, yelping “Hillbilly Cat,” shared a bill with the Cherokee Cowboys and nearly stole the show. By the next year, rockabilly was the hot, new sound of the South, and such Price contemporaries as Hank Snow, Webb Pierce, Kitty Wells and Red Foley saw their popularity plummet. Country radio stations were switching to rock, and Nashville artists such as Marty Robbins and Little Jimmy Dickens recorded rock ‘n’ roll material to try to attract younger fans. Showing his East Texas stubbornness, Price stuck to his honky-tonk guns.
“Ray Price kept the Texas in country music in the ’50s,” said Wimberley writer Joe Nick Patoski, who’s working on a Nelson biography. In doing so, Price was one of the only Nashville stars to see his fortunes rise during the heyday of rock ‘n’ roll. With the dancehall sensations “Crazy Arms,” “I’ve Got a New Heartache,” “My Shoes Keep Walkin’ Back To You” and “Heartaches By the Number” laying the groundwork, the “Ray Price beat” was the sound every country band was going for.
Powerful tenor
But nobody could sing it like Price, whose smooth, powerful tenor was built to be heard over the loud, rowdy, rarin’-to-dance Texas honky-tonk crowds.
“Ray’s just a natural singer,” said former Wills fiddler Johnny Gimble, who first backed Price on sessions at Jim Beck’s studio in Dallas in 1953. “He’s also a master at picking songs. Ray just knows what he wants and what the people want.”
Price found “Crazy Arms” while touring Florida in early ’56. It was originally cut by a California woman with a lifeless voice, but Price could hear that the song had potential. “That’s a hit, son,” he said to the deejay who played it for him. Price took the record with him to Nashville, where a recording session had been set up. First thing, Price wanted to change the tempo from the standard 2/4 to 4/4, creating a “walking bass” sound. Price said he based that shuffle sound on the rhythm of dancers’ feet. He also played Wills’ “Faded Love” for fiddler Tommy Jackson as an example of the single string style he wanted for the track. By melding elements of western swing and honky-tonk, Price created a new sound, one that is still in vogue with country traditionalists.
Along with “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets and “I Got a Woman” by Ray Charles, “Crazy Arms” is one of the pioneering, landmark records of the 1950s.
“When I’m playing drums and the front guy turns around and shouts out, `Ray Price,’ I know it’s gonna be a full-on 4/4 shuffle,” said Tom Lewis of Heybale! “It’s my favorite groove to play. It’s so swingy and smooth, yet hypnotically repetitive. … It’s a sound that gets into a true hillbilly’s soul.”
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James White of the Broken Spoke in Austin, which has hosted Price several times, said, “You could always count on keeping your date happy by taking her to a Ray Price show. Whether you came to dance or listen, Ray Price was true Texas music.”
Price and Williams hit it off instantly because “we were both country boys, trying to make a living in the music business,” Price said. In the affable, easy-going Price, perhaps Williams, who was older by three years and about two dozen hits, could see the innocence that he had lost long ago.
The two ran into each other for the last time in Dallas, two days before Williams played his final public performance at the Skyline Club in Austin on Dec. 19, 1952. They made plans to have lunch in Ohio, where they both had gigs, on New Year’s Day 1953. That’s the day Williams was found dead of heart failure brought on by an intake of alcohol, morphine and choral hydrate.
More realistic career path
While his mentor’s life and music have become mythological in stature, Price’s career has followed a more realistic path. He’s toured constantly though, at 80, his schedule is down to a handful of shows a month.
“I’m just lucky that I can still sing,” Price said. “I’ve never done anything special for my voice — I smoked for 35 years — so I guess it’s just a gift from God.”
In recent years, Price has had a heart attack and an aneurysm; he’s selling the farm he has owned and proudly worked on since 1970 to move closer to his doctors. But the voice, though not quite the sturdy, honey-coated tenor of “Release Me,” “Danny Boy” and “For the Good Times,” still croons, still swoops, still soars above musical boundaries. In September, Price drew several encores, just like Hank Williams in 1949, when he played a sold-out show at the Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
Nashville is catching up in its long overdue recognition, and Price couldn’t be more appreciative. The Country Music Hall of Fame recently unveiled a 1,000-square-foot exhibit, “For the Good Times: The Ray Price Story,” consisting of memorabilia, artifacts, photos, stage clothes and the like. Price said he and wife Janie, who he calls the ultimate packrat, had a great time going through boxes to find stuff for the exhibit.
“I guess it all started with my 80th birthday,” Price said. “I guess this is my year. . . . Finally,” he added with a laugh.
Bitter? Nah. Ray Price knows he has had it good, that his career has gone as far as it could, saddled by that bland name of a football coach or bank manager. He’s the Tony Bennett to George Jones’ Frank Sinatra in the pantheon of Texas country singers.
“Listen, I don’t sing about drinkin’ and fightin’ and cheatin’ and all that,” he said. Maybe that makes him tame, he acknowledged, but “the only thing I’ve ever done is sing my kind of song for my kind of people.”
Sometimes from such simplicity comes innovation. “You make your mark in Texas music by doing something different,” said Casey Monahan of the Texas Music Office, “and Ray Price’s mark is huge.”