Country Music Legends

Country Music Legend: Ray Price

By admin ⋅ June 9, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The Country Music Hall of Fame details the life of Ray Price:

Price has been one of country’s great innovators. He changed the sound of country music from the late 1950s forward by developing a rhythmic brand of honky-tonk that has been hugely influential ever since. As steel guitarist Don Helms, a veteran of Hank Williams’s Drifting Cowboys once put it, “Ray Price created an era.”

The Hall of Fame continues:

The pivotal record of Price’s career, however, was “Crazy Arms,” recorded March 1, 1956. Introduced by Tommy Jackson’s searing fiddle (“I whistled the sound I wanted Tommy to play,” Price recalled), and driven by Buddy Killen’s 4/4 bass line, “Crazy Arms” introduced a novel, modernist intensity to what was still an essentially classic honky-tonk sound.

Price’s career continued to grow:

The record spent twenty weeks at #1 and established Price as a full-fledged star. For the next several years, he continued to tinker with his sound, most importantly emphasizing a shuffle rhythm that was barely perceptible on “Crazy Arms.” The 4/4 shuffle, which many artists soon adopted, became so closely identified with Price it was known in country circles as the “Ray Price Beat.”

During this time, Price also gave a career leg up to many young musicians and songwriters. Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, and Johnny Paycheck all passed through his band, the Cherokee Cowboys, while Nelson, Harlan Howard, and Hank Cochran wrote for the publishing company of which Price was part owner, Pamper Music. Price’s 1959 rendition of Howard’s “Heartaches by the Number” helped establish Howard in Nashville, while Price’s 1958 smash “City Lights” did the same for its writer, Bill Anderson.

Later, he moved back to Texas from Tennessee and in 1996 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Ray Price sings “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes”