R.I.P. : Ray Price, Country Music Hall of Famer, dies at age 87

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Peter Cooper



Country Music Hall of Famer Noble Ray Price, who pioneered a shuffling, rhythmic, honky-tonk sound that has had an impact on country music since the mid-1950s, died Monday, Dec. 16, confirmed Bill Mack, a spokesman for the family. Mr. Price died at age 87, of complications from pancreatic cancer, at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas.

Through hits including “Crazy Arms,” “City Lights,” “My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You” and many others, Mr. Price’s full, round voice became one of country’s most beloved and instantly identifiable instruments. His expansive musicality allowed him a 65-year career that changed country music and inspired artists including Willie Nelson, George Jones, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings.

He developed his signature shuffle in 1956, added elegant orchestration in the 1960s and toured throughout the remainder of his career with bands capable of delivering edgy, early-career sounds and sophisticated 1970s hits including the Grammy-winning “For the Good Times.”

“He’s our chief,” country musician Marty Stuart often said. "Grand Ole Opry" and WSM announcer Eddie Stubbs, a dear friend to Mr. Price and a member of the Disc Jockey Hall of Fame, said, “Ray Price was a member of country music’s greatest generation, and he radiated poise, dignity and class.”

From mimic to pioneer

Mr. Price was born in East Texas, near Perryville. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, and he lived with his mother in Dallas.

At age 17, he quit high school, lied about his age and joined the U.S. Marines, serving from 1943 to 1946. After that, he studied to become a veterinarian at North Texas Agricultural College, and began singing in a Dallas club and, soon, on Dallas radio show “Big D Jamboree.”

His voice caught the attention of industry insiders, and for a brief while he signed to Nashville’s Bullet Records. In 1951, on the recommendation of Peer-Southern Publishing’s Troy Martin, he signed with Columbia Records. That autumn, he met country star Hank Williams, and the two became friends and collaborators, penning now-classic “Weary Blues (From Waiting)” together.

“Me and Hank, when we met, it was an instant friendship,” Mr. Price told William Kerns of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in 2010. “You know, in an entire lifetime, you may come across just one or two people you instantly like. I lived with Hank during the last year of his life. He was about the only mentor I ever had.”

At first, Mr. Price modeled himself after the already iconic Williams to the point of mimicry. In early 1952, Mr. Price entered the studio with Williams’ band, and seemed bent on being the next best thing to Williams.

“I thought at first he tried to emulate Hank too much and it didn’t come off well,” fiddler Jerry Rivers told country music scholar Rich Kienzle, for Kienzle’s extensive liner notes in the Bear Family boxed set “Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys.” “I think every session he did came off better because he was getting away from that.”

Mr. Price’s “Talk to Your Heart” made its radio debut in May 1952, by which time he was touring with Williams and appearing on the “Grand Ole Opry.” The song was Mr. Price’s first hit, rising to No. 3 on the Billboard chart and offering a glimpse at the original artist Mr. Price was becoming.

“I think ‘Talk to Your Heart’ was the first record where Ray began to sound like Ray Price,” Rivers told Kienzle.

Williams, 29, died on Jan. 1, 1953, while his protege’s “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” was climbing country charts.

Mr. Price was crestfallen, and he and members of Williams’ Drifting Cowboys band leaned on one another for support. Over the next year, Mr. Price toured with the Drifting Cowboys but was uncomfortable with the extent to which he was aping Williams’ sound rather than forging his own.

In 1954, he formed a deft new band, The Cherokee Cowboys, and in 1956, he recorded “Crazy Arms,” the infectious honky-tonk ballad that launched the shuffle era in country music.

Don Law produced “Crazy Arms,” but Mr. Price was active in directing the musicians toward a new sound that featured a heavy beat; pulsing bass from Buddy Killen; Tommy Jackson’s single-note, western swing-style fiddle licks; and Van Howard’s keening harmony vocals. “Crazy Arms” defined the “Ray Price Shuffle.”

“Crazy Arms” spent 20 weeks atop Billboard’s country singles chart and became 1956’s Billboard record of the year. It established a signature sound for Mr. Price and spawned hundreds of sound-alike records: Steel guitar great Don Helms sometimes said that Mr. Price did not merely create a sound, he created an era. Shuffling hits from Buck Owens, Kitty Wells, Johnnie & Jack, The Wilburn Brothers, Carl Smith and many others followed Mr. Price’s template.

Mr. Price, who had previously imitated his mentor, was now the one being imitated.

“They created a sound, later dubbed the ‘Ray Price Beat,’ that became an enduring part of the American musical vernacular, as durable in its way as the ‘hambone’ rhythms of Bo Diddley or the one-chord funk vamps of James Brown and the JBs,” wrote Bill Friskics-Warren in “Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles.” The book ranks “Crazy Arms” at No. 6.

That sound still rings each night from Lower Broadway bandstands and, occasionally, on contemporary country radio.

“Much of contemporary radio’s Hot New Country can be traced back to Price’s simple yet profound tinkering with country rhythm,” wrote David Cantwell in “No Depression” magazine in 2000. “Not that Price wants to hear this. ‘I may have started something,’ he laughs, ‘but I’m not taking the blame.’”

In 1999, “Crazy Arms” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, in recognition of its “lasting qualitative or historical significance.” In the late ’50s, the song was energetic and danceable enough to achieve massive popularity even in those early days of Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll. It actually knocked Carl Perkins’ rockabilly smash “Blue Suede Shoes” from the top of the country charts.
Hits, discovering talent

Mr. Price notched 20 Top 10 singles over the first eight years of his recording career.

One of the biggest was 1958’s “City Lights,” written by a young Georgia disc jockey and aspiring singer named Bill Anderson. Mr. Price heard the version of “City Lights” Anderson recorded for the independent TNT label and decided to record his own version. Mr. Price’s take on “City Lights” featured Roger Miller on guitar, Jackson back on fiddle, and a rhythm section of drummer Buddy Harman and bass man Bob Moore.

“City Lights” was a smash, spending 13 weeks at No. 1, launching a songwriting career for Anderson that would land him in the Country Music Hall of Fame and cementing Mr. Price’s standing as a major artist. It was Billboard magazine’s top record of 1958.

In 1959, Mr. Price had another No. 1 with “The Same Old Me” and two more major hits with “Invitation to the Blues” and “Heartaches by the Number,” and he won Cash Box awards for favorite male vocalist and country record of the year. In addition, his and Claude Caviness’ Pamper Music publishing company was thriving. That company became one of Nashville’s most important publishers, signing future Country Music Hall of Famers Roger Miller, Harlan Howard and Willie Nelson, and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer Hank Cochran.

By the early 1960s, Mr. Price had proved his prowess not only as a hit-maker, but also as a talent scout.

He’d found early hits from the pens of Anderson, Howard, Miller and Mel Tillis, he’d taken Nelson and Miller on the road as Cherokee Cowboys, and he’d signed numerous writers to Pamper. He’d also begun to flex his creative muscles in the studio, moving beyond his patented shuffle to record the first-ever tribute album to western swing pioneer Bob Wills, in 1961. And in 1963, his version of Willie Nelson’s “Night Life” was a jazz and blues-inflected masterpiece. The song reached only No. 28 on Billboard’s chart, but it remained one of Mr. Price’s most requested numbers for the next half-century.

In late February 1963, Mr. Price used a seven-piece string section on a session, and throughout that decade he worked to broaden his sound. That work was not always received with approval, and his relationship with Nashville grew tenuous. He was dropped from the Grand Ole Opry in 1964 because he did not play the required 26 shows in a year.

His string-laden “Danny Boy” was a Top 10 hit in 1967, but it alienated some audience members who would prefer he stick with his shuffling signature sound. Touring without his Cherokee Cowboys (he disbanded the group in 1966), he was sometimes heckled during concerts that featured a string section. He sang on, undeterred.

“My goodness, he took ridicule,” said Anderson. “It was like the whole world thought he’d gone crazy, but it turned out that he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew who he was, he knew what he wanted to do, and he prevailed.”

Mr. Price explained that he wasn’t turning his back on the records he’d made in the 1950s, he just liked singing with strings.

“I think strings are beautiful,” he told Cantwell in 2000. “They’re the closest thing to the human voice for me. Singing in front of them is like being lifted in an elevator. And if the strings can turn me on, I’m able to turn them on, and it becomes a good night.”
Closing of an era

In 1970, Mr. Price took Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times” to the top of the country charts and to No. 11 on Billboard’s pop chart. “For the Good Times” won a best male country vocal Grammy, and Academy of Country Music trophies for single and album of the year. And in 1971, the Country Music Association named Mr. Price’s “I Won’t Mention It Again” its album of the year.

In the 1970s, Mr. Price’s records tended toward smooth easy listening, far from his initial, honky-tonk inspirations. He moved back to Texas in 1968, and ended his long-standing relationship with Columbia Records in 1974.

He continued to chart Top 10 country hits into the 1980s, including 1980’s “Faded Love,” a Willie Nelson duet on “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (Of Hurting Me)” in 1980, 1981’s “It Don’t Hurt Me Half as Bad,” and 1982’s “Old Friends” with Nelson and Roger Miller.

Mr. Price remained active and impressive as a touring artist well into the new century.

When Willie Nelson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993, he made a point to mention that Mr. Price was conspicuously absent: Two years later, Mr. Price entered the Hall, but he did not take that honor as the completion of his career. He continued to tour, sometimes in conjunction with Nelson and Merle Haggard, and he and Nelson won a Grammy Award for best country collaboration with vocals in 2009, when Mr. Price was 83.

In late 2012, Mr. Price revealed he was fighting pancreatic cancer. He continued to tour and record throughout his ordeal, pausing to consider implications of the April 2013 death of friend George Jones.

“The door to an era in time is slowly closing,” Mr. Price wrote. “With only a handful of us left standing, the country music I knew and loved has also passed away. It is my great hope that the younger generation of singers will remember all of us from that time and carry on.”

Mr. Price’s final show was May 4, at The Legend Club in Salado, Texas. In his last months, he readied a reflective album called “Beauty Is,” which will likely be released in 2014. The album’s songs include “No More Songs To Sing,” “Among My Souvenirs” and “I Wish I Was 18 Again.”

On Dec. 12, Mr. Price left East Texas Medical Center to receive hospice care at his home. His wife, Janie Price, announced that he was in the final stages of cancer, and she delivered what she said was his final message: “I love my fans and have devoted my life to reaching out to them. I appreciate their support all these years and hope I haven’t let them down. I am at peace. I love Jesus. I’m going to be just fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you again one day.”


Contact Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.

Photo gallery: Ray Price over the years