The Right Price

Ray Price

Prisoner of Love (Justice/Buddha)

Nashville, Nov. 12, 1999—Ray Price is in the sound booth at Ocean Way Studios on 17th Avenue South. He’s singing ”I Wish I Was 18 Again,“ the only track he has left to finish for his forthcoming album of standards, Prisoner of Love. Jerry Lee Lewis and George Burns each had country hits with the song some 20 years ago. But in contrast to their readings of Sonny Throckmorton’s lyric—which, though wistful, also came with a wink—Price lets down his guard and plays it straight, aching for his youth with his every last heartstring.

”I’m three-quarters home from the start to the end,“ Price sings, ruing the fact that he’ll ”never again turn the young ladies’ heads or go running off into the wind.“ A choir of strings as gauzy as the curtain Price peers back through lightly urges him to the chorus. ”Oh I wish I was 18 again,“ he begins, before stopping, his eyes flooding with tears. ”I’m sorry,“ he says, ”but those strings are just so beautiful.“ Doubtless, the way the song’s lyrics cut so close to the bone, especially for a man Price’s age (74), also had him choked up. But strings—played here by members of the Nashville Symphony, and arranged and conducted by David Campbell (Beck’s dad)—have been touching Price’s heart for more than 50 years now.

As one might expect of someone reared in rural East Texas, Ray Noble Price cut his teeth on honky-tonk and Western swing, on the gutbucket records of Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb. But early on, Price also cultivated a taste for the smooth crooning of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and The Ink Spots. His recordings have reflected these pop leanings throughout his career. (As early as 1960, at the height of his run as a honky-tonk hero, he cut an album of gospel material steeped in strings.) The standard rap on Price, though, obscures this fact, plotting his career trajectory in three discrete phases: 1. Hank Williams clone (1951-1955); 2. hard-country pioneer (1956-1966); 3. supper-club sellout (1967 to the present).

Granted, Price’s early recordings were Hank Sr. knockoffs. This is hardly surprising: The two men were roommates when Williams gave Price his first hit of note, ”Weary Blues (From Waiting),“ and wangled him an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry. Price also fronted Williams’ Drifting Cowboys when Hank was too drunk to sing, and he later inherited the outfit after Williams’ death.

After one fan too many told him how much he sounded like Ol’ Hank, Price ditched the Drifting Cowboys, assembled his own band (The Cherokee Cowboys), and went on to forge a hard-driving 4/4 shuffle beat that became standard currency on the honky-tonk hardwood. No less than Bo Diddley’s ”hambone“ beat or James Brown’s one-chord funk workouts, ”the Ray Price beat“ became an enduring part of America’s musical vernacular. In the form of the hit single ”Crazy Arms,“ it almost single-handedly fended off the initial onslaught of rock ’n’ roll, knocking Elvis Presley’s ”Heartbreak Hotel“ out of the top spot on the country chart and spending 20 weeks at No. 1. Many of Price’s ’50s and ’60s sides, 25 of which reached the Top 10 between ’56 and ’66, also supplied country jukeboxes with a two-stepping, twin-fiddle alternative to the lush orchestration and creamy background choruses often heard on records produced by Nashville Sound architects Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins.

Without question, Price’s music took on more of a pop sheen as the ’60s wore on. He sweetened his hits ”Make the World Go Away“ (No. 2, 1963) and ”Burning Memories“ (No. 2, 1964) with string sections; both violins and Tommy Jackson’s fiddle graced two numbers on Night Life, his classic 1963 LP. Price’s increasing emphasis on these uptown flourishes reached its apotheosis in 1967, when he recorded a string-drenched version of the Irish chestnut ”Danny Boy.“ But here again, and contrary to the conventional wisdom about his career, this move wasn’t so much a departure for Price as a tribute to the saloon-style singing and arrangements he’d always loved and wanted to emulate. And for what it’s worth, cutting ”Danny Boy“ wasn’t entirely his idea to begin with.

”Every year for four or five years, I would close the Columbia show at the annual Disc Jockey Convention here [now Country Radio Seminar] with ‘Danny Boy,’ and everybody would scream, ‘Please, for God’s sake, record it,’ “ Price explains. ”So I went to Clive Davis, who was then president of Columbia, and said, ‘Mr. Davis, if you’ll let me do ”Danny Boy,“ I’ll hand you a smash hit.’ He looked at me real funny, but he let me do it my way. [Session leader] Grady Martin got [arranger and conductor] Cam Mullins for me, and I told Cam, ‘I want as many strings as we can put on it.’ And he said, ‘Are you serious?’ And I said, ‘Yep,’ and we burned ’em a new one.“