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Sunday, April 6, 2008
Ray Price: Willie’s mentor
MOUNT PLEASANT — 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. Yet Price’s Cherokee Cowboys band does not pack the nostalgic clout of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys or Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troubadours.
Even after beating back the Elvis explosion in the 1950s by inventing the country shuffle, then helping usher “the Nashville Sound” to prominence in the next decade, Price wasn’t inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame until 1996.
“Well, it’s about time,” the East Texan 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, who still performs 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 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.
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