Ray Price is
an American country and western singer. Some of Price's
more famous songs include "Crazy Arms," "Heartaches By the Numbers,"
"City Lights" and "Danny Boy." He was elected to the Country Music
Hall of Fame in 1996. Price is one of the founders of
honky-tonk music with his development of the "Ray Price Shuffle
Beat."
More about Ray Price.
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Ray Price hit Nashville in the early 1950s, rooming for a short time with Hank Williams. When Williams died, Ray Price took over his band, the Drifting Cowboys, and had minor success. He was the first artist to have a hit with "Release Me" (1953), a song made famous by Englebert Humperdinck in the early 1970s. Ray Price developed the famous "Ray Price Shuffle Beat" that is heard on "Crazy Arms", which served as the beat for many honky-tonk classics since then.
In 1953, Ray Price formed his famous band, the Cherokee Cowboys. Among its members in the late 1950s and early 1960s were Roger Miller, Willie Nelson and Johnny Paycheck. In fact, Miller wrote one of Ray Price's classics in 1958, "Invitation to the Blues", and sang harmony on the recording. In addition, Nelson penned the Ray Price classic, "Night Life".
Ray Price disappeared off the country music scene in the 1960s but emerged with another hit, the Kris Kristofferson classic, "For the Good Times". The song featured a more mellow sound backed up by sophisticated musical sounds, quite the opposite from the honky-tonk sounds Ray Price pioneered two decades before. He continues to tour and record today.