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Standard bearer: Ray Price's recordings of the classic love songs are as good as Frank Sinatra's. So why don't more people know it?

Article Excerpt
On the night in December 2000 when Ray Price was scheduled to appear at the River Palace, in Johnson City, he was a bit late making his entrance. The crowd was patient, but as soon as the instruments began to be set up, a movement started toward the rim of the stage. By the time Price appeared, we were ringed there, three or four deep. He was 74 then, and we had come, its fair to say, for the valedictory pleasures: to hear "For the Good Times" and "Crazy Arms," "Night Life" and "Funny How Time Slips Away." It could almost be said we'd come less to see Ray Price than to remember him. [paragraph] But though most of us didn't know it, he was at a turning point in a career that had already seen one or two major ones. Some forty years before, Price had famously lost the affection and support of country purists by adding strings to his act and becoming, in effect, a pop balladeer. He'd tried to make that earlier transition gently. His 1963 album, Night Life, opened with a spoken introduction ("Well, hi, neighbors!") in which he literally thanked his listeners for accepting the changes they were about to hear. Now he was once again asking us to accept something "a little different." Price had recently released a new CD, Prisoner of Love, and in between generous helpings of "Crazy" and "San Antonio Rose," he was serving up a sample of what was on it. There was no "Hi, neighbors!" to this transition, however. That would be a little like Charon the boatman asking his passengers on the ride across the River Styx to mind the rough waters. For Price, the rough waters had become the whole point.

What he was doing was mining some of the more soulful standards of...

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