Part II of my visit with Ray Price. Read Part I…
Nov 14, 2012–When I first came to Texas, I was expected to learn a drumming style called the “shuffle beat.” I had never heard or seen the two-step, let alone been inside a real dance hall. That beat, my band mates patiently explained, was the “shuffle” beat.
Guess what? Ray Price invented it–both the word and the rhythm.
“Guilty,” Price said when I asked him. “I invented the word ‘shuffle beat.’”
It happened at the session when they were recording Crazy Arms. The drummer was legendary Nashville studio musician Buddy Harman.
“I said, Buddy, can you play me a shuffle beat on the drums? He looked at me as if I was on another planet. I said, I’d like to see if we could play a shuffle. Do it with a 4/4 beat.” Buddy fooled around and finally nailed it. “Thank God it worked!”
Price admitted getting the idea while playing in honky-tonks. “I kind of heard it when I played a dance,” he said. “When playing music, if you all of a sudden stop, you hear feet shuffling on the floor. And it worked.”
Price also gets credit for introducing another innovation to standard country music. This one gets a stronger and more divided response.
Strings.
Price explained that he first heard strings while working on a faith album with Anita Kerr. He liked the sound of it and figured he could get away with adding strings to his faith songs, since “they didn’t play a lot of it on the radio.”
But further down the line, he heard Tex Ritter, Stan Kenton, and Eddy Arnold experiment with orchestral arrangements.
“By that time I was ready for it,” he said. So when he went in to record Danny Boy, he asked if he could use 17 strings players. The producer said, absolutely.
Unfortunately, the traditionalists in Nashville gave him heat over it. So much heat, that Price decided to move back to Texas. So, in a way, was Price the original “outlaw?”
“Well, one of them,” he admitted. “They said I had gone ‘pop,’ which wasn’t the case at all. So I got me a 22-piece orchestra and hit the road.” He chuckled. “It scared people to death when I played. They hadn’t seen nothing like that. God bless them, they stayed with it and gave me all the credit.”
Of course after six decades of singing it, Ray Price is country music. Even he admits it.
“If I stand on my head and sing the Star Spangled Banner backwards, they’ll say it’s country music,” Price said. “I try to do it my way. Everything so far has succeeded.”
I wanted to ask about Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson, and Johnny Bush, but Price was more interested in letting his fans know he is still recording. He is at this moment in a recording studio working on a new CD of love songs. “This is going to be for ladies only,” he said. “Now may be a good time to do this, because country music needs all the help it can get.”
Price remembers fondly his concert in Kerrville earlier in the year. “It was great,” he said. “Seems they really enjoyed the show.
And he wants everyone to come out again and “see me while you can,” he laughed. “It might be the last time.” Not that he plans to quit touring. Price battled cancer, and professes to have it under control. “I am ready and raring to go,” he said. “Tell your readers that we are back swinging!”