The time is right for Ray Price  

TTime was when country was country, and that was that. No arguments, no debate, no doubt. Steel guitars wept as beer joint junkies cried in their beer. Style was in. Hank Williams and Carl Smith and Webb Pierce and Ray Price sang like no other.

Time marches on. The Drifting Cowboy drifted on, Webb's gone, and Mr. Tunesmith retired years ago. Yet, the Cherokee Cowboy thrives.

Time was when Price, the king of the country shuffle, was as hard core country as anyone. Though he never ditched the sound entirely on the road, on record it's been mostly missing for nearly 40 years.

Until now.

With "Time" (Audium), Price recaptures the style that spread his sound through many a country home over the past 50 years.

"Nick Hunter (the head of Audium), when we made the deal for the record, I asked him what he wanted, and he said he wanted a pure country album," Price, 76, says by phone from his Mt. Pleasant, Texas home.

"I think everybody thought I didn't know how to do that anymore. So, thank goodness most all of us are still alive. My friend, Fred Foster, produced it, and I told him what musicians I wanted. Fortunate for me, we're friends enough that they all decided that we could get together and do it, and we did."

Price, whose famed Cherokee Cowboys band has included such names as Johnny Paycheck, Willie Nelson, Johnny Bush and the late Jimmy Day, also embarked upon his latest with all-star support. Buddy Harmon, country's most recorded musician of all time, slaps the skins. Buddy Emmons offers still strong steel guitar. Pete Wade, Jimmy Capps and Harold Bradley play guitar, while Bob Moore plays bass like only Bob Moore could.

The result: an album that hearkens to the late 1950s.

"Oh, they are great players," Price says. "Of course, Buddy Harmon was on the session of 'Crazy Arms' when we did the first shuffle record (back) when I told him what I wanted, and he come up with it. He's just like a rock; the way it starts is the way it ends. And, of course, Buddy Emmons - not knocking any other steel players - is the greatest steel player in the business. Buddy seems to have something really special."

Recorded live sans studio razzmatazz - i.e. computers, samples, drum machines and vocals tweaks - Price approached this one with the idea of getting it done and getting it done quickly. In short, there's no wasted time. Hank Williams did not require multimillion dollar recording budgets and months to make classic records, and neither does his one-time protŽgŽ.

Consequently, "Time" offers a more "real" sound, a warm feeling that creates a bond with whomever listens.

"Well, first of all when you do it live you capture something on record ' that you can't get piecemeal," Price says. "If you can stir the players up to where they're really into it and enjoying what they're doing, you're gonna get a good record if the songs are good. I knew that. I've been screamin' that for years: 'You're doin' it wrong.' You're really cheatin' the act, and you're cheatin' the musicians because there's no way you can get a little excitement going (otherwise), and you've got to have that if you have a great record. That's the way I want to record."

Back to style. Ray Price forged his career on iron strong country. Songs such as 1956's "I've Got A New Heartache" and 1959's "Heartaches By The Number" featured his commanding voice out front a fiddle and steel mix that came to be called the country shuffle.

Ever the stylist, Price came along when singers were expected to make their own mark, not copy from each other. Learn what the other guy does, then go out and do it your way.

Additionally, image played a large part in the making of a music career. Long before today's video-conscience warblers, country singers crafted images for themselves that at least visually separated themselves from those who paid to see them.

Why pay dearly to see someone who dresses just like you?Enter Nudie Cohn's rainbow-colored rhinestone suits, Nudie suits. Most every country singer of the 1950s wore them, from Webb Pierce to T. Texas Tyler to Faron Young.

And of course, Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys.

"I liked 'em a whole lot except they'd almost get me in a fight a lot of times with some redneck," Price says. "They weighed 16 pounds; they'd burn you up. I never wanted to wear rhinestones until I'd be on some shows with the Wilburn Brothers. They'd come out with rhinestone suits, and the crowd would just go wild, so I thought, 'hmm, maybe I ought to do something.' Nudie and I were friends. I told him what I wanted, and he did it, and it worked out great. The first night I wore one of them on the Grand Ole Opry, I got a full picture in color in Life magazine."

Such exposure - and with songs such as the 1956 country song of the year, "Crazy Arms" - helped make Price a superstar. Hits flowed like wine from a drunkard's bottle. 1957's "My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You" led to 1958's "Curtain in the Window" which preceded "City Lights." Jukebox operators loved the money his music generated; honky-tonkers just loved what he said and how he said the things he said.