Eddy Arnold News

Given that both artists joined the Country Music Hall of Fame on the same night in 1996, there's a symmetry to a Ray Price appearance at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. But what made Price's Bakersfield date Saturday particularly appropriate is the way in which his brand of country adapted well to what was essentially a supper-club engagement.

Price earned his place in the Hall of Fame as an innovator in two musical movements. His first Billboard No. 1 single, "Crazy Arms" -- March 1 marks the 50th anniversary of the recording session -- established the now-classic country shuffle with its walking bassline and piano chords on the afterbeat. It's a honky-tonk derivative of jazz-inflected Western swing, and as such it's perfectly suited to the laid-back atmosphere of a mealtime performance.

With Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves, Price was among the first to use lush, uptown string sections on his ballads, earning the wrath of diehard traditionalists but expanding his audience in the late '60s and early '70s in spite of the backlash.

In the first of two Saturday shows, Price balanced the shuffles and the countrypolitan material, incorporating a three-piece fiddle section among his 10-piece Cherokee Cowboys band. The fiddles gave the requisite hard edge to shuffles such as "Heartaches by the Number" and "The Other Woman," while they combined with Mike Cass' steel to create a softer texture for Price's ballads, including "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" and "I Won't Mention It Again."

Although he turned 80 last month, Price still maintains a rich, vibrant vocal presence. He stood almost motionless in a steel-gray suit and red tie, his gaze moving slowly across the club in a seeming attempt to make eye contact with every patron. He delivered the material with a warm, reassuring quality, treating many of the classic melodies with a near-reverence. Like Bing Crosby or George Strait, he graced most of the performances with a cool understatement that worked particularly well on the bittersweet parts of his repertoire, including "For the Good Times," which still induced chills 35 years after its introduction.

Price is an under-recognized bridge between generations of country stars. His Cherokee Cowboys graduated fellow Hall of Famers Willie Nelson and Roger Miller, and he was among the first artists to earn hits penned by Hall of Fame songwriters Kris Kristofferson, Bill Anderson and Harlan Howard. Price also was influenced by Western-swing icon Bob Wills and spent a short period as a housemate of Hank Williams, whose "A Mansion on the Hill" received a shuffle treatment for Saturday's encore.

Price didn't overplay those connections, and he didn't brag about having originally owned the publishing rights to some of the standards he dropped into the set, such as Nelson's "Crazy" and Hank Cochran's "Make the World Go Away." He simply slipped them in casually with his barroom numbers and reserved ballads; in the process, Ray Price filled the room with an easygoing dignity.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter