1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 35. Ray Price – Night Life (1963)

Full on Country and Western here, with Price, as I discover, being a big name in the genre. Most of the tracks are ballads and pretty much typical C&W style. The drums and (acoustic?) bass are way down in the mix, giving a mellow sound. Top of the mix is Price’s rich baritone, with the middle occupied with slide guitar and/or sweeping melodic fiddle, of the kind that will be favoured by Dexy’s Midnight Runners a couple of decades later. 

There are some decent tracks on here, including The Twenty Fourth Hour and the jaunty Bright Lights and Blonde-Haired Women, as well as the deliciously bluesy title track written by a certain Mr Willie Nelson, who was a member of Price’s band at this stage. This track is a little like the Yin to Ray Charles’ Yang. Whereas Charles took country and western music and gave it a soulful twist, here Price and Nelson take blues and give it a country twist. And consider that this kind of crossover between the music of black and white is still a few years before the Million Man March and the (official) end of Jim Crow. Music leads the way. 

One thing with Price, his deliciously melodic voice really doesn’t sell it when he sings songs about getting locked up for violence after drinking a bottle of gin. When Johnny Cash tells you he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, you believe it. Price just sounds too darn nice. When he’s singing the ballads about broken hearts, or even the more humorous tunes, he fits. 

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