Ray Price Sings Heart Songs

by Benimal This is the first Ray Price studio album. A year before, he had found his breakthrough with the #1 "Crazy Arms", which not only was the first in a series of consecutive chart hits (he had some other hits before that), but also established his legendary shuffle-style - the 4/4-beat that you hear in Country songs up to this day to remind you of the old days and to get you onto the floor scooting in your old boots. As this album comes from the 50s, it doesn't contain any of his singles or hits, but consists of recordings of covers, which doesn't mean that it can't be interesting just the same. As the album is said to contain "heart songs" and noone can quite sing a heart song like old Ray, you're in for a treat with this diddy. He sure is one of my favorite singers ever if not my very favorites on a good day and what he does to some already established classics here is nothing short of amazing. Ok, there might be better versions of "I Love You Because" around, "Many Tears Ago" was always a bit of a boring song to me, but he mostly does his best and that's great. Recorded with his band, the Cherokee Cowboys, and some of the usual Nashville musicians (Floyd Cramer on piano for example) he gives those songs some faithful cover versions that aren't too different from the originals except that they get succumbed by his unique voice, while at other times he decides to shuffle the song up. This works great with the versions of Ernest Tubb's "Letters Have No Arms" or Hank's "Mansion on the Hill" (great bassline too) and works wonders with "Pins and Needles (In My Heart)" where he gives great bitter vocal delivery. Meanwhile I think that "Faded Love" sounds just a bit too rushed, or it just might be that I'm used to hearing that great song done real slow (like he has done later on with Willie). He even sneaked some 'new'/unestablished songs on here with "Let Me Talk to You", which he recorded at several stages of his career (most notably on the classic Night Life album) and "I Saw My Castles Fall Today", which he co-wrote with Rex Griffin. All in all, this has stood the test of time way better than other Country albums of this era for those pluspoints you find in the tight rhythm sections and his vocals that never can do wrong. Although sometimes he gives some of those Honky Tonk classics a more careful and almost vocally too pretty deliverance than they really need, most of the time it really hits home. This would be the start of an almost faultless series of studio albums that would last almost a decade.