Ray Price

Ray Price,  known as the "Cherokee Cowboy" was born in Cherokee County, Texas, on January 12, 1926. Ray's career  began in the 1940s & included more than 100 singles on the country charts, including Crazy Arms, City Lights, Heartaches by the Number, Make the World Go Away & For The Goodtimes. He hired future country stars to play in his band, including  Roger Miller, Willie Nelson and Johnny Paycheck. And Pamper Music, the publishing company that he owned with two partners, helped start the careers of hit songwriters like Harlan Howard, Hank Cochran and Willie Nelson.

 

Ray Price first helped change country music in the mid-1950s, when, hoping to distinguish his sound from that of his former roommate Hank Williams, he and his band transformed the gutbucket country shuffle of the postwar era into sleek, propulsive honky-tonk.

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In the late 1960s & early 1970's, Ray refined his music by combining lush string orchestration & helped give birth to the so-called countrypolitan sound. His recording of Kris Kristofferson’s For The Goodtimes is an all-time classic.;