Tuesday, August 31
9 p.m.
Call the box office
for ticket info.

(6:30 p.m. performance is on a wait list basis. Call for info.)

With a strong, silky voice that “still spills nuance, experience and heartbreak” (Houston Chronicle) the great western crooner Ray Price has a list of hits that goes back decades as well as new beautiful recordings of western standards and swinging country.

Ray Price can do it all, and do it well, singing the spectrum of his greatest recordings from Your Cheatin’ Heart to Stardust, Danny Boy and Good Times to How Great Thou Art, Crazy Arms, Release Me, You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me, City Lights and San Antonio Rose. His career goes from traditional country to pop, jazzy western, country gospel to grand, sweeping orchestrations packed with weeping strings and lush back up vocals.

Price’s love of strings and his strength as a balladeer have placed him in a class of his own, but it is his roots in Texas swing that controls his smooth vibrato and which, together with the music of Bob Wills, still rules Texas dance halls. A member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1952, his early experimentations with sound and arrangements culminated in the 4/4 bass-driven “Crazy Arms,” the country song of the year for 1956. The intensely rhythmic sound he discovered with “Crazy Arms” would dominate his -- and much of country in general’s -- music for years. To this day, people in Nashville refer to the 4/4 country beat as the “Ray Price Shuffle.” Heavy on fiddle, steel, and high tenor harmony, his country work from the late 50’s is as lively as the rock & roll of the same era and his lush late-60’s and 70’s work has an orchestral, cross-over appeal of Eddy Arnold.

Price has recorded dozens of hit records and has performed with all of country’s greats, including Hank Williams, with whom he started out, and whose band, the Drifting Cowboys, he took over following Hank’s early death. Under Price’s direction the band later became the Cherokee Cowboys and helped start the careers of several country superstars including Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck, Roger Miller, Darrell McCall and Johnny Bush – all of whom were in the Cherokee Cowboys.

Together with Merl Haggard and Willie Nelson, Price recorded a hit CD entitled Last of the Breed in 2007, a collaboration which received critical acclaim and Grammy Award in 2008.