Houston Chronicle Features Ray Price

The 9513 returned after a brief outage (hyew!) to draw my attention to this great article from the Houston Chronicle featuring country music legend Ray Price. Here’s a taste:

Price’s early notoriety was as a wingman, of sorts, for Hank Williams. They met in 1951 and became fast friends and roommates, drinking buddies and tour partners. Price would stand in when Williams was too drunk to perform. Williams got Price on the Grand Ole Opry. Price calls Williams “a great cat, down to earth.”

They were supposed to meet for lunch on the New Year’s Day, 1953, that news broke of Williams’ death. Price had seen him a few weeks earlier.

“He was pretty low. He was really depressed over his marriage and he slowly went (crazy). But he was a nice guy. Twenty-nine when he died. And he died at the top of the heap.”