Vince Gill and Paul Franklin on Teaming Up for an Album of Ray Price Classics: Authentic Country Music Is ‘Not Dead — It’s Just Not Real Popular’
07.08.2023 - 00:21
/ variety.com
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The new collaborative album by Vince Gill and instrumentalist Paul Franklin is not a vocal duets record. But for anyone who believes that there’s something about the steel guitar that’s uncannily akin to the moan of the human voice, in spirit if not sound, maybe it’s close enough.
Ten years ago, the country star and the preeminent living steel guitarist joined forces for the co-billed album “Bakersfield,” a tribute to the music of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. After a decade’s pause, they’ve teamed up again on record for a much-needed sequel, “Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & the Cherokee Cowboys.” Including the name of a long-lost backing band in the subtitle is a tip-off that the record is not just an act of hero worship of Price, who had a five-decade recording career, from the ‘50s through 2000s, before passing away in 2013 at age 87.
It’s also a tribute to a style of classic country playing that you would be hard-pressed to hear anywhere near a radio airwave anymore. As Gill puts it in an interview with Variety: “People say all the time, ‘Country music’s dead.’ I go, ‘No, it’s not.
It’s not dead. It’s just not real popular.’ That’s a big difference, you know? … I think the real point of all this is we miss that kind of music.
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