Vince Gill & Paul Franklin Reunite to Toast an Old Friend
He’s a Country Music Hall of Famer, and known as one of the greatest high harmony voices and guitar players to ever grace the genre. And he’s one of the greatest steel guitar players to ever step behind the console whose been featured on more recordings than almost anyone, and has been nominated for the CMA Musician of the Year an insane 30 times.
They’re Vince Gill and Paul Franklin, old buddies who’ve collaborated with each other often in the studio, for years in the supergroup The Time Jumpers, and ten years ago they recorded and released a tribute to The Bakersfield Sound called Bakersfield. Now they’re back, and this time they’re paying tribute to Ray Price and his legendary backing band that gave birth to a bunch of legends itself, The Cherokee Cowboys.
To be released on August 4th via MCA Nashville, Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys will include eleven tracks that look to make sure the legend of Ray Price who died in 2013 doesn’t go forgotten. But Gill assures, “This isn’t a sound-alike record. I never wanted to do that. I don’t think any of these songs sound comparable to the original. There were some unbelievably gifted musicians who were such a part of those original records. We were drawn to them probably as much as we were drawn to Ray.”
Along with being the home of steel guitar legend Buddy Emmons, performers Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck, Roger Miller, Johnny Bush, and Darrell McCall all did time as Cherokee Cowboys. So did noted fiddle player Buddy Spicher, steel guitarist Jimmy Day, and others. Ray Price basically took over the Drifting Cowboys after Hank Williams died, and they morphed into The Cherokee Cowboys. To read more about the legendary backing band, CLICK HERE.
The musicians for this tribute beyond Vince and Paul include Tom Bukovac (electric guitar), Dennis Crouch (bass), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Steve Gibson (electric guitar), John Jarvis (piano), Greg Morrow (drums), Wendy Moten (harmony vocals), the late Michael Rhodes (electric bass), Jerry Roe (drums), Derek Wells (electric guitar), and Andrea Zonn (harmony vocals). Former Grand Ole Opry announcer and country music historian Eddie Stubbs was also involved.
“We kind of shopped for the unfamiliar,” Vince Gill says. “Eddie Stubbs was part of this process, although he didn’t know it at the time. I’d listen to him at night and call him up and say, ‘Play something for me I’ve never heard before.’ He’d often play something that knocked me out, and I’d take note of all the songs. I had maybe 30 different ones for Paul to listen to—some so outside the box that I didn’t know them, and Paul didn’t either.”
The track list that Eddie Stubbs helped craft also includes a who’s who of country music, including Willie Nelson, Mel Tillis, Hank Cochran, Bobby Bare, Marty Robbins, Mickey Newbury, and of course Ray Price himself.
“We had such a great time doing ‘Bakersfield.’ It felt good introducing that music to a new generation,” says Paul Franklin. “This time, it was a no-brainer to pick Ray Price. Once we locked in on Ray, we started looking through the sheer volume of his material. We looked for obscure songs, ones even Ray’s fans might not know as well.”
Ahead of the album, the pair has released the song “Kissing Your Picture (Is So Cold).” Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price is now available for pre-order/pre-save.
TRACK LIST:
1. One More Time (Mel Tillis)
2. I’d Fight The World (Hank Cochran and Joe Allison)
3. You Wouldn’t Know Love (Hank Cochran and Dave Kirby)
4. Walkin’ Slow (And Thinking ‘Bout Her) (Bobby Bare and Lance Guynes)
5. The Same Two Lips (Marty Robbins)
6. Weary Blues From Waitin’ (Hank Williams Sr.)
7. Kissing Your Picture (Is So Cold) (Mel Tillis, Ray Price and Wayne Walker)
8. Sweet Memories (Mickey Newbury)
9. Danny Boy (Fred E. Weatherly)
10. Your Old Love Letters (Ray Price)
11. Healing Hands Of Time (Written by Willie Nelson)
June 2, 2023 @ 11:04 am
Damn this is gonna be good. Those guys are solid gold.
June 2, 2023 @ 11:40 am
This will likely be a masterpiece.
June 2, 2023 @ 11:52 am
Really looking forward to this one.
June 2, 2023 @ 12:17 pm
The Bakersfield album was a great one. Picked up the deluxe version at Cracker Barrel.
Looking forward to this.
June 2, 2023 @ 12:18 pm
Yes!!!! I was hoping they would do another project like this. The Bakersfield album is a classic. In the future I hope they do the same for Paycheck/ LLoyd Green.
June 2, 2023 @ 1:50 pm
Shut up and take my money!
June 2, 2023 @ 1:59 pm
This remark from Paul strikes me as out of touch.
…“It felt good introducing that music to a new generation,”…
The people who enjoy Vince and Paul are the same people who enjoy Bakersfield and Ray Price. I doubt they introduced anything to a new generation. What they did was provide excellent new takes on some classics for those who already love this music.
June 2, 2023 @ 5:20 pm
Paul was right on. I am 36 and am not familiar with older country to the depth you are. This album seems to strike a balance between deep cuts and standards that will give it broader appeal among the classic country fans.
June 2, 2023 @ 5:49 pm
Same here, although I’m late twenties.
June 3, 2023 @ 10:36 am
Strait86,
That’s fair, but you’re at least interested in older Country. I may have mis-interpreted who Paul was referring to, but I assumed he meant the younger generation in general, not specifically younger people like you who already enjoy older Country.
June 5, 2023 @ 11:08 am
Honky:
Not to agree, or disagree with you, but to simply provide some perspective on this excellent point you’ve made. And temper it with a little of my own experience. While I think you’re correct that the people who would buy an album like this are already well aware of the material, you’ve overlooked some key points.
From my perspective, I’m not 30, I found most of country music retroactively, and fell in love with it. And while I took educating myself on country music, very seriously, they are obvious gaps in my knowledge. Some of them I attribute to a general preference for country music beginning at 1945 and ending in 1973, And some of it is just a general availability of access to that information.
If someone were to walk into the world of country music, from books, he haw television, or a documentary, the influence of the legends, like George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson is inescapable, irrefutable, and impossible to not be aware of
And while the name of Ray price, and a few select hits, are probably on that status, a lot less is known about Ray price, and while to anyone up on country music, especially to a younger person who has learned about country music as a history, Wilde re-price, the name, and certainly the five or six inescapable, colossal hits, or simply beyond doubt, the depth of the Ray price catalog is largely a blip.
I say this is someone who has bought books, watch, documentaries, and gone to great lengths to educate myself on country music, my knowledge of Ray Price is somewhat limited. I have the obvious albums, I would recognize the known hits, but there is probably a lot about Ray Price, that someone who was there for his career could teach me.
And let’s not forget the obvious bias, that to people like you and me, Vince Gill is still very much a newer country singer. I have to check myself regularly, because from my perspective, Vince Gill, having come along since Eddie Rabbit, since Randy Travis, since John Conlee it’s easy for me, to instinctively think of Vince Gill is being a more modern country singer. But Vince Gill has been on the seat in a long time. So to people of a certain era, who got wind of country music during the rise of Vince Gill and Randy Travis, and John Conlee, that is to say, people who I’m estimating are around 45 to 55, who may be didn’t deep dive into the history of country music, while they were younger, but have kept tabs on the careers of people of that era, such as Vince Gill and Alan Jackson, there might be some educating to be done for them. After all, to people who spent their formative years, listening to the early hits of Vince Gill, the Internet was barely a concept, was at least two decades, out from becoming household, and at least three decades out from having ready access Two information on Ray Price, uploaded to it. So the people who would’ve grown up on that era of country music, while the legacy careers of George Jones and Merle Haggard was immutable, Ray price was already a more obscure household name. Known by name, and possibly less by the breadth and depth of his career.
June 3, 2023 @ 12:04 am
I’d say it’s a safe bet that Paul Franklin is more “in touch” with what’s going on around the music business then is some nut who likes to take over message boards by screaming that everybody he disagrees with is a “communist.”
I take it that in creating and the promoting the Bakersfield project, Franklin encountered and connected with younger people, many of whom personally told him that they loved the music and that it was new to them.
And that MCA Nashville would not have gotten behind this new project if they did not have indications that there’s a receptiveness for it from outlets and venues that cater to younger listeners who are not intimately familiar with the muisic of Ray Price.
June 3, 2023 @ 10:39 am
Are you all ever going to get that strawman killed? You’ve been beating on it for a long time.
Why would Paul Franklin, who lives in an insular environment, know more about middle-America than someone who lives in middle-America?
To be clear, I’m open to being wrong, which is why I said, “strikes me as out of touch” as opposed to “is out of touch”.
June 5, 2023 @ 8:20 pm
Paul’s recorded on more popular albums in ‘middle America’ than possibly anybody, for the past 30-40 years. He also toured it for much of his life. He’s an acquaintance, and as a man of a certain generation in Nashville, don’t worry- his political views are nearly as dumb as yours.
June 2, 2023 @ 2:31 pm
Wow, first kenny rogers new cd is out today, life is like a song and now this, way to go Vince! This will be a classic, looks like 2023 is turning out to be another banner year for country, great to hear from Vince gill again.
June 4, 2023 @ 8:26 am
I love you Vince!!
June 2, 2023 @ 3:48 pm
This is going to be a party.
Musicians across every genre are going to be listening with big old grins.
We want quality, Na$hville, not the calculated con.
June 2, 2023 @ 6:34 pm
We all need this in our lives right now.
Listening to “Kissing Your Picture (Is so Cold)” I kept thinking of “Take Your Memory With You.” Which isn’t a bad thing. When Gill does country, it’s country at its finest.
Even the communist would agree.
June 2, 2023 @ 7:21 pm
Under communism you would have a 5 yr wait for the CD. Until then it would just be state-issued Sam Hunt and Luke Bryan and occasionally Kenny Rogers on sundays.
June 2, 2023 @ 8:09 pm
I’m sure this new song will be good, heck, it might even surpass my all-time favourite song, Creedence’s “Goin’ Up Around the Bend”.
June 2, 2023 @ 9:52 pm
My second favorite country singer covering my favorite country singer with one of the tracks being one of my favorite songs of all time (Danny Boy)? I’m in heaven just thinking about this album. I can hardly wait.
June 2, 2023 @ 11:05 pm
Awesome. Pre-saved the album. Thanks for the heads-up.
June 3, 2023 @ 7:25 am
This album is like a cold drink water to a man dying of thirst. Great to hear that REAL country music still exists in Nashville amidst the endless flow of dreck unleashed on humanity every week.
Kissing Your Picture (Is So Cold) was originally intended as the “A” side of a late 1958 Ray Price single. But DJ’s flipped it over so the Bill Anderson song “That’s What It’s Like To Be Lonesome” became the hit in early 1959. Ray was so hot at that time many stations also played “Kissing Your Picture.” Although that side did not make the Billboard country survey it charted for nine weeks on both the Cashbox and Record World country charts peaking at #15 and #25 respectively. Both sides of that single were never issued on a Ray Price vinyl album and remained unavailable until the CD era.
Here’s the Ray Price original. Dale Potter & Shorty Lavender play twin fiddles and Jack “Curly” Evins is on steel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLdphW3PJI
June 3, 2023 @ 7:56 am
Sounds good. Sounds like some real COUNTRY MUSIC for a change. But I have one question, how come you hardly see any tributes to George Jones? At least I hardly see any.
June 3, 2023 @ 7:32 pm
There’ve been a lot of tributes to Jones, some before he died in 2004, some after. The most recent one was apparently recorded just 6 weeks ago at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with an all-star lineup including Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Wynonna, Travis Tritt, Jelly Roll, Tanya Tucker, Trace Adkins, Sara Evans, Justin Moore, Jamey Johnson, Joe Nichols, Aaron Lewis, Michael Ray, Uncle Kracker, Lorrie Morgan, Tracy Byrd, Tracy Lawrence, The Isaacs, Dillon Carmichael, T. Graham Brown, Gretchen Wilson, Sam Moore, Janie Fricke, Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke and some sort of special appearance by Randy Travis. It’s supposed to air on PBS “Great Performances” in the coming season.
June 3, 2023 @ 11:20 am
2 classy and very talented artists. This will be good.
June 3, 2023 @ 1:49 pm
Eddie Stubbs-Keeper of the Code!
June 3, 2023 @ 5:12 pm
I was wondering what, if anything, Eddie Stubbs was doing nowadays. Hopefully he will pop up from time to time.
June 3, 2023 @ 8:37 pm
PLEASE tell me they are going to tour this record. Please, please, please…