San Antonio Rose [Expanded Edition]

Tour de force return to honky tonk

When F. Scott Fitzgerald said "there are no second acts in American lives," he clearly didn’t anticipate how country music stars could slip away from their roots, chase their commercial fortunes to the pop charts, and return with a vengeance to that which made them famous in the first place. Others may have retransitioned more recently (e.g., Dolly Parton’s recent mountain-inspired work), but few have so convincingly demonstrated their early powers to still be intact as did Ray Price with this 1980 release. ¶ Having inherited Hank Williams backing band upon Williams’ death in 1953, Price bucked Nashville’s drift towards pop with hard-edged, drum-fueled, honky-tonk tunes like "Crazy Arms" and minted his iconic 4/4 shuffle beat. Ironically, as his interests expanded to pop balladry, he was both vilified and commercially rewarded for hits like 1970’s "For the Good Times." ¶ Though he had the occasional chart breakthrough, such as 1977’s "Mansion on the Hill," Price’s fortunes were trending down through the end of the decade. It was at this point that he reunited with his former bass player, Willie Nelson, and other key members of his earlier backing bands for these sessions, hitting with "Faded Love," and minting a stirring, re-energizing album. ¶ Nelson brings his usual eclecticism to bear, from his idiosyncratic phrasing and gut-string guitar picking, to sophisticated, jazzy arrangements of songs like "Night Life" (which Price originally released as a single in 1963). The smoothness of Price’s voice, tempered by his years as a crooner, fits surprisingly well with the reedier tone of Nelson. ¶ Album highlights include the title track’s superb dancehall shuffle (revisiting a Bob Wills song that Price and Nelson had first recorded together in 1961 -- in the same studio!), the weeping steel ballad "Don’t You Ever Get Tired (Of Hurting Me)," and a a signature take (and a top-5 hit single) of "Faded Love," with haunting fiddle from ex-Texas playboy, Johnny Gimble. Also on board are one-time Price steel player Buddy Emmons, and ace studio players like Grady Martin and Leon Russell. ¶ It’s hard to imagine this record could have come out any better. The creative union of Nelson and Price plays to all of their strengths, re-energizes songs that both of them had played and recorded over nearly two decades, and provides each an opportunity to bask in the light of their combined success. Columbia Legacy’s reissue adds two previously unreleased tracks, the first reprising Price’s 1965 recording of "Just Call me Lonesome," the second providing a solo take of Nelson singing the western swing "My Life’s Been a Pleasure." Both are good spins, and Rich Kienzle’s new liner notes are informative, but it’s the original eleven tracks that make this a five-star album. ¶ Tech note: the Extended CD Features caused a Windows 2000 laptop to lock-up until the CD was manually ejected, and provided no usable extra features on a Macintosh G3 with MacOS 8.6.

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