While walking into the hotel, I was approached by a young man whom I confess I did not recognize, who asked me if I knew where the Reeves suite was, and I said I was headed there anyway and so we walked there together. It turns out it was actor Bobby Sherman (remember him, from the TV series "Here Come the Brides"? He an American singer, actor and occasional songwriter, who became a popular teen idol in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was in Nashville to also record and invited me to his session the following Monday but I wanted to spend the day with Mary instead, which I did). Anyway, I digress.
Mary really went all out that year and sponsored a dance in the hotel ballroom, featuring the Blue Boys BACKING RAY PRICE, whom she had hired to do a set. Can you imagine what that sounded like? A great singer and Jim Reeves' own band accompanying him!
Later in the evening I ran intro Ray at another hotel and he graciously posed for a picture, which I still have.
One postscript to this story is that I found Ray to be strangely aloof about Jim when I tried to get him to expound on his memories of Reeves for my book. (If you've read "Jim Reeves: His Untold Story," you know that it was Ray's then-wife, Linda, who organized the first search efforts when Jim's plane went down on Friday, July 31, 1964, in response to a plea from Jim's pilot friend, Bill Larson, who phoned her. Within a couple of hours Linda had called nearly everybody in the Nashville music fraternity and single handedly recruited them to help look for the plane. She was the unsung heroine behind the search and never got any public recognition until my book was published).
Anyway, Ray's response to me was that he barely knew Jim!!!!
But Jim even borrowed Ray's twin engine Aztec plane (which Bill Larson flew) for extended tour dates. And Judy Ford, Reeves' young rodeo star girlfriend, always confessed that Ray Price was her favorite SINGER but Jim was her favorite PERSON. Mr. Reeves used to tease her about this and say "when am *I* going to be your favorite singer?" On one occasion when Jim and the band flew down to Texas, and he arranged to have Judy meet him at the airport, he commented that he didn't bring Ray Price, but at least he brought his airplane!
After Jim was killed and the wreckage was found, Ray and Linda Price took Bill Larson home with them, fed him a meal, and insisted he get some sleep at their place because they were so concerned about him. He had been the first one airborne after Jim's plane disappeared from the radar screen just before 5 p.m. on the 31st, and had been flying Ray's plane with Linda and also an FAA man, William Whitmore, as a passenger, for a couple of days, trying to spot the wreckage from the air. Ray had been out of town for part of that time.)
Ray Price was one of the greats...
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