Crazy Arms
Created Sonntag 03 September 2017

Amber Digby & Miss Leslie "Crazy Arms"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjvWVJsuod0
19.481 Aufrufe

Ray Price ~ Crazy Arms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=153&v=GurizZaR0Ms
122.206 Aufrufe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Arms

Crazy Arms

Now blue ain't the word for the way that I feel
And the storm's brewing in this heart of mine
This ain't no crazy dream I know that it's real
You're someone else's love now you're not mine

Crazy arms that reach to hold somebody new
While my yearning heart keeps saying you're not mine
My troubled mind knows soon to another you'll be wed
And that's why I'm lonely all the time

So please take the treasured dreams I have for you and me
And take all the love I thought was mine
Someday my crazy arms may hold somebody new
But now I'm so lonely all the time

http://www.metrolyrics.com/crazy-arms-lyrics-ray-price.html


The Story Behind The Song………………………”Crazy Arms” – Ray Price (#1, 1956)
By the middle of 1956, many were predicting the end of the “real” country sound. The rockabilly movement that had sprung forth and taken root in the early ‘50s had now found a charismatic leader in Elvis Presley. The music that was propelling Presley’s rise, as well as scores of imitators across the nation, was a mixture of country, blues and pop, and the bass-driven sound was beginning to dominate not only the pop charts, but the country playlists, too. With Presley now being backed by RCA Victor, his music was not only starting a cultural revolution in the nation, but was also dramatically re-shaping the country music charts.
Hank Williams had been dead barely three years, and already fiddles and steel guitars were disappearing from country bands. Drums and hot guitar licks blasting out a louder, more frantic beat were now replacing the honky-tonk dance rhythm. Record executives were so convinced that yesterday’s music was dead that one of them (Steve Sholes at RCA) even asked Porter Wagoner to record rock-sounding songs. In a brief instant, it seemed that Music City had been turned upside down.
During the first five months of 1956, the Billboard country playlist presented five #1 singles. Three of these chart-topping hits, “I Forgot To Remember To Forget” and “Heartbreak Hotel” both by Elvis, and “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins, may have been sung by Southern boys, but they had nothing in common with the music of Webb Pierce or Faron Young. The two legitimate country hits during the first part of the year, “Why Baby Why” by Webb Pierce and Red Sovine, and “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby” by The Louvin Brothers couldn’t hold their top chart position nearly as long as their rock rivals. With Presley’s “Hound Dog”/”Don’t Be Cruel” single just beginning to make its run, things looked bleak for the folks who worked Nashville’s “Grand Ole Opry.”
However, during the holy war for the radio audience, one man would proudly step forward to carry the country banner. Far from seeing himself as country music’s savior, Ray Price didn’t even foresee a career in entertainment at all. He really thought he’d end up being a rancher. Price made extra money by singing at small, local events. This seemingly innocent moonlighting experience won him an invitation to join a local radio show. Once he was on the air, his audience grew so rapidly through the Abilene, Texas-based program that he was asked in 1950 to come to Dallas to be part of KRLD’s famed “Big D Jamboree” show, one of the two most important country music offerings west of the Mississippi River (the other being the “Louisiana Hayride” out of Shreveport, Louisiana), and segments of the show were broadcast on the CBS Radio Network. Price gained enormous popularity at the “Big D Jamboree” as well, and before long, he started getting some top offers. In 1952, the Opry called, as did Columbia Records. Ray quickly packed his bags and moved east. Texas may have lost a future rancher, but it wouldn’t take America very long to discover that they had gained one top-notch country music star.
In 1953, Price formed a band out of the remnants of Hank Williams’ old “Drifting Cowboys.” The fiddle and steel-driven sound (known as the “shuffle” sound) that the newly-renamed “Cherokee Cowboys” were to provide for the singer, would become his trademark for nearly two decades. During a time when Nashville was turning to the frantic rockabilly sound, Ray was keeping his shuffle-beat hillbilly music pure and easy. Price’s early recording career was marked with solid entries, but few songs that stood out. “Release Me,” which many years later would become a pop standard, was probably the best of these early singles, even though “I’ll Be There” scored a little better on the playlists. In early 1956, this moderate chart success would give way to something special. One song would make Ray Price the era’s most important traditional voice.
While Ray was thrilling traditional fans at the Opry, Charlie Seals was working to a much smaller audience on the West coast. A musician from a family that had been picking for generations (Brady Seals of the group “Little Texas,” and singer Dan Seals are from this same family tree), Charlie was playing in clubs by night and writing songs by day. He had written a couple of regional hits which had done pretty well out in California, but hadn’t made the national country charts.
One of Seals’ best concepts came on a day when he ran into a friend and old playing partner Ralph Mooney. Ralph was a very talented steel guitar player, but unfortunately a notorious womanizer. Mooney sadly told Seals that his wife had caught him with another woman, and had taken the first bus out of town. “Oh, these crazy arms of mine,” Ralph had moaned as he told Charlie about his problems. “If only I could control my crazy arms,” he said.
Ralph’s phrase immediately struck a chord with Charlie, and he thought Mooney’s predicament might make a great song, with the line about having crazy arms being a good place to begin. The two men pooled their songwriting talent and wrote the story of a man who just couldn’t be true, no matter how good he had it at home. Once the song was completed, Seals took it to Jimmy Wakely, who by then owned a publishing company. Wakely had scored several hits of his own back in the late ‘40s, three of them reaching #1, including “One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)” and “Slipping Around,” a duet with Margaret Whiting that also topped Billboard’s pop chart as well. Jimmy was extremely lukewarm about “Crazy Arms.” He agreed to publish it, but told Seals that it would never sell. Wakely didn’t even bother working the song, he simply filed it away. Whenever Seals or Mooney would ask about “Crazy Arms,” Wakely would answer, “there’s no way that song will ever be cut.”
Meanwhile, Charlie was doing the number in his live shows, and getting good audience reaction. The song came to the attention of another publisher, who asked Seals about it. When Charlie told him that Wakely wasn’t doing anything with it, the publisher asked Seals if he could get the rights back. When Charlie asked Jimmy if he could have them back, Wakely couldn’t even find his copy of “Crazy Arms” in the office! He verbally gave them back, still warning Seals that the song would never sell. Seals signed on with the new publisher and cut his own version of “Crazy Arms.” A few months later, Ray Price heard Charlie’s record and liked it a lot. Using an almost identical arrangement, Ray quickly snapped up the song and recorded it. Columbia Records had it ready to ship by the Spring of ’56.
The song that Jimmy Wakely said would never be recorded hit the Billboard chart in May, and on June 23rd, it knocked Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” out of the top spot. “Crazy Arms” would remain the #1 song in the nation for twenty weeks and stay on the Billboard playlist for almost a year. It is the fourth all-time biggest hit in country music history, behind only Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” (1950), Eddy Arnold’s “I’ll Hold You In My Heart” (1947) and Webb Pierce’s “In The Jailhouse Now” (1955). With one recording, Ray Price had not only become a country music sensation, but he was now the standard-bearer for the preservation of traditional country music on the current playlists of that period. He had succeeded in knocking a large hole in the theory that there was no place for the old country sound in the rockabilly era. – JH

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