Columbia Records
'
Super Hits
albums are discount-priced collections of ten of the biggest hits of individual artists. The
Ray Price
number in the series mixes up material originally released from 1956 to 1973, which is to say that his
honky tonk
'50s hits like
"Crazy Arms"
and
"Heartaches by the Number"
are juxtaposed uneasily with his Nashville Sound '70s
ballads
like
"For the Good Times"
"She's Got to Be a Saint."
You certainly get the two
Ray Prices
here, although much of the time they sound like two different artists. And there's one oddity. Somebody at the
Columbia
vault pulled the wrong version of
"Release Me,"
which leads off the album. A sleeve note says, "Originally Released 1954," but the included recording is a much later Nashville Sound arrangement with heavy strings that seems to bear the influence of
Engelbert Humperdinck
's 1967
pop
revival. ~ William Ruhlmann