Vince Gill And Paul Franklin Revive ‘Danny Boy’ For Ray Price Tribute Set
‘This was a daunting and challenging choice, and we had to consider if it was the right one,’ says Gill.
Vince Gill and Paul Franklin’s version of “Danny Boy” is now available to stream and download ahead of the August 4 release of its parent album Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys.
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The new, 11-track collaboration by two of Nashville’s most venerated musicians, a tribute to country hero Price, focuses on many of his less familiar songs. But Gill confesses that taking on such a time-honored and widely-performed number brought a particular responsibility.
“This was a daunting and challenging choice, and we had to consider if it was the right one,” he explains. “It’s the one song on this whole collection that I would have been most skeptical about because it is so iconic. Paul and I decided that it could be incredibly beautiful if done the right way, for example if it was treated like Ray’s version of ‘Night Life,’ so we decided to make the steel guitar predominant like it is in that particular song.”
“Danny Boy” has origins that go back to before World War I, with lyrics written by English lawyer Frederic Weatherly in 1910. Three years later, they were set to the traditional Irish melody of “Londonderry Air,” after his sister-in-law sent him the tune. There have been at least 800 or so recorded versions of the song, by everyone from Glenn Miller to Chet Atkins and from Duane Eddy to James Galway and the Chieftains. Price’s version, which reached No.9 on the Billboard country chart, was the title track of a 1967 LP.
Gill and Franklin currently have no touring plans, but will make an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry on August 3, followed by an exclusive Q&A. The first 300 ticketholders for the show that buy Sweet Memories in the Opry shop that evening will win access to the with event, to take place in Studio A directly after the show. The album arrives ten years after Gill and Franklin’s much-admired tribute to Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, Bakersfield.
Pre-order Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys, which is released on August 4.
