Vince Gill Hits a New High on His Latest Album: 'I Never Expected It' (Exclusive)

The Hall of Famer and virtuoso steel guitarist Paul Franklin pay tribute to country legend Ray Price — and earn a Grammy nomination for a 65-year-old classic song!

Think you’ve heard that old chestnut of a song, “Danny Boy,” more than enough times? Yeah, so did Vince Gill.

So what possessed him to include it on his latest album? Who cares? All you really need to know is that this song, delivered by one of country’s G.O.A.T. voices, will leave you heaving sighs and wiping away tears.

Even the usually self-effacing Gill admits he was impressed. “I’ve been singing for a long, long, long, long time on a lot of records — 50 years,” says the 66-year-old Hall of Fame member, “and I sang a couple of notes in that recording that are some of my favorite notes I’ve ever hit. Just the sound — the controlled little bit of vibrato and everything about it — was really moving to me, and I never expected it.”

Of course, country fans live for moments like this, and Gill, even more, lives to make them. Blessedly, for the rest of us, it’s why he keeps doing it.

This time around, “Danny Boy” is nestled amid 10 other equally sublime tracks on Gill’s latest collaboration with his frequent musical partner, virtuoso steel guitarist Paul Franklin: Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys.

On Friday, the two men learned one of the cuts, "Kissing Your Picture (Is So Cold)," has been nominated for a Grammy for best country duo/group performance. No doubt its "don't make 'em like they used to" title proclaims it's from a bygone era in country music: Price originally released the song in 1958. But its lively uptempo — awarding Franklin ample opportunity to display his deft touch — clearly makes the song timeless. (And both Franklin and Gill suspect the songwriter, Mel Tillis, another country legend, had his famously stuttering tongue in cheek when he wrote it. "He was such a comedian," says Franklin.)

Sweet Memories is Gill and Franklin's second album together, following 2013's Bakersfield, which featured the music of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. While both projects fall under the category of “tribute” albums, they are much more playgrounds for the two men’s fertile — and like-minded — musical spirits. “Fun” is the word that keeps coming up as they talk about the album. It was fun, they say, to discover and learn new music, fun to pick the songs, fun to get into the studio and combine their singular voices, Gill’s sweet tenor and Franklin’s smooth steel.

The sound of those bended strings, Gill submits, “is the most reminiscent of the human voice, and I think that’s why I’m so drawn to it. I love the sound of the instrument with my voice.” Franklin returns the love to Gill. “His voice is like a musical instrument,” says the 69-year-old musician, who’s played on Gill’s recordings since “When I Called Your Name,” his first major hit. “It’s as flawless and as pure as you can get.”

Picking the music of Ray Price was fun, as well, for the two men, but it was also an act of love. Both are lifelong fans who’ve been deeply influenced by the country legend and his ace band, the Cherokee Cowboys, and both knew Price personally. In Gill’s storied career as an artist, guitarist, and songwriter, he crossed paths with his hero several times, and Gill and Franklin both contributed to his last album, Beauty Is … The Final Sessions, recorded in 2013 soon after Price was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died, at age 87, in December that year.

These days Price’s name is not commonly included in the same breath as Willie, Waylon, Jones and Haggard, but Gill points out that Price was among their great inspirations — and the one who “took all those cats under his wing.”

“There’s just a grand history of Ray having the respect of all those people because of the way he sang,” says Gill. “They would tell you, to the man, that’s the guy. That’s the singer right there.”

In fact, Willie Nelson, who briefly played bass in Price’s band in the early 1960s, created his own tribute album in 2016, and both Gill and Franklin appeared on several of its tracks. Nelson mostly chose from Price’s hit parade, including his groundbreaking shuffle, “Crazy Arms” (its swinging 4/4 beat soon took over country); his aching “Make the World Go Away”; his smooth countrypolitan “For the Good Times”; and the Nelson-written masterpiece, “Night Life,” with its signature steel intro.

Related: Willie Nelson 'Never Thought' He'd Get to Age 90 — but Says the Milestone 'Ain't Nothing' (Exclusive)

When Gill and Franklin conceptualized their album, they were intent on taking a more subterranean dive than Nelson did into the Price catalogue. To help them in their search, they enlisted walking country encyclopedia Eddie Stubbs, the longtime DJ on Grand Ole Opry flagship station WSM.

“He was bringing us songs we’d never heard before,” Franklin recalls. “I thought I was a deep study on Ray Price, but I learned real quick that I had no idea.”

Once they made their selections, Gill and Franklin did further research, only to discover the songs had been written by an impressive roster of other country giants, including Tillis, Hank Cochran, Marty Robbins and Bobby Bare — all Country Music Hall of Fame members.

“The fact that we chose those legends blind means that we may have an idea of how to pick a good song,” Franklin says with a merry chuckle. “But they stand out as writers. There was something they did, just their simplicity in delivering a really strong message. That’s why they’re in the Hall of Fame.”

The songs span 20 of perhaps the most influential years of Price’s six-decade-plus career, and all of them exude the traditional sound that occupies the core of Gill’s and Franklin’s hearts. The oldest, 1951’s “Weary Blues from Waitin’,” was written by Hank Williams (with an uncredited assist from Price, who toured with country’s honky-tonk keystone). The musical journey ends with title track “Sweet Memories,” Price’s 1971 cover of an Andy Williams pop classic that was written by Mickey Newbury. (Nelson put it on the country chart in 1979.)

Only three of the tracks — “One More Time” (1960), “Danny Boy” (1967) and “You Wouldn’t Know Love” (1970)— made country’s top 10, and none were No. 1 hits.

The old friends approached their selection process selflessly, each looking for songs that offered opportunities for the other to shine. That’s how “Danny Boy” ended up on the list. Gill settled on the song as one that would give Franklin a signature steel moment like the one that Price’s “Night Life” is known for.

“I thought, if we put the right changes to this, we can make ‘Danny Boy’ a new showpiece for steel guitar,” Gill recalls. “It was more about making the steel guitar have this presence that was reminiscent of ‘Night Life.’ And so I said, yeah, I think I can sing it. I’ve never tried to sing it, but I’ll give it a shot.”

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Not that he didn’t know the potential power of the century-old song — something reinforced by an encounter with Price himself. Gill relishes telling of an exchange between the two when they shared a bill at a long-ago private event.

“Ray came off stage, and he just killed ’em,” says Gill. “They were in the palm of his hand, and he was gonna do an encore — kind of thinking about it. And I went up to him and I said, ‘Man, if you do ‘Danny Boy,’ you’d kill ’em. And he looked at me, and he says, “Son, you want blood, don’t ya?’”

Price’s version is majestic, while Gill and Franklin’s is more intimate. Recorded with all the musicians in the studio (a rarity today), it turned into a singular moment for Franklin, as well.

“I’ve been a Vince Gill fan since I met him 40 years ago, and I thought I had heard him sing pretty much every style of music,” says Franklin, “but when he started singing this traditional song, it was like he went to a different place. There was a conversation going on with the band that was spiritual. I look back at my career, and there are magical moments, and that was one of the moments where everything just came together.”

Gill is now touring with the Eagles and Franklin stays busy with touring and studio work — his latest appearance is on George Strait’s upcoming album — but both are eager to make more magical moments together. They fully intend to turn their two tribute albums into a series, and they don’t want to wait a decade to work on the next edition, as they did with this one.

On their short list are artists whom they have both idolized and had history with: George Jones, Conway Twitty, and Little Jimmy Dickens. Franklin performed on several Jones albums. Gill sang harmony on Twitty’s recordings, toured with Twitty and Jones, and he and Dickens were Opry pals.

“So there’s a deep connection behind all of this,” says Gill, “and there’s a thoughtfulness behind it. You want to honor the people that you love the most. That’s a good way to go about life, you know.”

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