The Wray Brothers Band "Cowboy Sangers" (CIS Northwest Records, 1982) (LP)
(Produced by Larry Messick & Dave Mathew)
This album is notable as the launching pad for the career of 1990s Top Forty star Collin Raye, an Arkansas native whose birth name was Floyd Elliot Wray. He was going by the name Bubba Wray at the time, and had apparently moved to Portland, Oregon with his brother Scott, who he performed with up until the decade's end. Though they started out as indie artists, the Wrays also took a fling at Nashville, recording a few singles for Mercury Records in the late '80s. This early album looks super-twangy and ultra-indie, but it's mostly pretty slick sounding, with a heavy debt towards the Eagles/ They do make a few nods at Asleep At The Wheel-style western swing and Johnny Cash-ish hillbilly twang (on the album's one cover song, a version of Jimmie Skinner's "Doin' My Time") but the smooth sound Raye would excel at a decade later is readily detected on this disc. The album's many originals include "Briars In Her Britches," "Country Sangers," "Country By-God Music," with Scott Wray being the main songwriter. It's country (poppy country) with a few goofy instruments in the mix -- Moog, synths, orchestra bells, woodblocks -- as well as a banjo and pedal steel, but it's also a solid album, a cut above most records made at this level. No surprise that Collin Raye made it big in Nashville, though one wonders why the brothers didn't make it as a duo.
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