James Price

He was born James Dean Price on 21 June 1964 in Cleveland, Ohio. His first known record is Great Day in May (RRRainbow, 1984) by Ron Rigsby & One Way Track, made when he was about nineteen, on which he played mandolin, fiddle and lead guitar and sang; Jerry Douglas added Dobro to two tracks. By the early 1990s he was the fiddler with the Goins Brothers and is on their Hay Holler albums Still Goin’ Strong (1993) and We’ll Carry On (1995). While still with them he recorded his first album under his own name, The Old Mountaineer (Hay Holler, 1994), cut between December 1993 and February 1994. It is all instrumental and takes its title from Bill Monroe’s “The Old Mountaineer,” one of six Monroe compositions on it, with Carl Berggren on mandolin, Ray Craft on guitar, Craig Smith and Jimmy Gabehart on banjo and Rick Westerman on bass. He also played fiddle for Lost & Found on A Ride Through the Country, released by Rebel in July 1995.

Curly Ray Cline retired from the Clinch Mountain Boys in 1993, and Art Stamper, who had played with the Stanley Brothers years before, came back to the band for two years. Price followed him in August 1995, a week or two after Ralph Stanley II began singing lead. His first session with Stanley was in November 1995 at Maggard Recording Studio in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, for Short Life of Trouble, an album of songs associated with G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter, with Ralph Stanley II on guitar, James Alan Shelton on lead guitar, Steve Sparkman on banjo, John Rigsby on mandolin and Jack Cooke on bass. The same band made My All and All (1997), While the Ages Roll On (2000) and Clinch Mountain Sweethearts (2001), and it backed the guest singers on Clinch Mountain Country (1998), recorded largely in Nashville in 1997. A concert recorded at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California, on 11 February 2001, on which Stanley introduces him from the stage, came out as Live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in 2002. He also played on Ralph Stanley II’s first Rebel albums, Listen to My Hammer Ring, recorded in the fall of 1998, and Pretty Girls, City Lights, recorded in the spring of 1999.

Two albums with Jim Lauderdale came out of the same band. On I Feel Like Singing Today, recorded at Maggard in the spring of 1999 and issued by Rebel, Price played fiddle and mandolin; it was nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. Lost in the Lonesome Pines, recorded at Maggard early in 2002 and released by Dualtone in May that year, has him on fiddle throughout, and it won that Grammy at the 2003 awards.

On stage he was also the band’s comedian. He played a character called Poogie Jude, Stanley called him “Old Pooge” on the road, and in live recordings of the period he sings imitations of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. His fiddling was in the old-time mountain style but notably clean and precise, and Ralph Stanley II, who toured with him throughout, said he “played a lot like Curly Ray Cline.”

His other two albums date from his Stanley years. Southern Flavor (Freeland, 1997) takes its title from another Monroe instrumental and mixes fiddle features such as Monroe’s “Old Dangerfield” with vocal numbers drawn mostly from the Flatt & Scruggs and Lester Flatt repertoire, sung by Price, with Barry Bales on bass, Jim Mills and Buddy Griffin on banjo and Terry Eldredge singing tenor. Fiddlin’ the Old-Time Way (Primrose, 1998) is again instrumental, made with the Clinch Mountain Boys of the day, Shelton, Ralph Stanley II, Rigsby and Sparkman, with Adam Steffey on mandolin on two tracks and Mike Bub on bass; Rebel remixed it and reissued it in 2003. As a sideman he is also on Sammy Adkins’s Tribute to Keith Whitley (2001) and Josh McMurray’s Pickin’ Time (Copper Creek, 2002).

He left the Clinch Mountain Boys toward the end of 2003, and Todd Meade took over the fiddle. Back in West Virginia he led two bands of his own, the bluegrass group James Price & Kentucky Reign and the country band James Price & Native Country, and he also toured with Little Jimmy Dickens and Johnny Paycheck. He died at his home in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on 23 May 2022, at the age of 57.