Randy Bruce Traywick began playing country music in his early teens with his brother Ricky when they formed a duo and called themselves The Traywicks.
It was years later when he won a talent competition that the clubs owner to a liking to his music and he changed his name to Randy Ray.
It was during this time that I was broadcasting country on the North East premier independent radio station Metro Radio and I remember receiving a vinyl LP ‘Randy Ray Live at the Nashville Palace’.
It was not until I listened to it that I realised that he was going to be a force to be reckoned with.
With it came a postcard of the Nashville Palace where he was employed as a cook and resident artist personally signed by ‘Randy Ray’.
It was from this album that his manager secured a deal with Warner Brothers Records and once again changed his name this time to Randy Travis.
They subsequently released his first single ‘On The Other Hand’.
The rest as they say is history…as since 1985 he has recorded twenty studio albums and charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Charts and twenty two of these were number one hits.
The interview you’re about to hear was recorded in the late eighties/early nineties and for some weird and wonderful reason I cannot remember where it was recorded although somewhere in the lost annals of time I think it was before an appearance at Sunderland Empire.
Sit back and enjoy the music and chat of an artist who in country music history brought ‘true country’ back into the establishment when many thought the music industry had lost its way.
I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed talking to him on your behalf.
Click here to take a listen
