Ray Griff, one of Canada’s most notable and successful country music stars living, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award in absentia at the 19th annual SOCAN Awards, held at The Carlu in Toronto last night. The award was presented by Canadian-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter/producer and ASCAP executive Ralph Murphy, and accepted by Griff’s wife Trudy. A video message by Ray Griff expressed his appreciation for the acknowledgement. His absence, he told the assembly in a touching and spirited message, was the result of his recent diagnosis with throat cancer.
Griff (b Vancouver 22 Apr 1942). was raised in Winfield, Alta, and took up the piano and drums as a young boy, forming the Winfield Amateurs and then, in his teens, he formed the Blue Echoes and caught the ear of local radio personality D’Arcy Scott who landed him an opening slot on a Johnny Horton tour in Western Canada. It was the beginning of a magical career. Griff played Horton a song he’d written called “Mr. Moonlight” and Horton recorded it on his Grammy Award winning album, The Battle of New Orleans.
This was followed by an invitation from Jim Reeves to move to Nashville. Griff moved there in 1964 and over time he won loyal friendships and, more importantly, credibility as a songwriter and session player. By the mid-1980s, Griff had written a staggering 2000 odd songs, some 500 of them recorded, and yielding an enviable tally of 48 Billboard charted singles. Among them: “Lost in the Shuffle” for Stonewall Jackson, “Something Special” for Mel Tillis, “Canadian Pacific” for George Hamilton IV, “Step Aside” for Faron Young, “Better Move It On Home” for Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, “Who’s Gonna Play This Old Piano?” for Jerry Lee Lewis, “Where Love Begins” for Gene Watson,.
His songs also have been recorded by the country artists Bill Anderson, Eddy Arnold, Chet Atkins, Carroll Baker, Gary Buck, Crystal Gayle, Tommy Hunter, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, the Mercey Brothers, Marty Robbins, and Hank Snow and by the pop singers Pat Boone, Wayne Newton, and Roger Whittaker. Griff’s songs are published by Blue Echo Music and administered through Casablanca Media Publishing Inc.
Griff himself began recording his own and others’ songs in 1965, first for RCA and then in turn for MGM, Dot, Royal American, Capitol, Boot, Vision, Bookshop, WEA, and ATI. He had a run of US hits in the 70s with “Patches,” “The Morning after Baby Let Me Dow,” “You Ring My Bell,” “If I Let Her Come In,” “That’s What I Get,” and “The Last of the Winfield Amateurs.”
Other Griff singles popular in Canada include “The Entertainer,” “What Got to You,” and “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” Maintaining a residency in Nashville, Griff created the New Winfield Amateurs to tour in Canada and in 1975 he was host for Global TV’s ‘Good Time Country’. Among the 30 Griff album catalogue to 1991 are two (for Boot) of patriotic songs. Griff was inducted into Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989.
Of the numerous chievements in his exceptional career: Seven BMI Citations for song writing and publishing, 40 ASCAP Achievement Awards, induction to the Hall of Fame Walkway in Nashville. induction in to the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Honour in 1998 and, last night, a SOCAN Lifetime Achievement award.
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