|
About
Ray Grundy |
|
I was born in 1950 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, from Elvis to The Beatles to Tamla Motown to Folk/Rock etc. It was in the early 70s that I first started to take a real interest in country music, via the recordings of well-known, pop/country artists of the time like Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Billy Jo Spears, Don Williams, Tammy Wynette, etc. At the time I was working as a Radio & TV Technician and it was while I was in a customers home repairing their Hi Fi, that I was handed a cassette to test the unit with. The cassette was Moe Bandy. I was totally knocked out with it and sat there in the customers home listening to both sides.(making sure I gave my repair a good test you understand!) After that I searched out more of Moe's recordings and in the process discovered other country artists such as, Tom T Hall, Bobby Bare, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, George Jones etc. I was HOOKED and became a virtual country music fanatic! These days there is very little of any other type of music in my record collection. In 1986, I suffered the first of 2 heart attacks, which was the start of many stays in hospital that I have had since. It was on one of these stays that I met a member of the hospital's radio station, 'Radio Metro' who happened to be on the same ward as me. We became friends, and shortly after our release, he invited me into the studio. On talking with some of the D.J.s, it became apparent that they didn't have a country music show. That was in 1993 and I have been doing a country show (Metro Country) for the station ever since. In my time there, I have done interviews for the show, with artists such as Gail Davies, George Hamilton IV, Sandy Kelly, Tommy Collins, Tom Russell and Sonny Curtis as well as U.K. artists, Foster & Allen, Sarah Jory, Iona & Andy, Bob McKinlay, John McCane, The Cheap Seats, Joe Butler & Kenny Johnson(The Hillsiders), with the Cheap Seats and Kenny & Joe having also been studio guests. Due to ongoing health problems I was forced to retire early and needed something more to do with my time, so around 2 years ago I decided to start up this website, intending just a couple of pages as a spin off from the show. I couldn't believe the response I got to it, which has been phenomenal and the site has now grown to around 300 pages at time of writing. (10/11/01) Since starting the site, I have done many more interviews, which to date have included Independent artists, Billy Keeble (this interview was also published in the ECMA Newsletter), Lance Allen, Kim Anthony, Dave Young, Dr Fry's Texas Medicine Band, Lamar Morris, Bill 'Dawg' Moore, Troy Cook Jr, Frank Ifield, Karen O'Shea, Lydia Miller, Tim Johnson, Sally Barris, Candace Asher, and New Zealand's Joy Adams among others and the very popular Paul Mateki, from Arlington in Texas has also been a studio guest on two occasions. All these interviews can be found on the site along with a large database of CD reviews, Charts, News, Playlists and much, much more. I also, now present Metro Country on Radio Caroline (Broadcasting across Europe via the Astra 1G satellite) and TwangtownUSA.com Internet radio. In 2000/2001 I was nominated for the Harry E. Fenton Memorial Radio Award, by the European Country Music Association. |
|
|
