Billy Gray (29 December 1924 – 27 March 1975) was a Western swing guitarist.
Billy Gray was born in 1924 in Paris, Texas and raised in a poor family. After purchasing his first guitar from a local pawnshop, at 19, Gray organized a band based on the western swing style popular in the area. He hosted his own radio show in Paris, featuring his band, and they spent the next few years on a successful touring circuit around Texas and the Southwest.
During the late '40s Gray moved to Dallas and joined Bob Manning's Riders Of The Silver Sage. Gray sang on Manning's 1948 recordings for Dude including Reading Your Letter With Tears In My Eyes, Old Folks Boogie and Green Light, the original version of a song which Hank Thompson recorded for Capitol.
In the early 1950s Gray relocated to Dallas, where he met and befriended Hank Thompson. He became the bandleader and guitarist of Thompson’s Brazos Valley Boys. He and Thompson began writing songs together, and founded two publishing companies, the Texoma Music Publishing Company and the Brazos Valley Publishing Company. The two co-wrote some of Thompson's greatest hits, including "Waiting in the Lobby of Your Heart", "The New Wears Off Too Fast", and "A Fool, a Faker."
In 1954, Gray released a duet with rockabilly vamp Wanda Jackson. "You Can't Have My Love" became a chart hit. The following year, Gray premiered his own seven-piece dance band, the Western Okies, at Oklahoma City's legendary Trianon Ballroom where Thompson held court during 1952-54. The band, including Texas Playboy Bobby Koefer on steel, made fine records but with the national acceptance of rock'n'roll.
Gray's brand of Western swing took a nosedive and the group soon broke up. Their leader remained with Decca long enough to record with Mimi Roman and to cut this cover of Marty Robbins's Tennessee Toddy, a classic tale of honky tonk violence which has been reissued countless times on rockabilly and hillbilly compilation records.
Gray worked steadily throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s as a guitarist for bands such as the Nuggets and the Cowtowners, and he also appeared on the TV show Music Country Style. Gray's other records appeared on Monument (1959) and Longhorn (1960), Vandan and Liberty (1963). In 1965 he made what was to be his last recording for Longhorn Records. Although his songwriting and publishing endeavours were successful, stardom under his own name proved elusive, and he retired from the public arena.
Billy Gray died on 27 March 1975 while undergoing heart surgery.
(Edited from AllMusic & Bear Family notes)