Mel Tillis and Ray Price

Success came late to Mel Tillis, but when it finally arrived, it hit hard. Though Tillis had been writing songs since the 1950s, it wasn’t until the 1972 hit “I Ain’t Never” that Tillis became a star. For the rest of the decade, Tillis was a constant on the country charts, scoring number one hits with songs like “Good Woman Blues,” “Heart Healer,” and “I Believe in You.” Tillis splits tonight’s show with a country legend whose music career dates back even further: Ray Price, now 83 years old, who’d been a successful honky tonk singer in the early ’50s before moving on to a more ballad-oriented Nashville sound in the 1960s, making hits like “Danny Boy” and “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.”