Hot Club Sandwich

Ray Wood’s first radio performance was in Bremerton in the late ’40s at the age of six. Now, nearly seventy-five years later, Ray is retired from performing at eighty years of age. As a child, Ray was present for the rehearsal of Arkie Shibley and his group in the living room of Ray’s parents’ house (his parents were big country music fans). The following day in Seattle yielded the famous recording “Hot Rod Race No. 1”, cited in “Hot Rod Lincoln” as the precursor song.

With his late brother, Chuck, Ray was a founding member of the Rhythm Rockets, one of the Northwest’s first rock and roll bands in the 1950s. In 1959, Ray lied about his age to a recruiter to tour USO halls in the Far East, backing up touring artists like the Delmore Brothers and Sir Lancelot in places like Taipei, Seoul, and Okinawa. Returning at the end of the 1960s, Ray held standing residencies over the years, such as on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and in Northeast Portland at a country music club (when he departed, he was replaced by Jimmy Bryant). Ray is literally a walking archive of music.

You can still write to ask Ray about chord inversions or applications of modal theory. In addition, we are compiling a “Ray List” of songs which Ray loved to sing. It’s in the hundreds. Please send us a message if you remember one of his favorite songs, and we’ll add it to the “Ray List”. Feel free to send an email to hotclubsandwich [at] gmail.com.