Ray Reed, Roswell / Ruidoso

A way out in New Mexico, among the cool tall pines

Where the skies are always blue, the sun it always shines
There lies a little oval, that's becoming world renowned
A way high in the mountains, called the Ruidoso Downs...

RAY REED AND HIS BAND - Go Ahead On b/w Holiday At the Downs (Ruidoso Racing Assocation no#)

I have but the vaguest of memories of my first trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico and they are tied to the pine and the race track in Ruidoso Downs. I might have been but 4 or 5 years old. Looking back it was a strange little trip to the track seeing as how my dad was a devout New Testament church of Christer. What with all the drinking and gambling going on the whole idea of Ruidoso Downs was at definite odds with our family's churchin'. And yet there we were. Just before my teens we visited again, staying a week in a timeshare, but there was no trip to the Downs this time. I remember a near bear attack and once again the smell of the pine. 20 years on and Mrs. Westex and I actually spent part of our honeymoon there 6 years back, even hitting the slots at the Inn of the Mountain Gods for a night. And then Just this past summer we made a quick stop on the way back from a vacation in north central New Mexico. As 'tourist' as the place is I still enjoy it. I think it's because there's a part of me that wishes it to still be some sorta technicolor 50s-styled mountain getaway. A lot like the kind of place Ray Reed sings about.

Located 7,000 feet up in a southern stretch of the Rocky Mountains, Ruidoso (Spanish for "Noisy") and Ruidoso Downs have been a vacation spot for West Texans for a number of years. I've met many folks with cabins in the area, some of them making the 300 mile drive from Midessa two to three weekends per month. And many west Texas skiers hit the slopes of 12,000 ft. Sierra Blanca. For other Westies and New Mexicans it's the gambling that's an attraction. Though the slots are the big draw today, local betting first began with horses.

It was in the 1940s that horse racing first came to Ruidoso Downs, an operation taken over by a couple of Arizona brothers by the name of Henslee (google "McCain Henslee" if that name don't ring a bell) in the 50s. The horse racing game has grown annually in the area, and since 1959 has included the world's richest quarter horse race, the All-American Futurity, which saw a purse of $2,000,000 in 2009.

In the mid-50s New Mexico's Ray Reed returned from the music scene of California, taking up with Gene Henslee and working to help promote the race track Ruidoso Downs. Ray was based out of Roswell at the time which is about an hours drive to the east, down the beautiful Hondo Valley. While in the area Ray worked the Yucca, rival to the famed honky tonk Scottys, and television station KSWS where the Jimmy Blakley clan worked as well.

In 1961 Ray and his band waxed the two swinging sides heard here, each touting the exciting life of Ruidoso Downs and the surrounding area. As noted by Andrew Brown below, neither song quite fits in with the year of the actual release of this Capitol custom. While the recording techniques of the era give it a bit of a punch and shine, the style and arrangements still hold to the swinging sounds of the decade previous. Lincoln, fishing, golf, Billy the Kid, horse racing, a first rate airport, clean air, gambling... Ray makes it all sound aw-reet. No idea who the band might have been, but they were certainly a tight outfit. I have no idea if Ray ever recorded after this effort, but there is one reference in Billboard to a 1940s recording on a Crest label out of California.

Ray's lasting legacy (he passed away in 1998) was creating the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium, a now annual gathering of all things truly cowboy.

Some of the information about Ray Reed in this post came came from THIS STORY written by Mark Doth, while the postcard came from THIS Ruidoso Downs website which features a few more vintage postcards.

________________________

Ben's Little Mexico is where you'll find the Westex clan on most Friday nights. If you're ever here in Odessa around mealtime please do stop in at Ben's... great people and great food. Catch 'em M-F, because Sat-Sun they are closed-closed-closed!