 Singer/songwriter Collin Raye's blend of Western swing, rockabilly, country-rock and sentimental ballads brought him a string of hit singles in the early '90s. As a child in Arkansas, Floyd Collin Wray's mother was a well-known local country singer who performed with such stars as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley, and she sometimes brought Collin and his brother Scott up on stage to sing harmony. Billing himself as "Bubba," Collin and Scott founded the country-rock Wray Brothers Band in the late '70s and moved west to perform. The brothers made their recording debut in 1983 and had some chart success with their first single "Reason to Believe." Over the next four years, the Wrays released a number of singles on different record labels, but had no real success until 1987, when they had a Top 50 hit with "You Lay a Lotta Love on Me." Following the single's success, the band broke up. After the Wrays disbanded, Collin began performing on his own in Nevada clubs. In 1991, he signed to Epic and released his solo debut, All I Can Be. Raye's first single, "All I Can Be (Is a Sweet Memory)," reached the country Top 40 but it was his second single, "Love, Me," that made him a star when it climbed to number one in early 1992 and stayed at the top of the charts for three weeks, kick-starting a string of Top 10 hits that ran for a number of years. Raye's second album, In This Life (1992), went gold and produced three hits, including "Somebody Else's Moon." He released his third album Extremes in 1994 and it went gold by the end of the year, spawning the Top 10 hits "Little Rock," "Man of My Word," and "My Kind of Girl." In 1995, Raye released his fourth solo album, I Think About You; The Walls Came Down followed in 1998, and two years later he returned with Counting Sheep, a collection of lullabies, and his sixth proper album Tracks.
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