Collin Raye finds growth from loss, celebrates 25 years in country music

Collin Raye was determined his granddaughter wasn’t going to die. Born seemingly healthy in 2000, Haley Marie Bell hit all of the milestones for a typically developing child for the first two years of her life.

Then the toddler didn’t want to stand. She sat in a W position, her bottom and her knees on the ground with her feet splayed out behind her. Haley’s speech didn’t progress. When the family took her to the doctor, they were told there was no cause for concern.

At 4 years old, she was still regressing. Over a period of time, the child lost her ability to stand. She couldn’t move her hands. She couldn’t speak or swallow and had to be fed by a tube.

By 2004, Raye had charted 16 No. 1 country songs. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted and being able to fix any problem. He was sure that through his resources and connections he could find the right combination of people and modern medicine to heal the child.

Haley died of a regressive neurological condition in 2010. She was 9 years old and had lived with Raye her entire life.

Raye wrote about Haley in his song “She’s With Me.” And she inspired Raye and his daughter Britanny Wray, Haley's mother, to write his song “Undefeated." 

Both are featured as bonus tracks on his new album “Collin Raye — 25 Years, 25 Hits.” The collection also includes his 1991 breakthrough hit, “Love, Me,” and singalong chart-toppers “My Kind of Girl” (1994) and “I Can Still Feel You” (1998). The album was created to commemorate Raye’s 25th anniversary in country music, which he'll celebrate along with his 58th birthday at Nashville’s City Winery on Aug. 22.

However, he probably won’t sing “She’s With Me.” It hurts too much.

'I actually thought I could fix this' 

Surrounded by the yellow glow of the light in his dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry House, Raye has to be on stage in less than an hour. But in that moment, he's back in the yearslong fight to save his granddaughter's life. 

“I pulled out every stop. Sometimes God says, ‘No, you’re not fixing squat. I’m the one that has been fixing things for you, and it’s time for you to stand down a little bit.’ ”

During the battle to save his granddaughter's life, the family found a home health care nurse to help Haley’s mother care for her during the day. The little girl struggled with respiratory issues and her throat had to be suctioned every few minutes.

Raye was playing a show in Kansas City when he received a message from the nurse that said: “Call me ASAP.” Haley had stopped breathing and her mother had tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate her. The paramedics arrived five minutes later and restarted her breathing. She was flown to a children’s hospital in Dallas, and Raye got there as fast as he could. But she never regained consciousness. 

An MRI was scheduled so doctors could compare the new image to the one taken five days earlier when she was admitted to the Dallas hospital. The images revealed her brain had deteriorated by 50 percent.

“I remember right there was the first time in my life that I had really given up on something,” Raye said. “I don’t give up. I don’t quit. But then I thought, ‘OK, I’ve got nothing.’ ”

The next day, with her mother in bed beside her, Raye watched as his granddaughter took her last breath.

The family made the necessary funeral preparations. After the service, Raye hung back in the mausoleum when the rest of his family retreated to waiting cars. He wanted to see his granddaughter one last time. He kissed her face and her hands and loved on her as much as he could because he knew when the vault door closed he would never see her again. 

“There’s something so final about that,” he said. “It hit me really hard. But the good news is we did survive it.”

About one week later, Raye was back on stage playing a concert in Indianapolis. He wasn’t sure if he could do it but he said he "turned the button" and made everybody smile. 

“I thought, ‘OK, I can still do my job,’ ” he remembered. “You can’t just check out when something like that happens. You gotta keep pushing forward.”

Inspiring artists who have followed 

Raye’s career has sustained him for 25 years. And his songs have inspired today’s generation of country music singers.

“Get to You” singer Michael Ray said Collin Raye was his mother’s favorite. The 30-year-old remembers listening to “Love, Me” in the car every morning when his mother drove him to school. Now he plays the tender ballad in sound check.

“His voice and style never wavered,” Ray said. “I fell in love with the letter in ‘Love, Me.’ It paints the perfect picture, and that’s what country music is in that song. No matter where you are or how many years goes by from hearing it, you can go straight back to it and that moment."

Written by Skip Ewing and Max T. Barnes and released in 1991, the song uses a love letter the song's fictional grandmother wrote to his grandfather and pinned to a tree in 1923 as the basis for their lifelong love.

The song’s chorus and the letter’s words are the same: "If you get there before I do, don't give up on me/ I'll meet you when my chores are through/ I don't know how long I'll be/ But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see/ And between now and then, 'til I see you again/ I'll be loving you/ Love, me."

Until the success of “Love, Me,” Raye was a singer just trying to break through like many others in Nashville, but his voice was different. He’d been singing in bars and casinos for more than a decade before his manager Steve Cox helped him get a record deal in Nashville.

“He has the innate ability to be a performer,” Cox said. “He is a no-fear kind of guy. When Collin sings, he is believable. Some artists are pretty. Some artists are good. And there’s good singers, but not everybody knows how to sing. And he does.”

A long string of hits

After years of both singing like Merle Haggard and screaming Rod Stewart lyrics on the bar and casino circuit, Raye thought he was a baritone. When Raye got to Nashville, producer Jerry Fuller quickly determined Raye was a tenor and isolated contemporary qualities in his voice. Those characteristics set him apart from artists including Mark Chesnutt and Doug Stone, who ruled country radio at the time, and continue to make Raye one of the most easily identifiable voices in the genre.

His first single, "All I Can Be (is a Sweet Memory)," was a top 30 hit, but it was “Love, Me” that started the chain of 16 No. 1 songs and 24 top 10 hits. 

Raye re-recorded those songs — 25 hits and three bonus tracks — for his 25th-anniversary album because he believes he’s a better singer now than he was two decades ago. Surviving the loss of Haley improved his voice.

“My job was my biggest therapy after Haley died,” he said. “You live through stuff like that and you do sing better. Real singing is emotion, and fans can hear that in your voice. I think nobody gets out free. Everybody is going to get some cross to bear, and I think that’s what makes you a better person.”

Reach Cindy Watts at ciwatts@tennessean.com or 615-664-2227 and on Twitter @CindyNWatts. 

If you go

What: Collin Raye in concert
Where: City Winery, 609 Lafayette St. in Nashville
When: 8 p.m. Aug. 22
Tickets: $35-$45 at https://citywinery.com/nashville