Born in Boone County, Kentucky, the six-foot, 300-pound Kenny Price earned the nickname "The Round Mound of Sound" and grew up on a ranch where he first took up guitar at age five. Although he made his initial radio appearance at fourteen on WZIP in Cincinnati, he still viewed music as a sideline while his real goal was farming. Military duty from 1952 to 1954, which included a Korea posting and a successful USO audition, prompted him to pursue music professionally after discharge; he enrolled for a short time at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Still in 1954 he joined the cast of Midwestern Hayride on WLW Cincinnati, and by 1957 he was performing on Buddy Ross’s local television program Hometown.
The third single, “Walking on the New Grass,” climbed into the Top 10 in 1966 and was quickly followed by another Top 10 entry, “Happy Tracks.” Several mid-level hits sustained his momentum through the rest of the decade, leading to a Top 20 placement in 1969 with “Northeast Arkansas Mississippi County Bootlegger.” Two additional Top 10 records arrived soon afterward, one of them “The Sheriff of Boone County,” which briefly crossed onto the pop charts. Three more modest chartings appeared by 1973. In 1976 Price joined the cast of Hee Haw. Over a fifteen-year span he placed thirty-four singles on the charts yet never reached major stardom as a singer, songwriter, and musician. Heart failure ended his life on August 4, 1987.
