POP MUSIC REVIEW : Price Takes Respectful Tour of 4 Decades : His performance of the songs is high in professionalism, low in imagination. And his show cries out for some reminiscing.

Though he’s not usually considered among country music’s titans, Ray Price has had quite a run.

Over four decades, he has racked up more than 100 country hits--including a few of the biggest in history--and in the mid-’50s he and his band were significant innovators in the rhythmic evolution of honky-tonk country music.

And his career was anything but predictable: After scoring in the ‘60s with such orchestrated pop ballads as “Danny Boy,” he turned right around and scored again with the young Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.”

His reading of that challenging lyric made for the most absorbing moments of his show at the Crazy Horse Monday, when the 67-year-old Texan offered an easygoing overview of his career.

Price’s five musicians, a skilled and well-drilled ensemble, were attuned to both the ballads and the up-tempo swing, and the first of the evening’s two sets was marked by musical professionalism and a respect for the legacy, if not by much ambition and imagination.

Price never was a pure powerhouse as a singer, so he hasn’t lost that much of his essence with age. There’s a bit less body and power, but he still has some range, along with the familiar deep, uneven rumble.

Particularly on such ‘50s classics as “Crazy Arms,” it all fit together in a winning blend of nostalgia and immediacy. The archetypal Price persona is the decent man virtually paralyzed by heartbreak, and he packs his pain into such soaring pleas as “Release Me” and “Make the World Go Away.”

He is uniquely situated in country music history, and it’s too bad he didn’t add some dimension to the show by incorporating some memories and anecdotes. If not a particularly colorful fellow himself, he sure has spent time with some, including Willie Nelson (a former band member) and Hank Williams.

Instead, his principal conversation involved little jokes about his age and, unfortunately, some ethnic humor in tandem with his fine pianist, Moises Calderon.

It’s one thing to bring back the sounds of the ‘50s but quite another to revive attitudes that permit this kind of offensive stereotyping. From all indications, Price is not a malicious man, but in these moments he was at best insensitive and out of touch.

Say no mas , Moises!