Ray Price

Noble Raymond Price (January 12, 1926 – December 16, 2013) was an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His wide-ranging baritone is regarded as among the best male voices of country music, and his innovations, such as propelling the country beat from 2/4 to 4/4, known as the "Ray Price beat", helped make country music more popular.

Some of his well-known recordings include "Release Me", "Crazy Arms", "Heartaches by the Number", "For the Good Times", "Night Life", and "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me". He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He continued to record and tour into his 80s.

Ray Price was born on a farm near the small former community of Peach, near Perryville, Wood County, Texas. He was the son of Walter Clifton Price and Clara Mae Bradley Cimini. His grandfather, James M. M. Price, was an early settler in the area. Price was three years old when his parents divorced and his mother moved to Dallas, Texas. For the rest of his childhood he split time between Dallas and on the family farm, where his father had remained. Price's mother and stepfather were successful fashion designers and wanted him to take up that line of work, but it had little appeal to him.

Price began singing and playing guitar as a teenager, but at first chose a career in veterinary medicine. He was attending North Texas Agricultural College in preparation for that career, when his studies were interrupted by America's entry into World War II. Price was drafted in 1944 and served in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater. He returned to the college after the war, and in 1972, was honored as a distinguished alumnus.

After the war and college, Price rethought his decision to continue schooling to be a veterinarian; he was considered too small to work with large cattle and horses, the backbone of a Texas veterinarian's practice then. While helping around his father's ranch, he also began singing at various functions around the Abilene, Texas, area. This eventually led him to begin singing on the radio program Hillbilly Circus broadcast on Abilene's KRBC in 1948. He joined the Big D Jamboree on Dallas radio station KRLD (AM) in 1949, and when the show was picked up for broadcast on the CBS radio network soon afterward, Price had his first taste of national exposure. Around this time, Ray Price became friends with Lefty Frizzell. The two first met at Beck Recording Studio in Dallas, and Price ended up writing the song "Give Me More, More, More of Your Kisses" for Frizzell's use. A few demonstrations recorded by Price at Beck's caught the attention of Bullet Records in Nashville, Tennessee, and he was signed to his first recording contract. His first single released on Bullet, though, "Jealous Lies", failed to become a chart hit.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.