Noble Ray Price (January 12, 1926 – December 16, 2013)[1] was an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

[2] 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".

Ray Price was born on a farm near the small former community of Peach, near Perryville, Wood County, Texas.

[1] Price's mother and step-father were successful fashion designers and wanted him to take up that line of work but it had little appeal to him.

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.

This eventually led him to begin singing on the radio program Hillbilly Circus broadcast on Abilene's KRBC in 1948.

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.

During the 1960s, Ray experimented increasingly with the so-called Nashville sound, singing slow ballads and utilizing lush arrangements of strings and backing singers.

[6] Examples include his 1967 rendition of "Danny Boy", and "For the Good Times" in 1970,[6] which was Price's first country music chart No.

1 country music successes during the 1970s: "I Won't Mention It Again", "She's Got To Be A Saint", and "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me" (the last of which was a pop hit in Canada, and would gain greater fame a year later when Gladys Knight & the Pips covered it).

Later, he sang gospel music and recorded such songs as "Amazing Grace", "What A Friend We Have In Jesus", "Farther Along" and "Rock of Ages".

According to Price in a 2008 interview, old friend Willie Nelson — no stranger to marijuana arrests — phoned and told him he had just earned $5 million in free publicity with the drug bust.

Price worked on his last album, Last of the Breed, with fellow country music singers Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

[9] An alternative to the chemo would have been surgery that involved removing the pancreas along with portions of the stomach and liver, which would have meant a long recovery and stay in a nursing home.

After leaving Nashville, Price lived his time off the road on his east Texas ranch near Mount Pleasant, continuing to dabble in gamefowl, cattle and horses.