1. Noble Ray Price was an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
23 Facts About Ray Price
1. 2.
Ray Price was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
3.
Ray Price continued to record and tour into his 80s.
4.
Ray Price was born on a farm near the small former community of Peach, near Perryville, Wood County, Texas.
5.
Ray Price was the son of Walter Clifton Price and Clara Mae Bradley Cimini.
6.
Ray Price began singing and playing guitar as a teenager but at first chose a career in veterinary medicine.
7.
Ray Price was attending North Texas Agricultural College in preparation for that career when his studies were interrupted by America's entry into World War II.
8.
Ray Price was drafted in 1944 and served in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater.
9.
Ray Price returned to the college after the war and, in 1972, was honored as a distinguished alumnus.
10.
Ray Price joined the Big D Jamboree on Dallas radio station KRLD 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.
11.
Ray Price relocated to Nashville in the early 1950s, rooming for a brief time with Hank Williams.
12.
When Williams died, Ray Price managed his band, the Drifting Cowboys, and had minor success.
13.
Ray Price was the first artist to have a success with the song "Release Me", a top five popular music hit for Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.
14.
Ray Price became one of the stalwarts of 1950s honky tonk music, with hit songs such as "Talk To Your Heart" and "Release Me".
15.
Ray Price continued to have songs on the country music chart through 1989.
16.
Ray Price briefly made national news again in 1999 when he was arrested for possession of marijuana.
17.
Ray Price worked on his last album, Last of the Breed, with fellow country music singers Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
18.
Ray Price sat there with the mic against his chest.
19.
On November 6,2012, Ray Price confirmed that he was fighting pancreatic cancer.
20.
Ray Price told the San Antonio Express-News that he had been receiving chemotherapy for the past six months.
21.
On December 2,2013, Ray Price entered a Tyler, Texas, hospital in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, according to his son, then left on December 12 for home hospice care.
22.
Ray Price was interred at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas.
23.
Ray Price married second wife Janie on June 11,1970, and they remained together until his death.