Posted on 12/16/2013 3:49:35 PM PST by Doogle
Ray Price, one of country music's most popular and influential singers and bandleaders who had more than 100 hits and was one of the last living connections to Hank Williams, died Monday. He was 87.
Price died Monday afternoon at his ranch outside Mount Pleasant, said Billy Mack Jr., who was acting as a family spokesman. Billie Perryman, the wife of family friend and spokesman Tom Perryman, a DJ with KKUS-FM in Tyler, also confirmed his death.
Price was discharged last week from the East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, where he had been in and out in recent months as he was treated for cancer and its complications. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011 and it has recently spread to his liver, intestines and lungs, the hospital said.
Perhaps best known for his version of the Kris Kristofferson song "For the Good Times," a pop hit in 1970, the velvet-voiced Price was a giant among traditional country performers in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, as likely to defy a trend as he was to defend one. He helped invent the genre's honky-tonk sound early in his career, then took it in a more polished direction.
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“Don’t look so sad,
I know it’s over....”
Rest in Peace.
“Ray was for the ages. He could sing anything, and he did. I loved evrything he did, dont think he ever made a bad recording. The world is definitely a bleaker place without this classy, elegant man in it.”
Well said.
Great singer. He made this world a better place through his incredibly great music. There will never be another like him.
I always preferred the Homer & Jethro parody version - “Fer the Good Times”
He was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
He was a great singer, one of the last remaining connections to the great Hank Williams. They were friends and after Hank died Ray tried to sound like him. Then 10 years later that god-awful Nashville Sound ruined country music. Ray could sing it with the best of them, but I am a honky tonk fan.
RIP Ray Price, who was also a WW2 veteran.
Billy Jack passed away yesterday also.
This old man can’t listen to this version of Faded Love without this tearing up. Wish Ray had sang it by himself. Not a Willie fan.
A football field of violins... if only there were honest DJs these days.
One of the smoothest singers ever. Somewhere there is an old Waylon song where he sings about listening to “Ray Price gold”. That’s what I say every time I play a Ray Price CD or album.
R.I.P. Ray.
It was a metaphor, not a literal statement. It was also during the 1960s.
This is a shame. A very talented man, whose music I listen to often. RIP.
Seriously? After all these years and they only just got around to it? That’s disgraceful.
His voice was a common sound in our home when I was a kid. I'm thankful to my mother for being a fan and exposing me to this great music.
That’s the way I felt about Patsy Cline.
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