Noble Ray Price (January 12, 1926 – December 16, 2013) was an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His wide ranging baritone has often been praised as among the best male voices of country music. 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. Price continued to record and tour well into his mid-eighties. 　　Ray Price was born on a farm near the small, now gone, community of Peach, near Perryville in 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 of 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 step-father were successful fashion designers and wanted him to take up that line of work but it had little appeal to him. Ray 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 many years later (1972) was honored as a distinguished alumnus.