Noble Ray Price (January 12, 1926 – December 16, 2013) was an American coun… Read Full Bio ↴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 and—even into his late 80s—continued to record and tour.

Price, born in Perryville, Texas, served with the U.S. Marines from 1944–1946, and began singing for KRBC in Abilene, Texas during 1948. He joined the Big D Jamboree in Dallas in 1949. He relocated to Nashville in the early 1950s, rooming for a brief time with Hank Williams. When Williams died, Price managed his band, the Drifting Cowboys, and had minor success. He was the first artist to have a success with the song "Release Me" (1954), a top five popular music hit for Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.
In 1953, Price formed his band, the Cherokee Cowboys. Among its members during the late 1950s and early 1960s were; Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Darrell McCall, Van Howard, Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Bush, Buddy Emmons, Pete Wade, Jan Kurtis, Shorty Lavender and Buddy Spicher. Miller wrote one of Ray Price's classics in 1958, "Invitation to the Blues", and sang harmony on the recording. Additionally, Nelson composed the Ray Price song "Night Life".
Price became one of the stalwarts of 1950s honky tonk music, with hit songs such as "Talk To Your Heart" (1952) and "Release Me". He later developed the famous "Ray Price Shuffle," a 4/4 arrangement of honky tonk music with a walking bassline, which can be heard on "Crazy Arms" (1956) and many of his other recordings from the late 1950s.

During the 1960s, Ray experimented increasingly with the so-called Nashville sound, singing slow ballads and utilizing lush arrangements of strings and backing singers. Examples include his 1967 rendition of "Danny Boy", and "For the Good Times" in 1970 which was Price's first country music chart No. 1 hit since "The Same Old Me" in 1959. Written by Kris Kristofferson, the song also scored No. 11 on the popular music chart and featured a mellower Price backed by sophisticated musical sounds, quite in contrast to the honky tonk sounds Price had pioneered two decades before. Price had three more 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." His final top ten hit was "Diamonds In The Stars" in early 1982. Price continued to have songs on the country music chart through 1989. 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."
In 2006, Price was living near Mount Pleasant, Texas and still performing in concerts throughout the country. In 2009, Price made two performances for the Fox News show Huckabee. The first was with the Cherokee Cowboys and host Mike Huckabee, and he performed "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches By The Number". Weeks later he performed with the Cherokee Cowboys and Willie Nelson (again with Huckabee playing bass guitar). This time they performed duets of "Faded Love" and "Crazy."
Price worked on his latest album, Last of the Breed, with fellow country music singers Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. This album was released on March 20, 2007 by the company Lost Highway Records. The two-disc set features 20 country classics as well as a pair of new compositions. The trio toured the U.S. from March 9 until March 25 starting in Arizona and finishing in Illinois. This was Price's third album with Nelson and first album with Haggard. After the tour, Haggard remarked, "I told Willie when it was over, 'That old man gave us a goddamn singing lesson.' He really did. He just sang so good. He sat there with the mic against his chest. And me and Willie are all over the microphone trying to find it, and he found it."

On November 6, 2012, Ray Price confirmed that he was fighting pancreatic cancer. Price told the San Antonio Express-News that he had been receiving chemotherapy for the past six months. 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. Said Price, "That's not very much an option for me. God knows I want to live as long as I can but I don't want to live like that." The 87-year-old Country Music Hall of Famer also told the newspaper, "The doctor said that every man will get cancer if he lives to be old enough. I don't know why I got it – I ain't old!" Price retained a positive outlook and hoped to play as many as a hundred concert dates in 2013.
As of early February 2013, the cancer appeared to be in remission. Sometime in May 2013, Price was hospitalized with severe dehydration. On December 2, 2013, 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. Price died at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, on December 16, 2013.

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Ray Price Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry

Ive never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud

To hide it's face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry

Overall Meaning

The Ray Price's song "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a heart-wrenching ballad that describes the overwhelming sadness and loneliness a person feels when they have lost their loved one or when they are unable to get over someone. The first verse of the song tells about the whippoorwill, a bird that sounds too blue to fly, which is a metaphor for the singer's current emotional state. The whippoorwill's mournful voicing creates an atmosphere of gloom and melancholy, which reflects the singer's deep sorrow.

In the second verse, the singer expresses his feeling of being stuck in time, where every second feels like an hour and the night seems never-ending. The moon hiding behind the cloud is a figurative way of saying that even nature is sad and sorrowful on the singer's behalf. It reflects his inner turmoil and his longing for his loved one. In the third verse, the singer uses a robin weeping to symbolize his lost hope and will to live. He is so immersed in his loneliness and despair that he can't find comfort in anything else.

The last verse of the song captures the essence of the singer's loneliness, as he looks at the falling stars and wonders where his loved one is. The purple sky created by the falling star represents a glimmer of hope and love for the singer, but it is only fleeting. The silence and darkness surrounding him symbolizes his isolation, and he is left to bear his sorrow alone.

Line by Line Meaning

Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
Listen to the lonely bird, the whippoorwill

He sounds too blue to fly
The bird sounds depressed and hopeless

The midnight train is whining low
The sound of the train is sad and mournful

I'm so lonesome I could cry
The artist is filled with overwhelming sadness and loneliness

I've never seen a night so long
The artist feels as though time is moving slowly and painfully

When time goes crawling by
Time seems to pass very slowly

The moon just went behind a cloud
The moon disappears, as if hiding from the singer's sadness

To hide its face and cry
The moon seems to share in the artist's sadness

Did you ever see a robin weep
Have you ever witnessed a sad robin

When leaves begin to die
During the fall season when the leaves turn brown and fall off the trees

That means he's lost the will to live
The fact that the robin is sad signifies a loss of hope and a feeling of helplessness