Ray Price Is Not Dead Yet
Ray Price, one of the great voices and storytellers of the Golden Age of country music, almost died over the weekend. His son, Clifton Ray Price, certainly believed that his father—who is 87 years old and is most certainly, and inevitably, dying of cancer—had passed away on Saturday. But after Price's wife angrily contradicted that report yesterday, the younger Price wrote on his dad's Facebook page that he had "been deceived by some cruel people" and that his dad was indeed "still hanging on." He's going to die, though. Soon. So listen to "Night Life," written by Price's old bass player Willie Nelson. It's the title track from the greatest concept record ever made, a louche, slightly slurred, lipstick-on-your-collar tour through the drunken disintegration of the middle-class American family.