Ray Price

DALLAS — Good friends like Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard got more credit for their contrary ways and trend-setting ideas, but it was Ray Price who set the precedent for change in country music more than a decade earlier.

Price passed away Monday at his Texas home, having long outlasted the prognosis doctors gave him when they discovered his pancreatic cancer in 2011. He was 87.

The Country Music Hall of Fame member changed the sound of country music, collaborated with and inspired the genre’s biggest stars and stayed relevant for more than half a century.

Price, one of country music’s most popular and influential singers and bandleaders, had more than 100 hits and was one of the last living connections to Hank Williams.