“She’s Got to Be a Saint”
Ray Price
Written by Mike DiNapoli and Joe Paulini
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
December 30, 1972 – January 13, 1973
I was struggling with this one at first.
The protagonist here is shockingly loathsome in his mistreatment of the titular saint. He sings of his own cruelty as casually as if he’s acknowledging a slight change in the weather. Even Price’s peerless vocal performance can’t make this man likable.
Until the final verse, where he gives himself the comeuppance he deserves, and retroactively redeems the contrast he draws from the beginning between his sinful behavior and her saintly endurance of it.
I still can’t give it a perfect grade because of the “saint/ain’t” rhyme in the chorus. Just typing about it makes me shudder. But what a great performance and what a compelling character arc.
“She’s Got to Be a Saint” gets a B+.
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Willie Nelson has said on numerous occasions that Ray Price is his favorite singer and the reason is very clear: Ray is simply a supreme vocalist, capable of handling a wide variety of material. Like Frank Sinatra, Price is fearless in his choice of material, and like Sinatra he is the master of phrasing. This is far from being my favorite Ray Price recording; however, it still falls in the B to B+ range.
I only got to see Ray in concert one time when he was about 81 years old, but he could still sing most singers under the table at that age. By that time, he had incorporated both of his honky-tonk and countrypolitan hits back into his stage show.
I also struggled with this one. It’s not his best work by any means but it’s not bad. “B”
I really liked this one. Songs about sleazy antiheroes are right in my wheelhouse. This one seemed like an inspiration for both Mark Chesnutt’s “Thank God for Believers” and Mark Wills’ “When You Think of Me”, both songs I love. I’m not overly familiar with Ray Price’s catalogue but he left a great early impression of the first song I can definitively associate with his name.
This definitely is no one of my favorites by him but I do enjoy the next #1 single upcoming very much. I also think his 1975 album “If You Ever Change Your Mind ” is underrated. I enjoy the title track, “Between His Goodbye and my Hello” and my favorite version of the Kris Kristofferson classic “Nobody Wins”. So mellow but transports me to a place and time that I have not experienced but gives me the feeling all the same. Ray was always a phenomenal vocalist and his and Willie version “Faded Love” is one of my all time favorites performances ever.
Never heard of this song before.
I did some digging. Ray Price was on the charts for decades, but he actually only had eight #1 hits: 4 in the 1950s and 4 in the 1070s (None in that decade in between.)
This is the only one I’d never heard.
I find it bizarre that he even issued this song–as a single, no less–and more bizarre that it went to #1.
It’s not just that he’s a cad, but that his definition of a saint is a woman who lets him walk all over her. Also, Ray’s a great singer, but he sounds like he’s in his 60s here, even though he was actually only around 46. It’s one thing when a younger character is acting wild and free (“The Wanderer,” etc.), but for a middle-aged or old man, it’s something else. All of Ray’s other #1 from the era “For the Good Times,” “I Won’t Mention It Again,” “You’re the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me” were uplifting,
This song, along with one called “Same Old Me” from the 1950s (not the George Jones song) are the only #1 hits that Price had that you can’t find videos of him performing live. Not surprising that he would want to keep excise this awful song from his repertoire.
According to Record World and Cash Box, Price had two #1s during the 1960s. Billboard had five of Ray’s singles reach either #2 or #3 during the decade of the 1960s. Ray apparently restored this song to his stage show as I heard him perform it in 2007, the one time I saw him perform live.
Well, Ray outsmarted himself with a harrowing rendition of “Make the World Go Away” in 1963 that was filled with bells and whistles and stalled at #2. Just two years later, Eddy Arnold recorded a more straighforward version of the song, that became an iconic #1 hit and has since been “inducted” into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Harrowing ???
Do you even know what the word means ?
I wouldn’t call a record that reached #2 a failure. Price was clearly experimenting with the song and his version. Also, Timi Yuro had a competing version of the song in release during Price’s chart run – to some extent they split the hit. AC and Hot 100 stations played both the Price and Yuro versions (Yuro received very little country airplay, however)
If Eddy Arnold had released his version in 1963 (with Price on the sidelines) I doubt that Eddy’s version would have reached the top as there was a logjam of huge hits during Price’s chart run blocking the way among them “Act Naturally”, “Still” and “Ring of Fire”
Price maturing into a full on soft-country crooner after his hard-country honky-tonk beginnings is one of country music’s great stories. That he excelled in both styles is a testament to his artistry, perseverance, and vision.
On this hit, Price’s vocals are deliciously rich and smooth, like some sort of auditory confectionary. He is more than holding his own with pop vocalists like Andy William’s, Frank Sinatra, Englebert Humperdinck, Robert Goulet, or Johnny Mathis. I have such a sweet tooth for that style of vocal performance.
I love how absolutely elegant and mature Price sounds here with his resonant vibrato. He is not playing at being a big singer, he is one.
I am very well-versed in Ray Price’s catalogue but this is one that I had forgotten about. Like almost everything else he sang, the vocal is enough to make the song compelling. Country has had its fair share of crooner vocalists and performances, but my money is still on Ray as the best of them all. Only Jim Reeves matches up to me.