At the age of 74, Ray Price has released an album that can be heard as both a career capper and an ambitious new chapter. After acknowledging his honky-tonk roots with the opening "Better Class of Loser," the countrypolitan crooner addresses the classic American songbook, applying his conversational phrasing to material immortalized by the likes of Louis Armstrong ("What a Wonderful World"), Frank Sinatra ("Fly Me to the Moon"), and Billie Holiday ("Body & Soul"). Only the Beatles" "In My Life" sounds like too much of an interpretive stretch for Price. Where many of his crossover hits in the "60s and early "70s suffered from saccharine production, here the string arrangements by David Campbell (father of pop star Beck) recall the bittersweet sophistication of Nelson Riddle"s Sinatra sessions. File Prisoner of Love next to Willie Nelson"s Stardust on the short shelf of genre-busting country classics. --Don McLeese