Ray Stevens and those Animals...

In a departure from my usual in-depth analysis of Ray Stevens here's a whimsical blog entry discussing the animals that appear in various Ray Stevens songs. We can't start off this entry without mentioning the camel. The camel not only appears in a couple of songs but it's one of Ray's trademarks. The camel's name, Clyde, doubles as the name of Ray's record company. Clyde appears in a couple of songs...but camel's also are referenced in a couple more songs. "Ahab the Arab", from 1962, introduced Clyde the camel.

The story goes that the camel got it's name when Ray spotted Clyde McPhatter walking around at Mercury Records. After "Ahab the Arab", Clyde the camel made a guest appearance in the original recording of "Santa Claus Is Watching You". Clyde was called in as a last minute replacement for Rudolph who, curiously, injured himself while doing The Twist. When you have the reindeer visually planted in your mind...replace Rudolph with a camel...and see how hilarious the image looks now.

The camel and Arabian scenery was re-visited nearly 30 years later in 1991 when Ray recorded "The Sheik of R&B". The title, of course, is a spoof of the movie, Sheik of Araby. In 2010 Ray mentions camels in the song "Come to the USA" and there's footage of him in Arabian attire in the music video. Also from 2010 we have "Caribou Barbie" which is a song all about Sarah Palin and her nick-name that the critics came up with. Each of those 2010 recordings come from his We The People collection. "Deerslayer", from 2000's Ear Candy and 2002's Osama Yo' Mama, is about a hunter who captures a deer (it's laying in the road!). The hunter puts the deer in his car and that's when all the fun begins.

In 1963 Ray sang about another particular animal: The ape! "Harry the Hairy Ape" was Ray's satirical look at rock music and the shaggy long-hair a lot of them were beginning to appear with. In Ray's song, of course, it's a real ape who becomes a singing sensation. In the same animal family is the monkey...and of course "Gitarzan" immediately comes to mind. In that 1969 song Ray sings about a jungle band consisting of Gitarzan, Jane, and the Monkey. A year later, "Monkey See, Monkey Do" appeared on a 1970 album from Ray Stevens titled Unreal. The song has nothing do with monkeys...it's based upon the phrase that refers to people who copy others...mostly for social acceptance. In 1984 Ray did a wild version of the theme song of the rock group, The Monkees. In Ray's recording we hear two Austrian singers perform "The Monkees" theme song but ultimately the duo dissolve into arguing with one another over everything from singing off-key to goat management.

Ray's sang about dogs on several of his albums, too. "Fred" springs to mind...it's from 1984. In another song from 1984, "Joggin'", Ray gets chased by a dog and the song closes with dog howls. In 1960's "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon" we hear about the dog, King, as Ray does some chilling dog howls. In 1963's "Butch Babarian" we get to hear Ray do more dog howls when Butch's dog, Houston, makes an appearance. In 1991 Ray recorded "Back in the Doghouse Again" and while we don't hear any dog howls we get to hear some dog growls toward the end of the song. In "The Dog Song", from 2000, Ray sings from a dog's point of view about a woman who claims to have been treated like a dog but yet the dog recalls all the attention he actually receives...and if a man really treated the woman like a dog she would have never left. In 1993 Ray told the story of "The Higher Education of Ol' Blue" which was based on a story about a boy, his father, and a dog who goes to college. The boy is running a scam against his father in an attempt to get more spending money...so he tells his dad that he needs more money because there's a college course that'll teach dogs to read. It's available on Classic Ray Stevens.

Fish have only made their way onto two Ray Stevens recordings. "Fish Eat Sleep" appeared on a 1973 album, Nashville. 24 years later in 1997 "Too Drunk To Fish" came along...as did a comical music video. In 1975 Ray recorded "Cow Cow Boogie" which was originally conceived in the early 1940's as a satire of the singing cowboy. 1970's music listeners, when hearing it on Ray's album, may have viewed it as a groovy cowboy-type song. It happens more than you think...humor and satire often get lost in time and each successive generation will interpret lyrics to mean entirely different things than originally intended. When Ray recorded the song in 1975 it was more than 30 years old. It's on his Misty album.

The fearsome snake took center stage on 1986's "Smokey Mountain Rattlesnake Retreat" and 1987's "Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty". In 2005 Ray recorded "Kitty Cat's Revenge" which dealt with the misadventures of trying to rescue a cat from a drainage pipe. The same year he also recorded "The Cat Song" which deals with a husband's jealousy over a wife's affections toward the family cat...Ray does baby talk at various spots in the song in an effort to explain the way the wife treats the cat. Each of those songs are on the Box Set collection. Famously in 1984 Ray recorded "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" about a squirrel that gets loose in a southern church...and all the while the church goers think all the commotion and disturbance is created by the Lord and they start confessing their sins and asking for forgiveness. A year later Ray recorded "Kiss a Pig"...a cute story about a man who finds a pig and takes him home and treats him like a member of the family.

In 1976 Ray hatched upon an idea to release a chicken clucking version of "In the Mood". Ray remarked that he had the idea and recorded it for private use to share with friends and family...but then his label at the time, Warner Brothers, wanted him to put it out as a single! So, in late 1976, Ray Stevens issued "In the Mood" under the pseudonym Henhouse Five Plus Too. It's b-side was the culturally aware "Classical Cluck". Amazingly, the 2 minute 40 second chicken clucking extravaganza known as "In the Mood" reached the country and pop Top-40 charts in America and the Top-40 in the United Kingdom. In 1985 he revisited the chicken coop again with "Thus Cacked Henrietta", based on Also Sprach Zarathustra...in the recording we also hear cows and a goat much like we did in "In the Mood". In fact the 1985 recording kicks off with a cow mooing.