May 1, 2011

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 3...

The "Obama Budget Plan" has 95,868 unique views so far. I'll take a look at the number this evening or tonight and see if they're even closer to 100,000. I happen to think it may surpass that number later today but it may happen on Monday. Whenever it happens one thing is for sure: Ray Stevens has yet another major video hit on his hands!! Don't forget...the CD that contains "Obama Budget Plan", "Mr. President - Mr. President", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Cap'n Trade the Pirate", and others is now available at Ray's web-store at his official web-site. The CD is called Spirit of '76 and it's available as a physical CD and as an Mp3 digital download.

Those of you who do a lot of on-line music shopping may come across a Ray Stevens collection titled The Incredible World of Ray Stevens. Consumer alert is in order due to the fact that there are two collections with the same exact title and the same packaging concept. The first release, from 1993, contains 3 CD's of mostly MCA material. Ray recorded for MCA during the years of 1984 through 1989. Each CD contains 10 songs...an overall total of 30. CD #3 is Crackin' Up, the studio album Ray recorded for MCA in 1987. The biggest single from that collection is "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". CD #2 is actually He Thinks He's Ray Stevens, Ray's debut album for MCA in 1984. In this collection the 1984 release goes under the title of Mississippi Squirrel Revival. MCA, in 1992, had re-issued Ray's 1984 album under that alternate title and that's why it appears as such on this 1993 collection. "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" reached the country Top-20 early in 1985. "It's Me Again, Margaret" was another song from the 1984 album to become a classic in Ray's career. CD #1 features a mix of songs Ray recorded for MCA during 1985, 1986, and 1988 in addition to 1970's "Everything Is Beautiful" and 1974's "The Streak". Four songs come from 1985's I Have Returned release; three songs come from 1986's Surely You Joust release; 1 song comes from 1988's I Never Made A Record I Didn't Like release while the other two come from the 1970's. Ray's 1989 album, Beside Myself, is the only studio release for MCA that wasn't represented on this 1993 collection.

I happen to have the 1995 release...as you can see it features pretty much the same cover design but it uses a different picture of Ray and on this collection there's 34 songs instead of 30. There's two additional songs on CD's 1 and 2 while CD #3 features 10 songs. The songs are also different on CD's 1 and 2 while CD #3 on this 1995 release remains 1987's Crackin' Up. CD #2 features a whole lot of mostly Monument recordings that Ray did plus quite a few early Barnaby recordings from 1970 and 1971. CD #1 also features quite a few Monument Recordings and Barnaby recordings. The highlight of this 1995 release is that it included several album tracks from Ray's late '60s and early '70s albums that weren't in print. One song in particular on CD #1 is "Mary, My Secretary"...this song was released as a single only on Monument Records in 1967. I believe this 1995 collection marks the first time it was released on CD. I also believe this 1995 collection to still be the only place you can find the song in CD format. The original single on Monument has a catalog number of Monument-1001 and it's B-side is "Answer Me, My Love". As you can tell this collection with 34 songs and the 1993 release with 30 songs that's a grand total of 64 songs. I'm not going to list all 64 songs on both releases for obvious reasons (too many to mention!!). Those interested in those particular collections can seek them out on the various on-line shopping stores and discover the material contained on them.

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