February 28, 2012

Ray Stevens 9-CD box set, Part 4...

YES!!! RELEASE DAY IS AT LONG LAST HERE!!!


Good Tuesday morning...it's a Super Ray Stevens Tuesday!! The day's finally here...the day that Ray Stevens releases his 9-CD box set titled The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. You can order your copy at Ray's web-store by clicking the following link. I put my order in about half an hour ago. There is another page at the web-site completely devoted to the Encyclopedia project that features audio samples and a video hosted by Ray showing rare footage of him in the recording studio. You can see this by clicking the following link and because it was uploaded onto You Tube you can watch the embed below. You can purchase the Encyclopedia at that link, too, by clicking the Buy Now button at the bottom of the page or the Buy Now link up on the illustrated book shelf.



Now, to get you more In The Mood for the Encyclopedia here's that video clip of Ray and Kix Brooks one more time:

Kix Brooks and Ray Stevens.

I can't wait for the collection to arrive in the mail!!

Here is the track-list for the Encyclopedia:

CD 1:
Abba Dabba Honeymoon
Ahab The Arab
Alley Oop
All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth
Along Came Jones
A Boy Named Sue
The Ballad Of The Blue Cyclone Part 1
The Ballad Of The Blue Cyclone Part 2
The Bricklayer’s Song
Bridget The Midget
Chantilly Lace
Charlie Brown

CD 2:
Chug A Lug
Cigareets And Whuskey And Wild Wild Women
Cocktails For Two
Convoy
Dang Me
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor
The Dooright Family
The Downtown Poker Club
Drop Kick Me Jesus
Dry Bones
Freddie Feelgood
Get A Job

CD 3:
Gitarzan
I'm Kissin' You Goodbye
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer
Harry The Hairy Ape
Haunted House
The Haircut Song
Henry The Eighth
Hello Muddah Hello Fadduh
Huggin' And Chaulkin'
How Much Is That Hound Dog (Doggie) In The Winder (Window)
If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus
I’m My Own Grandpa

CD 4:
In The Mood
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
I Still Write Your Name In The Snow
Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
It’s Me Again Margaret
I Wanna Talk About Me
I Went To Your Wedding
Jeremiah Peabody’s Green And Purple Pills
Kansas City Star
The King Is Gone And So Are You
King Tut
Little Brown Jug

CD 5:
Little Egypt
Love Potion #9
Mairzy Doats
Makin’ The Best Of A Bad Situation
Maybellene
May The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose
Mississippi Squirrel Revival
Monster Mash
Moonlight Special
Mother-In-Law
Mr. Custer
My Old Flame

CD 6:
No Help Wanted
Ode to The Little Brown Shack Out Back
Open The Door Richard
Osama Yo Mama
The Pirate Song
Poison Ivy
The Preacher And The Bear
The Purple People Eater
Rub It In
Running Bear
Santa Claus Is Watching You
Searchin’

CD 7:
Short People
Shriner’s Convention
Sittin’ Up With The Dead
Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette
Spiders And Snakes
Splish Splash
The Streak
Temptation (Tim-Tay-Shun)
That’s What I Like About The South
There Is Something On Your Mind
The Thing
Three Legged Man

CD 8:
Three Little Fishes
They’re Coming To Take Me Away! Ha! Ha!
The Too Fat Polka
Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport
Too Old To Cut The Mustard
Transfusion
Western Movies
White Lightin'
William Tell Overture
The Witch Doctor
Would Jesus Wear A Rolex
Yakety-Yak

Bonus material/CD 9:
The Camping Trip
Come To The U.S.A.
Cooter Brown
The Cure
Furthermore
Happy Hour
The Higher Education Of Old Blue
Hugo The Human Cannonball
Hurricane
Obama Budget Plan
The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore
Sucking Sound

February 27, 2012

Ray Stevens 9-CD box set, Part 3...

It's a very interesting read. The article is written by a writer named Bob Paxman whose written a lot of articles that have been published in Country Weekly. I briefly mentioned this issue in one of my previous blog entries but I decided to give the issue much more greater exposure because as you can see from the various shots of the magazine cover there isn't any indication that there's an article about Ray Stevens in the issue. Those who follow Ray's career as closely as I often do knew ahead of time that the March 5th issue of Country Weekly would have a story on Ray and so when I saw it sitting at a news stand at the check out line I skimmed through the article while waiting in line at a store. Those of you who caught the G-A-C episode of On The Streets with Ray back on February 21st and watched the video clip of Ray and Kix Brooks you will not want to be without this issue because it puts down in written form a lot of things that were and were not discussed during Ray's two previous interviews. Also, because it's a magazine, there are pictures of Ray that appear within the article.

There's a picture of Ray in here from 1996 showing him at a computer in his office...surrounded by figurines on his desk as well as papers...including a picture on the wall of him performing at his Branson, Missouri theater in the early '90s. Within the article there are other pictures as well...the earliest dates back to 1970. Once the box set comes into my possession it'll take awhile to listen to the music...and to digest the booklet that comes along with it. I hesitate to talk at length about the comedy song, in general, because I'm saving this for the blog entry I write in the near future where I review the box set. Now, on the eve of the box set's release I thought it would be perfect to post the advertisement that Ray encouraged people on his Facebook page to use in their timeline. However, since I don't use the timeline version of Facebook I'm going to post the advertisement here to help spread the word about the box set's release tomorrow...yes...TOMORROW!! I can't wait to place my order at his web-site.


Here's the upcoming television appearances from Ray Stevens:

March 4: Crook and Chase; 6pm ET on RFD-TV

March 8: Larry's Country Diner; 7pm ET on RFD-TV

Larry's program will repeat several times after it's initial air-date. You will be able to catch the show 3 times. It's first airing will be Thursday March 8th at 7pm ET, then it repeats on Friday March 9th at 10am ET in select markets, and lastly on Saturday March 10th at 11pm ET. In my location we get the show twice: the Thursday and Saturday airings.

February 26, 2012

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 31...

Well, it's an early Sunday morning here...and to update something from my previous blog entry: The episode of Larry's Country Diner that aired Saturday night at 11pm on RFD-TV featured Moe Bandy as I had assumed it would. I also assume this means that the Ray Stevens episode will air on March 8th as originally announced prior to all the confusion that took place on February 23rd on Facebook regarding Ray's appearance on the show. I hope you all enjoyed the video clip of Ray Stevens and Kix Brooks! If you haven't seen it I'll post another link to it at the end of this blog entry.

The catalog number for this 1971 album from Ray Stevens is BR-5004. I mention the catalog number due to the fact that the image of Ray that graces this album's cover would later re-appear on a couple of collections with almost completely different track lists. The release with the BR-5004 number features 11 songs recorded by Ray during the years of 1968 through 1971. Then there is the second version located below with a completely different letter design featuring songs from 1968 through 1971 and 1973 through 1975. The year of 1972 is often always omitted on these compilation albums because that was the year that Ray released a series of gospel songs. "Turn Your Radio On", a legendary gospel song, is the only gospel recording from Ray that gets inclusion on these releases. My guess is it's Top-20 showing on the country charts in early 1972 merits it's inclusion on a lot of the compilation albums. The hit gospel recordings Ray had in 1972 do not get much publicity but he did have back-to-back Top-10 hits on the Adult-Contemporary chart with gospel recordings in 1972: "All My Trials" and "A Mama and a Papa". The Adult-Contemporary format, known at that time as Easy-Listening, programmed songs that were classified as pop (contemporary) but had an appeal with older listeners. Ray had quite a few big hits on this format during the early to mid '70s.

In this release the track list features a hefty amount of recordings from 1974 and 1975 to build upon the success of his version of "Misty". The song would go on to win a Grammy in early 1976 in the Best Arrangement category for it's use to banjo, fiddle, steel guitar, and piano...in addition to the uptempo delivery. The original recording had long been performed or thought of as a slow love ballad until the Ray Stevens version came along in 1975. The single reached the Top-20 on the pop chart and the Top-5 on the country chart. A Misty album came along in 1975. In addition to "Misty", the 1975 hit single "Indian Love Call" is also on this compilation. Ray's version of the song hit the country Top-40. The song had originally been made famous by Slim Whitman. Ray's version featured a bluesy/doo-wop style arrangement...slowing down the tempo considerably from the bouncy up-tempo sing-a-long made famous by Whitman. In addition to those 1975 hits there is "The Streak", from 1974, which became the biggest selling single of his career. 1974 is also represented by "The Moonlight Special", a lesser-known but hysterical hit comedy song spoofing the television program The Midnight Special.

Here are the track lists on the two compilation albums that feature the same picture of Ray:

1971 release:

1. Everything Is Beautiful
2. Gitarzan
3. Isn't It Lonely Together
4. Harry the Hairy Ape
5. Have a Little Talk With Myself
6. America, Communicate With Me
7. Mr. Businessman
8. Along Came Jones
9. Bridget the Midget
10. Unwind
11. Ahab the Arab

1975 release:

1. Misty
2. Unwind
3. Turn Your Radio On
4. Everything Is Beautiful
5. Mr. Businessman
6. Indian Love Call
7. The Streak
8. Nashville
9. The Moonlight Special
10. Gitarzan
11. Ahab the Arab

Here's that link to the video clip I posted in the previous blog entry: Ray Stevens and Kix Brooks

February 25, 2012

Ray Stevens 9-CD box set, Part 2...

Good Saturday morning...a lot of confusion took place the other day concerning Ray's television appearance on Larry's Country Diner. Originally it was reported that Ray's episode would air the second Thursday of March and then at what you might call the 11th hour a post appeared on Larry's Facebook page promoting Ray's appearance...for February 23rd(!). The episode that actually aired on February 23rd featured country legend Moe Bandy. The show airs again tonight at 11pm Eastern Time on RFD-TV and my program guide states that Ray Stevens will be the guest...but I have a feeling it'll be the Moe Bandy episode from the 23rd. Whichever episode airs later tonight I'll make a note of it here.

In the link below you'll be taken to a page at the American Country Countdown site. Kix Brooks interviews Ray Stevens for a segment called The Back 40. The video is broken into 5 parts and the best thing, in addition to getting to see Ray talk about comedy songs, is that you don't have to hit play at the end of each video. It automatically starts playing once a previous video clip has ended.

Ray Stevens and Kix Brooks

The issue of Country Weekly with the write-up/promo piece about Ray was in the local store this morning. It's the March 5th issue. In the article they show a picture of the box set and a few pictures from Ray's past. The article includes snippets of conversation with Ray about the box set and comedy songs in general. Also, there's commentary from Ray and the author of the article about the comedy song as an art form and how endangered it's become.

February 23, 2012

Ray Stevens 9-CD box set...

Good Thursday morning!! It's going to be a Ray Stevens fan-fest for the next several days. Ray is wrapping up his three city tour stop in Florida tonight. On the 21st he performed in Daytona Beach...yesterday afternoon and night he performed two shows in Lakeland...and tonight he'll be in Melbourne, Florida at the King Center.

Ray gave an interview for G-A-C, the country music channel. The interview runs anywhere between 7 to 8 minutes on the series called On The Streets. The show has aired multiple times since February 21st. You have two more chances to catch the show as it airs later today at 4:30pm and then on Saturday at 10am. Ray's segment starts up 18 minutes into the half hour show and it starts with a short clip of his "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" music video from 1992. The purpose of the interview was to promote the upcoming Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music that Ray's set to release on February 28th...this coming Tuesday!!

The songs will be in alphabetical order on 8 CD's. The 9th CD features newer recordings from the last few years that Ray's featured on some of his previously released CD's. Some of the songs that Ray's brought back to life are "The Thing", originally a big novelty hit for Phil Harris. There's "Three Little Fishes" that I'd never heard of but research shows it was a big hit during the '40s by Kay Kyser's group. Ray covers a lot of ground on this collection as you can imagine. We also get to hear his take on several songs that had erroneously been credited to him by a whole host of people down through the years: "Witch Doctor" and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer". The original recordings were done by David Seville (the "Witch Doctor" hit) and Elmo and Patsy (the "Grandma..." hit). Some of the other songs that Ray revives are "My Old Flame", "Open the Door, Richard", and "Mairzy Doates". In "My Old Flame", the original recording from Spike Jones featured voice actor Paul Frees as the Peter Lorre sound-a-like. I don't know if Ray's version will feature a Peter Lorre impression or not.

Now, in addition to On The Streets, Ray Stevens will be a featured guest on this weekend's American Country Cowndown with Kix Brooks. The countdown airs on hundreds of radio stations usually on Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings depending on the station that airs it. You can find the radio station in your area by visiting their web-site and looking up the radio station list. Click your state and a list of stations will appear.

Ray will also be making appearances very soon on a couple of RFD-TV programs. He'll appear on Larry's Country Diner as well as Crook and Chase. In addition to this, Country Weekly will run a story about Ray in their March 5th issue, which is scheduled to hit store shelves this weekend. I'll be on the lookout for that particular issue of course!

Here's a look at what the Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music lettering looks like, click the link:

Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music

The actual box set will be rectangle in shape and feature a laughing mask on the front. The picture of Ray will be somewhere in the box set...either inside the booklet that accompanies the collection or on the back of the box. Once I get a copy of the box set I'll dissect it, analyze it, listen to it, review it, and post my thoughts here on the blog page. Since the collection contains 9 CD's it'll be a longer analytical essay once it's all said and done.

February 19, 2012

Cast your votes for Ray Stevens: An Update

Good Sunday morning...an update from yesterday morning shows that Ray Stevens is in 4th place on the vote tally on the Hit Parade Hall of Fame web-page. Again, I have no idea just how much of an impact the vote tallies are due to the fact that the hall of fame has inducted multiple performers each year and that people can vote more than once, but I assume when it's all said and done the top 4 or 5 with the most votes play a factor in the decision making process!? Based upon the vote tally as of right now the top-2 include The Lettermen at #2 and Ronnie Milsap at #1. The Turtles are #3 and Ray is #4.

Now, to be specific, there is a large separation in vote numbers between the #2 act and The Turtles.

#4: Ray Stevens
#3: The Turtles
#2: The Lettermen
#1: Ronnie Milsap

The fact that people can vote more than once plays a big factor, too. If 1000 people, for example, vote 20 times well that's 20,000 votes easily. I only voted once...and I'm sure that other people voted only once because there was no announcement that people could vote more than once. I think voting more than once skews the numbers but if it's something that the site allows then it's perfectly fine to vote more than once if you choose to. There are 12 nominees for 2012 (induction to be in January 2013) and the Top-4 vote leaders are listed above. As mentioned elsewhere I have no idea the impact that the votes have considering people can vote more than once.

Here's the link again:

Vote For Ray Stevens

Soon, as in a couple of days, Ray Stevens will be in Florida for a series of concerts on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. Ray will appear in Daytona Beach, Florida at the Peabody Auditorium on February 21st. On the 22nd he'll be in Lakeland, Florida at the Lakeland Center for 2 concerts. On February 23 Ray will be in Melbourne, Florida at the King Center. Here are the ticket information links for each venue:

Peabody Auditorium: 2/21

Lakeland Center: 2/22

King Center: 2/23

February 18, 2012

Cast your votes for Ray Stevens...

Good Saturday morning all the Ray Stevens fans out there. I take it that most of the people to visit this blog page are either fans of Ray Stevens or perhaps curious who Ray Stevens happens to be if you see his name in passing on various social media sites.

Ray is one of the nominees for induction into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. I have no idea how long the voting period lasts but as of now all of you Ray Stevens fans can vote for Ray by clicking the following link...but first read the following...

When you click the link you will see a gold star up on the top right side of the page. Click the gold star to cast your vote for Ray Stevens! Now, here's the link:

Hit Parade Hall of Fame

February 5, 2012

Ray Stevens Provides an Escape...

One of the obscure releases from Ray Stevens is this 1968 single entitled "The Great Escape". It didn't reach America's Hot 100 pop chart but it did surface on the Australian music chart in December 1968. The song has nothing to do with the movie of the same name which saw it's release back in 1963. However, Ray's song has a very small parallel with the sentiments from the 1963 movie. The movie dealt with POW's whereas Ray's 1968 single uses a prison analogy to describe life in the city. In the song Ray can't wait to make the escape to the quieter country surroundings of his home life. The song itself has a pounding, urgent arrangement along with a vocal delivery that brings home the excitement that the worker has when he's fleeing the crowded city. You can almost see him speeding down the interstate...that's how intense/uptempo the vocalization is. It's a shame that it wasn't really pushed as a single in America...then again it's always been baffling to me why a lot of singles from Ray Stevens were never really pushed in the kind of way that a record company is capable of doing.

"The Great Escape" was part of Ray's 1968 Monument album, Even Stevens. The album was issued on CD in the mid '90s by Varese Sarabande Records. The CD featured several bonus tracks and a 1971 re-recording of "Mr. Businessman" in addition to the original 1968 recording. Yes, the CD featured two recordings of the same song. The album cover for Even Stevens is what appears on the promo picture for "The Great Escape" above. "Isn't It Lonely Together?" appears on the 1968 album and it became a single for O.C. Smith several years later. Ray wrote the song...in fact Ray wrote the bulk of the songs on Even Stevens.

All Things Ray Stevens...

One of the various picture sleeves for the international smash hit from Ray Stevens in 1971 titled "Bridget the Midget". The single reached the Top-5 in the United Kingdom, the Top-5 in Belgium, the Top-5 in Holland, and the Top-50 on America's pop chart. As far as release months go it was issued in America first in December 1970. In January 1971 it hit in Holland and the following month it hit in Belgium. In March 1971 it hit in the United Kingdom. Political correctness pretty much keeps this song from getting much attention nowadays but it appeared on quite a few compilation albums released on Ray Stevens during the '70s, some of the '80s compilations, a few from the '90s, and just several in the next decade. As you can see, as the years went by, the less frequent the song remained in print and commercially available. It appears on the 1990 His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits release on Curb Records. It was on that collection where I first heard the song as it didn't appear on any of the compilations on Ray Stevens that I owned at the time. It later appeared on the Rhino Records collection, The Best of Ray Stevens, in 1997. In 2001 it was included on the Varese Sarabande CD titled All-Time Greatest Hits. He re-recorded the song several years later for a limited animation music video found on 2004's Cartoon Video Collection. The audio recording of that performance appears on the Box Set release from 2005.

"Can He Love You Half as Much as I?" is a Ray Stevens song from 1986 that he performed on several television program throughout 1986 and much of 1987. It was released as a commercial single in 1987 as the third release from Surely You Joust...following "The People's Court" and "Southern Air". The album's first two singles featured some heavy duty production work...more so on "Southern Air" but "The People's Court" has it's share, too. Jerry Clower and Minnie Pearl make guest appearances on "Southern Air"...as the Captain and the man-crazy Stewardess...Ray plays the part of the nervous passenger. The song opens up with Ray's vocal impression of a beat-up airplane trying to start and take off, which it eventually does.

"The People's Court" is a send-up of the television program of the same name (the original 1981-1993 version with Judge Wapner and company). In the recording Ray demonstrates his vocal mimicry of the nagging wife. The husband is the Plaintiff, the wife is the Defendant, and each one gets a chance to tell their side of the story to the Judge. Also on hand is the court reporter whose nameless in the recording. Interestingly the voice Ray uses as the reporter is more similar to the hushed delivery of Jim Peck from Divorce Court than the louder enunciations of Doug Llewelyn of The People's Court.

You can view his 1986 performance of "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?" by clicking this link: Can He Love You Half as Much as I?. The video uploader doesn't provide embed links and so I'm unable to post the actual video here. As a result you'll have to click the link and be taken to the video host's site, You Tube, and view it there. While there search for the performance Ray did of the song "Fat". It was uploaded by the same person. On Surely You Joust it's track 5.

As mentioned, the performance comes from 1986, right around the point in time when he began winning the Music City News Comedian of the Year trophy every year. As mentioned in earlier blog entries, Ray won this fan-voted award during 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994. He was nominated for the award prior to 1986 and after 1994 but lost out to other performers. For the award program's last several years in existence the Comedian trophy went to traditional stand-up comics who had gained some attention/hype in the country music press for their blue collar/redneck material. The lone exception was Gary Chapman, a gospel-oriented performer whose comical monologues on the television program he hosted on The Nashville Network during the mid-late '90s, Primetime Country, created the opportunity for a nomination in the Comedian category.

As many long-time fans are aware, Ray Stevens became pretty much exclusive to comedy recordings in 1984 with the release of He Thinks He's Ray Stevens. The album would reach the Top-5 on the Country Album chart in 1985 and eventually sell more than a million copies. The 1985 follow-up, I Have Returned, would hit #1 and sell half a million copies. Ray didn't put a non-comical recording on any of his next series of albums, which included the years of 1986, 1987, and 1988. It wouldn't be until 1989, with the release of Beside Myself, that new non-comical songs emerged on a Ray Stevens album. After this release he returned to country comedy full-time and eventually added home video superstar to his list of accomplishments. The period of 1992 through 1997 saw Ray Stevens sell millions of VHS home videos. During this same era, 1991-1993, Ray owned and performed at his self-named Branson, Missouri theater. Ray would return to Branson many times in the years following the closing of his theater. He's scheduled to appear in Branson later this year at Andy Williams' theater. His own theater, which was closed from 1993 through 2004, reopened for another stretch of concert performances from Ray before he sold it to RFD-TV.

Nowadays, for those who aren't aware, Ray is involved in political humor from a conservative point of view. Conservative humorists are a rare thing...most political humor, both past and present, has almost exclusively centered around poking fun at a conservative philosophy or trashing a prominent figure in Republican politics. It's still very seldom that liberal philosophies get the satirical treatment...even less frequent is the spoofing of left-wing progressive viewpoints...and even more less frequent is any positive publicity from the mainstream media for what few conservative humorists still exist. Ray Stevens, since December 2009, has become affiliated with conservative humor...some of the songs he's released since then are light-hearted and whimsical while others are straight to the point and serious. His songs have become hits on-line through music video exposure on You Tube...and it's that exposure on You Tube and numerous high-profile appearances on a variety of programs on the Fox News Channel that introduced Ray to a new audience and re-introduced him to a mainstream pop audience again.

In my opinion the conservative humor in the music videos caught a lot of people by surprise and for a lot of people who never heard of Ray Stevens before, based upon their comments, they didn't really know what to make of the humor. The reason being is a lot of the people who frequent You Tube are much more familiar with videos that make fun of conservatives on a routine basis. I imagine a lot of people who watched "We The People" and never knew of Ray beforehand perhaps asked themselves: "Who is this Ray Stevens guy??? And why is he putting down Obama??". Since then he's released several political music videos and from time to time appears on the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Channel. He's released two albums of political comedy. We The People hit in 2010 and Spirit of '76 hit in 2011. As most of the readers of this blog know Ray will be releasing a 9-CD collection later this month called The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. The project will not be politically themed as his previous two collections were and with so much material I suspect that Ray will promote and market this collection throughout much of 2012 and beyond. It's anyone's guess if he'll put out a new political music video by the time the 2012 Election rolls around in November. His channel on You Tube is called raystevensmusic in all lower case. It was created early in 2009.

Here's a re-cap of Ray's You Tube political and patriotic music video totals:

1. We The People; 2009 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 4,652,576

2. Caribou Barbie; 2010 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 481,298

3. Throw the Bums Out; 2010 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 856,381

4. Come to the U.S.A.; 2010 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 5,799,176

5. The Global Warming Song; 2010 on-line views as of 2/5/2010: 198,855

6. God Save Arizona; 2010 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 841,723

7. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore; 2011 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 277,289

8. Obama Budget Plan; 2011 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 1,099,143

9. Mr. President - Mr. President; 2011 on-line views as of 2/5/2012: 474,304

Note: Two other music videos of a patriotic nature filmed before 2009 were uploaded onto You Tube by Ray. "Osama Yo' Mama" dates back to late 2001. The music video, uploaded onto You Tube in 2009, has 1,247,345 on-line views. "Thank You", the song and music video dating back to 2004, features additional video footage in the 2009 upload. As of 2/5/2012 the video has 420,795 views. Keep in mind that the 9 music videos listed above are only the ones that have a political/patriotic overtone. A few of his non-political music videos have obtained a million views: "The Streak" has 1,635,336 views and "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" has 1,815,717 views. Those two music videos, uploaded in 2009, were filmed in 1992...well before You Tube came along.