June 30, 2018

Ray Stevens and 2,018 Arabian Nights...

Oh yes it's me once more...putting together another fan created blog entry centering on the one and only Ray Stevens. I've kind of been in a formulaic pattern posting blog entries of my recaps of his locally syndicated PBS series, CabaRay Nashville, and I hadn't necessarily been posting blog entries about other aspects of his career as I used to do prior to 2017. Obviously with the television series and the CabaRay dinner theater being the biggest activity in his career at the moment it goes without saying that I'd spend a majority of my energy blogging about all things CabaRay (be it the TV show or the dinner theater). In my previous blog entry, a recap of John Schneider's guest appearance on CabaRay Nashville, I made mention near the close of the blog post that Ray would be guest starring on the Grand Ole Opry this coming Tuesday night (July 3rd). Officially the Tuesday performances are billed as the Tuesday Night Opry. There's long been a Friday Night Opry and of course the major one, Saturday's Grand Ole Opry, but the Tuesday night performances at the Opry are seasonal. But anyway...Ray's guest starred at the Opry for years and has also appeared several times on other Opry-related programming...one that leaps to mind is the Larry Gatlin recurring series, Opry Country Classics. The calendar for the month of July at the CabaRay features an added performance. Ray will put on a show July 5th (a Thursday). His performance schedule at the theater is Friday and Saturday nights but news of this Thursday addition was released a couple hours ago.

Curious to why I title this blog entry with that kind of phrase? Well, on this date in 1962, "Ahab the Arab" made it's debut on Billboard's Hot 100. This was the song that made Ray a 'superstar over night' as the saying goes. The song had a massive impact on his career both musically and in his business affairs. He got the inspiration for the song while recalling his childhood experiences reading about the 1,001 Arabian Nights and seeing Arabian culture in movies. In other interviews he recalled that the camel's name, Clyde, was inspired by the former lead singer of The Drifters, Clyde McPhatter. The name of the love interest in the song, Fatima, simply came from the name of a cigarette brand. Ray recorded the song during his years at Mercury Records. The producer of the recording was Shelby Singleton while Jerry Kennedy is credited as the orchestra director. Earlier I mentioned that the song had massive impact in his career and one need look no further than his eventual publishing company: Ahab Music Company.

This publishing company's name would eventually change to Ray Stevens Music in the mid '70s but if you look at any compilation album and look at the credits you'll see Ahab Music credited as publisher on recordings from Ray during the late '60s through the mid '70s. Also, Ray used to wear a ring on his finger with a camel image...a certain image that ultimately became a logo/advertising symbol.

This illustration of an encircled camel silhouette with the added touches of some palm trees in the backdrop became the logo for Clyde Records (a company Ray owned and operated for the purpose of releasing products that major labels wouldn't release). Clyde became the imprint for his home video, and later, DVD releases, and he recorded a number of CDs for his own label, too.

The Clyde imprint, I guess, is still part of Ray's business portfolio but the label has largely become a bit less prominent due to some recent releases being under the CabaRay Entertainment banner. As far as I know the first product released under CabaRay Entertainment happened to be Love Lifted Me in 2016. That's the CD where he re-recorded his 1972 album, Turn Your Radio On. His last CD, to date, is 2016's Christmas release Mary and Joseph and the Baby and Me. After the release of those two CDs in 2016 both the Season One and Season Two DVD releases of his PBS television series in 2017 also received the CabaRay Entertainment credit as did the DVD release of the CabaRay Nashville documentary special shown on PBS stations during pledge break. There hasn't been a new audio CD released by Ray Stevens since Christmas season 2016, by the way...but as you should know he's busy with his CabaRay dinner theater and his television series...which is what I began discussing at the top of this blog entry.

On last week's episode, as I mentioned in my recap, Ray introduced a brand new song called "It's My Job". Could an audio CD be in the not too distant future? I know I'm jumping to conclusions based simply on his performance of a brand new song but anything's possible in the kind of unpredictable career that Ray Stevens has maintained for more than 60 years. When in Nashville seek out the CabaRay. It's located on River Road off of Charlotte Pike...the main access to it is Interstate 40. You can read all about the CabaRay by clicking HERE.

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