Ray Stevens CabaRay performance: "Detroit City"

Hello fans of Ray Stevens! Earlier today, given that it's the birthday of Bobby Bare, Ray uploaded his own performance of "Detroit City". This particular song, from the pen of Mel Tillis and Danny Dill, had been recorded by Billy Grammer less than a year before Bobby's recording was released. In fact, the song was titled "I Wanna Go Home" when released by Billy Grammer. The song became a Top-20 country hit and peaked early in 1963. Bobby recorded the song in the spring of 1963 as "Detroit City" and by the end of the summer it hit the Top-10 on the country chart and crossed over to the Pop and Adult-Contemporary formats. The single crossed over internationally and reportedly hit number one in Sweden, Norway, and the Top-10 in Denmark. Bobby's recording was released on RCA and was produced by Chet Atkins. A few years later, in 1966, Ray did the arrangement for Bobby's recording of "Streets of Baltimore". If you have the vinyl album of Streets of Baltimore you'll see Ray credited with the arrangement of that recording. The liner notes for the album were written by Eddy Arnold. Chet Atkins was the producer. 

Ray speaks, briefly, about the recording session for the song. Something that one has to remember is that Ray witnessed a lot of recording sessions in his career. Now, of course, he played on a lot of recording sessions but what some may not realize is that Ray often was in recording studios during sessions and rehearsals that he, personally, didn't participate in but witnessed. He was often showing up at the recording studios of Mercury, Monument, Columbia, and RCA given his jack-of-all-trades skill set or he simply shown up due to his friendships with producers such as Shelby Singleton, Fred Foster, Chet Atkins, and Jerry Kennedy.