Ray Stevens music journey

Ray Stevens and some of Those Great Albums...

2012-01-30T06:05:00.000-05:00

Feel The Music, from 1977, continues to be one of the great albums from Ray Stevens. The album itself features a musical display of easy-listening pop and a couple of jazzy-country recordings. The label Ray recorded this for was Warner Brothers. I got ahold of this particular album several years ago from eBay and up until that point in time I had never saw what the back of the album looked like. On the back there's a publicity picture of Ray along with an illustration of the back of a stereo speaker. As you can see, the image that's on front of the album is the stereo speaker. The album contains 10 songs...9 of the 10 were written by Ray Stevens while the lone exception, "Set The Children Free", was written by Buddy Kalb. Interestingly, though, during the time that this album was released the music on here was considered mainstream country. This had to do with the simple fact that most major country music radio stations in the mid to late '70s were playing mostly up-tempo or slow ballad songs with a decidedly pop production and instrumentation. This style of pop-country being released by a whole host of country music acts inspired the creation of the television program, Pop! Goes the Country. In hindsight the music on Ray's 1977 album is much more in step with easy-listening and soft rock than it is with country music but nevertheless it was marketed at country music audiences in 1977 and as a result the album and the singles charted country. The album reached the Country Top-50 while "Dixie Hummingbird" and "Get Crazy With Me" were released as singles. "Get Crazy With Me" is a great song and it incorporates a lot of funky musical accompaniment...enabling some of the instrumentation to become non-verbal hooks. It reached the lower half of the Top 100 Country chart in 1977 during a chart run of less than 7 weeks. "Dixie Hummingbird", in the meantime, was the complete opposite. It's jazzy-country arrangement and uptempo delivery created a catchy recording that enabled the single to knock on the door of the Country Top-40, mostly through sales and steady airplay during the single's first few weeks on the market. Sadly, though, it peaked several slots below #40 on the Country single charts and didn't get the chance to really compete with the airplay heavy Top-40. It hung around on the charts for nearly 10 weeks, though. Some of the other songs on this album are "Alone With You", "Road Widow", "Save Me From Myself", the title track "Feel the Music", and "Junkie For You".

This Warner Brothers album from Ray Stevens, Be Your Own Best Friend, released in 1978, came into my collection in the late '90s. At that point in time I was beginning to track down Ray's vinyl albums but I never really had much of a chance to really expand on that until I got on-line in 2002 and was able to visit on-line auction sites and music stores that sold vinyl albums regularly. Up until 2002 I only had a couple of Ray's vinyl albums that a local flea market had for sale. This was one of the first vinyl albums of Ray Stevens that I was able to get my hands on in the late '90s. I had only heard a few of the songs on this album (thanks to the 1995 3-CD project that Warner Brothers issued!). I was obviously interested in hearing the songs whose titles I had long known of but up until then had never heard. "With a Smile" is a slow ballad and one that fits the mood that the album, overall, I assume was attempting to convey. "You're Magic" became one of my all-time favorite songs after I heard it the first time. You can also add "Comeback" to that category, too! In this song Ray sings like a man possessed...in the song he plays the part of a man who definitely wants the woman in his life to comeback to him. He makes this fact perfectly clear! I love the way the chorus goes and the sing-a-long feel. The album contains 9 songs and I think a lot of that has to do with the running time of quite a few of the songs. "Comeback", for example, is lengthy as is "L'amour", "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right", "The Feeling's Not Right Again", and the title track, "Be Your Own Best Friend". Each of those songs are well over 3 minutes in length...with some close to 4 minutes.

Here's one of the more recent albums from Ray Stevens released on his own label, Clyde Records. 2010's We The People came together as a result of the viral success of his You Tube music video, also titled "We The People". The subject matter is political and as a result the video/song has it's fans and it's detractors. The album contains 22 songs which convey a political message but there are other songs on the collection that express patriotism and offer recognition to what's called small-town America and the values that consist in 'fly over country'. In fact, there's a song on this album called "Fly Over Country" which highlights the practice of some politicians who leave their relatively smaller hometowns for Washington, D.C. and only return to their hometown several weeks prior to election day. This album is not a ha-ha let's have a lot of fun kind of project even though the music videos of some of the songs on here, available on You Tube, are visually whimsical and light-hearted. The music video releases from this album include: "We The People", "Caribou Barbie", "Come to the U.S.A.", "Throw the Bums Out!", and "The Global Warming Song". Ray's 2004 single, "Thank You", was added to this 2010 album to add to the patriotic material. The other patriotic songs on here are "Let's Roll", "Stand Up", "The Fallen Ones", "Midnight in Baghdad", and his "Pledge of Allegiance/Star Spangled Banner" medley. Small-town America gets recognized in "Fly Over Country", "Safe at Home", "Dear Andy Griffith", and "Kings and Queens". The rest of the songs, in addition to the ones that were made into music videos, are strictly in the political vein: "We Are the Government", "Solar Powered Song", "Three Fractured Factions", "Obama Nation", "Sucking Sound", and "If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus". If you're counting that's 21 songs, yes? There is one song on here that has nothing to do with politics or the military...it's his updated version of "Mr. Businessman" which was lifted from a concert a few years ago. He dedicates the song to a certain businessman who epitomizes the lyrics almost to a tee.

Released in 1985, this overview of Ray Stevens on RCA features 8 recordings. Collector's Series was the umbrella title for a lot of artists who recorded or still recorded for RCA at the time. Each release featured 8 songs and so that's exactly the amount of songs you get in the album spotlighting Ray Stevens. Unlike the other artists given the Collector's Series spotlight, Ray recorded for RCA for just three years: 1980, 1981, and 1982; although research shows he was under contract with RCA from late 1979 through early 1983. With only 3 studio albums to choose material from we get 3 recordings from his 1982 album, Don't Laugh Now, 3 recordings from his 1980 Shriner's Convention comedy album, and 2 recordings from his 1981 One More Last Chance album. A track list of 8 songs on a compilation album, no matter the artist, is something that I imagine is difficult to assemble. This 1985 release came into my possession in the early '90s. I already had a 1987 version of this album which removed 1981's "One More Last Chance" in favor of 1980's "Put It In Your Ear". This meant that the 1987 re-issue featured 4 songs from 1980, 1 from 1981, and 3 from 1982. The 1987 re-issue was released on CD in 1992. This collection was my introduction to 7 of Ray's RCA recordings...previously I had only heard "Shriner's Convention". His RCA recordings (1980-1982), like the Warner Brothers recordings (1976-1979), have never been kept in print for any extended amount of time. This 1985 release and the 1987 and 1992 re-issues remain the only compilations to focus exclusively on his RCA recordings. His Warner Brothers recordings haven't been in print since 1995...except for the Mp3 release of those 1995 CD's a few years ago. As far as studio albums go there's not been any CD re-issue of any Warner Brothers or RCA album by Ray Stevens...and for a lot of fans it just doesn't make much sense why those studio albums have yet to see the light of day in CD or Mp3 format.

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 17...

2012-01-29T04:44:00.001-05:00

Good early Sunday morning!! We are a week away from the Super Bowl. The Pro-Bowl is tonight and I may or may not watch it. It all depends on the broadcaster's moods. Usually we get broadcasters who belittle the Pro-Bowl and attempt to take the joy out of watching it with their caustic comments. Even though people say that broadcasters shouldn't spoil the mood if a person really wants to watch a sporting event the truth is that broadcasters CAN spoil the mood if their style isn't harmonious with the viewer and that's why for me a broadcaster is important when it comes to whatever sport I'm watching on TV or hearing on the radio.

Now, taking a look at the You Tube numbers we see that Ray's current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President" is inching closer to half a million on-line views. It's current total is 462,039. It's been on-line for 4 months and I expect it to smash through the 500,000 mark at some point in February. A gap of a little more than 28,000 views separates it from the half a million mark. The President gave one of the most low-rated State of the Union speeches in history several days ago...commentators viewed it as a replay of 2009, 2010, and 2011's speeches with just a tweak here and there for topicality purposes. I didn't watch the speech...I heard snippets of it during newscasts on both radio and TV and that's all I needed to hear to form my own conclusion that it was the same old-same old speech instigating class warfare, highlighting so-called economic unfairness and so-called inequality, and how the Government should be the solution to everybody's personal and financial problems but a little ol' thing called the Constitution keeps getting in his way. In other words it was the same old garbage as before more or less...maybe more since the speech ran overtime.

Speaking of the President, the "Obama Budget Plan" music video from Ray Stevens is nearing 1.1 million views. At the moment it has 1,088,519 views. It was uploaded 9 months ago and was a slow climb to half a million views. The recurring battles about the budget and the debt ceiling in the latter half of 2011 pushed the video into the million views stratosphere.

A recent controversy surrounding Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and the TSA in a Nashville airport caused some activity for Ray's video titled "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore". The video has 276,126 on-line views now and was the second single/video release from Spirit of '76 in 2011. The music video's been on-line for almost 1 year...11 months and counting. It's a lot closer to 300,000 views now than it was prior to the Rand Paul story. The TSA music video, as I theorized in a couple of blogs, hits home with those who travel frequently and have to deal with the screenings and invasive pat downs. The song's title refers to the phrase "fly the friendly skies" made famous by United Airlines. His 2010 anti-illegal immigration video, "Come to the U.S.A." is nearing 5.8 million views! The totals at the moment are 5,791,250! The Obama Care music video from 2009, "We The People", has 4,648,990 views. "Throw the Bums Out!" has 854,504 and "God Save Arizona" is in the 800,000 range too with 840,795 views.

A short 5 years ago Ray Stevens released this wonderful salute to the music of New Orleans. New Orleans Moon, from July 2007, features Ray's versions of many songs celebrating not only New Orleans but the entire state of Louisiana as well. There are 11 selections on the CD and like a few of Ray's albums in the past this one slipped through without a lot of fanfare. A lot of that presumably had to do with the simple fact that none of the songs are comical and as a consequence there's a large segment of the listening audience that prefer comedy and funny business from Ray Stevens instead of thought-provoking, serious work. This has long been the case...even when Ray was releasing only non-comedy albums year after year...there are just some people who expect/insist on Ray Stevens being the funny guy without a trace of seriousness. Now, of course, there are plenty of people who appreciate all the music from Ray Stevens...whether it's serious or comical. "New Orleans Moon", the title track, was written by Ray and Chuck Redden. As a side note, Chuck wrote "The New Battle of New Orleans", by the way. Ray and Buddy Kalb re-wrote a lot of the original lyrics in the song and Curb Records issued Ray's version in 2005 as a CD single in limited quantities. That song isn't on this 2007 CD but I decided to mention the 2005 single's existence anyway!

Meanwhile, the first track on New Orleans Moon is "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans". I purchased the digital download/Mp3 album of New Orleans Moon when it was brand new but have never purchased a copy of what they now call the physical CD. I plan on doing so at some point. On this CD you will hear Ray's take on "Basin Street Blues", "New Orleans", "Louisiana Man", "Louisiana", "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?", and "When The Saints Go Marching In" among several others. Pay attention for several impressions by Ray of Louis Armstrong.

This was a comedy album released in 1988 from Ray Stevens. I recently came across commentary about the album and some of the songs from it and so I decided to give some spotlight to it again. I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like is based upon a phrase attributed to Will Rogers that went something like: "I never yet met a man I Didn't Like". Given the connection it makes sense for Ray to dress up as Will Rogers on the album's cover. Consisting of ten recordings the material runs the gamut from satellite TV curiosities and Hollywood scandals to hippies and boogie men to the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, and Elvis...and everything else in between. First things first is "Surfin' U.S.S.R." which became a music video. The video features an extended comedic routine at the start with parodies of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Ray supplies the voices for both. There are also parodies of their wives who get in a fight in the background as their husbands talk about U.S. and Soviet relations...leading up to Reagan inquiring about Malibu, California and why there happens to be a Soviet sub there. Cue the main song as the two start dancing. The audio recording doesn't feature the Reagan and Gorbachev parody, though, it's only available on the music video. "Blood and Suede" is the story song about a Hollywood car crash between a drunk driver and a singer. The singer was listening to his own album real loud while the drunk driver, in a Mercedes, plowed into the Porsche. The song carries satirical undertones about the fast living and fast cars image of Los Angeles and it's surrounding area, cut throat lawyers that exist everywhere but are glamorized in Hollywood movies, and the egotism that exists amongst celebrities in general (the singer, afterall, was listening to own Greatest Hits album prior to the crash). For those who have this album, as I do, take a more closer listen to the song. When I originally heard it for the first time in the early '90s I didn't soak in everything that the song addresses. At that time I was mostly fascinated with it's melody and Ray's hushed small town hamlet storytelling narration. On this particular album Ray performs songs in various vocalizations. There's the Beach Boys style in "Surfin' U.S.S.R.", a talking blues style on "The Booger Man", a broad exaggeration on Bob Dylan in "Old Hippie Class Reunion", Michael Jackson enunciation parodies in "Bad", and of course in "Blood and Suede" we have the hushed storyteller delivery. There are songs in Ray's natural voice, too: "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", "I Don't Need None of That", "Ethelene the Truckstop Queen", "Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex", and "The Day I Tried To Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive". The song about Charlene MacKenzie was released as a single and it charted on the Country Top 100...but it peaked in the low-80s on the charts. "Surfin' U.S.S.R." didn't reach the country charts but it was issued as a commercial single and music video. The album reached the Top-60 on the country charts in the fall of 1988 and remained a best-selling country album for more than 15 weeks.

One of the great recordings of Ray's career is his take on "Indian Love Call". Aside from the obvious vocalization there is the standout arrangement of the song which is unlike any version. Whereas usually the song is performed as a mid-tempo love ballad with the love calls being a trademark, in Ray's version we get the love calls but we also get the R&B flavored, doo-wop harmony in the background. As many Ray fans know he often over-dubbed his own voice on his earliest recordings and the choir of doo-wop vocalizations heard in the background are his own voice. When he performed the song on television around the time it was a single he'd use a click track which integrated his over-dubbed background into the live recording. Ray's only performance of the song on television, that I'm aware of, is a 1975 appearance on the Pop! Goes the Country program. I'm aware of this because I own a DVD which features the 1975 episode in it's entirety. Ray, with a full beard by the way, sings "Misty", "Indian Love Call", "Twilight Time", and does a duet with the other guest, Sammi Smith, on "Everything Is Beautiful" as the show's credits roll. I'd written about the Pop! Goes the Country DVD collections many blogs ago. You can look up the information about them by searching their web-site, Country Music DVD. The 1975 episode with Ray Stevens is on DVD Volume 4. There are a couple more DVD's featuring episodes with Ray, too. On each DVD there's multiple episodes featuring all sorts of country music celebrities as guests but for the purposes of this blog I only highlight the DVD releases with a Ray Stevens episode. "Indian Love Call" reached the country Top-40 for Ray in 1975 and was one of his last single releases for Barnaby Records prior to his switch to Warner Brothers in 1976. His ballad rendering of "Young Love" reached the country Top-50 in early 1976 while the wonderful "Mockingbird Hill" didn't reach the charts.

Ray Stevens and the Silver Bracelet...

2012-01-28T12:39:00.000-05:00

The one and only Ray Stevens made his way into a recording studio 55 years ago...at the age of 18...to record a series of songs. One of those songs, "Silver Bracelet", was released as a single on the Prep label, a subsidiary of Capitol Records. The year was 1957! Ray recorded for Prep in 1957, Capitol in 1958, and from 1959 through 1961 he was with the NRC label. He released quite a few teen pop ballads and uptempo rocker songs during the late '50s and he performed on quite a few sessions along the way. His session work greatly expanded in the '60s as he moved onto Mercury Records and then Monument Records. The time period being 1961 through early 1970. The session work continued in the '70s but not as consistently as it had been primarily because from 1969 onward Ray became a superstar with music that hit with all music brands: pop, country, adult-contemporary, gospel, plus he was testing the waters with an international market during this same time period. His singles were popping up in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia...with several singles making the Top-20 and Top-10 on foreign music charts. The extra time for session work predictably had vanished as Ray's fame grew and he became more and more in-demand for concerts and TV appearances.

However, no matter how big Ray Stevens eventually became once he joined Mercury Records in 1961, there's still the musician/producer/arranger/writer side of him that nobody should ever forget....for he still produces, arranges, and plays piano and, or, keyboards and synthesizers on his CD's to this very day. Ray Stevens is a true Renaissance Man whose career extends well beyond the handful of novelty songs that a general public is most familiar with.

These series of anniversary blogs that I've been writing since the first of January are leading up to the much anticipated release of Ray's 9-CD Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. The release, originally set for January 2012, will now be released in February. I'm really excited to hear Ray's take on a lot of the novelty songs by other artists through the years...and I'm also excited to get the book that'll spotlight all the songs and feature history and other information. According to a radio interview in 2011 the songs will go in alphabetical order starting with songs that begin with the letter "A" and not stop until the end of the alphabet. It's going to be a fascinating collection!

It's Saturday morning...well...Saturday afternoon. As I've discussed elsewhere, white promo singles used to be commonplace amongst radio stations. As the decades went by the singles found their way into the public domain. As you can see on the label, the actual song was produced by Shelby Singleton with orchestra conduction by Jerry Kennedy. The Merry Melody Singers are given credit on the single as well. Several blogs ago I saluted the single turning 50 this year...a Golden Anniversary...and I also praised the song's importance in Ray's career. There have been several versions of the song issued through the years...which is highly understandable considering that record labels own the recordings that artists make and if a label doesn't keep a recording in print then the artist has no choice put to re-record the song(s) in an effort to keep the song(s) in print and available. 1962 was the original year for "Ahab the Arab" while a couple of years later an impromptu version performed on a program hosted by Ralph Emery made an appearance on an obscure vinyl album released by Mercury Records. Ralph is heard at the beginning and the end of the song. In between you have the song itself with some alternate lyrics heard only in that performance. I don't know if this performance is an audio cut from one of Ralph's mid '60s television programs or if it's taken from any number of package shows that used to be commonplace in country music during the '50s through the early '70s where a lot of country artists would travel together, along with an emcee (typically a radio or TV personality) and they'd perform shows. George Strait in more modern times did something like that with his Festival concerts in the late '90s. Anyway...this version with Ralph Emery's announcing can be found on The Best of Ray Stevens. In 1969 the more familiar recording of "Ahab the Arab" was included on the Gitarzan album. I say more familiar because it's that recording which appears on countless compilation albums and it's been the recording that was kept in print the longest during the '70s, '80s, and '90s. A fourth recording arrived in 1995 when the music video came along for his Get Serious! movie. In my Ahab tribute blog I covered a lot of this same information but I thought to bring it back again considering it was several blogs ago.

Ray Stevens In a Concert Near You...

2012-01-27T08:07:00.000-05:00

Good Friday morning all you fans of Ray Stevens!! It looks as if the second half of 2012 will be concert heavy as news broke the other day that Ray will appear as far west as New Mexico later this year. He has three Florida dates in late February that I wrote about a couple of blogs ago. To recap those concerts it's February 21st through 23rd. On the 21st he'll appear at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. On the 22nd he'll be at the Lakeland Center in Lakeland, Florida and then on the 23rd he'll be at the King Center in Melbourne, Florida. In my earlier blog I provided URL links to each venue.

There are no concert appearances scheduled, at the moment, for the months of March through August. Perhaps a concert or two or three will pop up as time goes by...but starting in September Ray Stevens will perform a total of 12 concerts during the months of September and October. On September 21st he'll do two shows at the Blue Gate Theater in Shipshewana, Indiana. On September 29th he'll appear at the New Barn venue in Renfro Valley, Kentucky. He's appeared there several times during the last several years so for those familiar with the locale it'll be in the same place as before. On October 13th he'll appear at The Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino in Mescalero, New Mexico. On October 15th Ray will become a regular performer, for 6 shows, at the Andy Williams Theater in Branson, Missouri. Then, on October 26th, he'll perform 2 concerts at the Country Tonite Theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Several days ago Ray celebrated his 73rd birthday. I had written a birthday blog in 2010 and 2011 but I didn't do one this year (as you can see) due mostly because of slow computer connection stemming from a series of weather events that passed through here. On Ray's Facebook page you can read the birthday wishes and belated birthday comments. The official page is called Ray Stevens Music so when you visit the site type in 'Ray Stevens Music' and you'll be there. You can also read more information about the tour dates here. When you're at Ray's web-page you'll be able to click on the info links and visit the various venue web-sites.

Ray Stevens...Classics at 20...

2012-01-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

Comedy Video Classics became a gigantic success in the career of Ray Stevens in 1992. In actuality, though, the home video would remain a success through 1994 as it not only sold millions of copies by way of direct marketing but it would also sells hundreds of thousands of copies in retail stores throughout 1993-1994 during it's initial wave of availability. The home video's commercial aired numerous times, at various times of the day, and even during the overnight hours. Longer commercials for the home video would often air in the overnight and early morning hours while quicker commercials aired in the afternoon and prime-time. The commercials weren't limited to just The Nashville Network or country music friendly channels...Comedy Video Classics commercials aired on quite a few cable channels of the time period. The music videos featured on the collection were: "Help Me Make It Through the Night", "It's Me Again, Margaret", "Santa Claus Is Watching You", "Surfin' U.S.S.R.", "Sittin' Up With the Dead", "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", "The Streak", and "Everything Is Beautiful". When the collection became available for retail sale in 1993 it became eligible to appear on the weekly sales charts. This is important mostly for publicity purposes. As radio and TV insiders view the weekly charts they often get a feel for the artist's who are selling or who are getting airplay. When Ray's home video was able to become recognized in the pages of Billboard magazine it created even more hype. The home video would reach the #1 position on the Video chart and remain firmly placed among the Top-10 in home video sales for nearly a year! It's early sales totaled up to more than 2,000,000 copies (direct market and retail sales combined). The home video format became Ray's launching pad into home video mogul stratosphere as two follow-up releases, Ray Stevens Live! in 1993 and Get Serious! in 1995, both obtained respectable chart placings during their respective years of availability in retail stores. Neither collection would top Comedy Video Classics in sales statistics or awards...but yet this isn't anything new when discussing any field of entertainment. Very, very rarely does the follow-up out perform the predecessor...especially when we're talking about sales data...but by and large the follow-up releases sold hundreds of thousands of copies in retail stores and were initially sales hits with direct marketing, too. The 1995 home video hit retail stores in January 1997 and it quickly amassed more than 300,000 in sales earning Triple-Platinum recognition. Comedy Video Classics was the #1 Home Video of 1992 and subsequently was named Billboard's Top Video of the Year. The home video was later released in DVD format but it wasn't sold on TV or in retail stores. The availability was limited to on-line stores such as Amazon and his own store at his web-site.

Ray Stevens...the Radio gets a Ruby...

2012-01-22T04:57:00.001-05:00

This is one of three projects that came along in 2005 from Collectable's Records. The company released 6 of Ray's studio albums for Barnaby Records in CD format...pairing 2 albums per CD for a total of 3 projects. An early complaint was the fact that they passed by his 1973 album, Losin' Streak, and other complaints came from the more purist of fans who were annoyed that the CD re-issues didn't stick with the exact track listing of the vinyl counterpart. In some instances, radio edits of songs were used instead of the full-length album versions. I didn't do much complaining because of the joy I got of finally seeing his Barnaby recordings in print again and for a lot of the songs it was there first time in CD format. At that point in time you had to have been part of the fan base that had bought the original vinyl albums in order to have been familiar with the complete Ray Stevens. I bought a lot of Ray's vinyl albums from on-line stores and so I was familiar with the songs before they were issued on CD but I realized there were plenty of people only familiar with Ray's singles and not his albums. Too many times consumers are only aware of what's commercially available (from radio airplay or video airplay on television) or what's being pushed by a record label or business organization. They don't seek out music on their own. When you purchase a full album by an artist you get to hear all of that artist...in other words you're not just being exposed to the catchy recordings designed for mass appeal (which are great to hear, too, but you know what I mean!).

Speaking of the radio edit, hardcore fans of Ray Stevens will more than likely know about the two takes of "All My Trials". There is the full-length album version and there is also the radio edit which cuts out a lot of the great instrumentation toward the closing of the song. The full version can be heard on the 1996 release, Great Gospel Songs, which Curb Records issued. It was a re-release of Turn Your Radio On with additional songs, "Everything Is Beautiful" and "A Brighter Day", included. The full-length "All My Trials" lasts 4 minutes, 33 seconds while the radio edit clocks in at a little over 3 minutes. There's like a minute or so of instrumentation taken out in the radio edit...for those familiar with the full-length version you'll certainly notice the difference. This 2 album on 1 CD release from 2005 features the radio edit copy of "All My Trials" as track 1. On the 1972 album it's track 7. In the meantime, the Turn Your Radio On album is a Ruby this year...the 40th anniversary of it's release. Now, of course, the terms Silver, Ruby, Gold, etc. etc. are way more associated with other events but I apply them to song and album anniversaries regardless.

Turn Your Radio On originally was released in 1972. In fact, the album reached the Country Album chart in February 1972 for a nearly 20 week stay...peaking in the Top-20. The album, as you can see, displays a smiling picture of Ray. The flashes of bright light on the LP I assume were added in to give the image a more heavenly glow but that's just my opinion. The album features 11 tracks altogether...4 of the songs were released as singles while a fourth recording in the collection is the title track of his 1969 album, Have a Little Talk With Myself. "A Mama and a Papa" hit first in the summer of 1971. The single charted in the Hot 100 based pretty much on the strength of sales. It obtained a bulk of it's airplay on Adult-Contemporary radio stations of the time. It was in the '60s that Adult-Contemporary started to become a viable alternative to radio that programmed youth-driven rock music. The format was titled Middle-of-the-Road and Easy Listening before it was changed to Adult-Contemporary in the late '70s. I refer to this style of music, collectively, as Adult-Contemporary regardless of what it's official chart name specified it as being labeled at the time. "A Mama and a Papa" reached the Top-10 on the Adult-Contemporary chart in the summer of 1971 and it also reached the Top-5 on Canada's version of the Adult-Contemporary chart. A writer by the name of Tom Autry is credited with writing the song.

"All My Trials" is also one of the 4 hits from the album. It's a song that's been recorded, in whole or in medley fashion, by hundreds of artists but NO version is like the Ray Stevens interpretation. The song is performed in the traditional style but the arrangement/choice of instrumentation is vastly different from what one might expect. Beyond the arrangement aspect is the amazing production work that went in to putting the song together. Ray overdubbed his own voice multiple times, in various harmonies, to create the massive choir effect. This same technique can be heard on most of the other recordings on this album, too, with a runner-up being "Glory Special" in it's extensive use of vocal overdubbing. "All My Trials", predictably, didn't gain a lot of support from pop radio stations, either, as gospel music has rarely gained acceptance amongst mainstream music buyers. Like it's predecessor, "A Mama and a Papa", the "All My Trials" single became a big hit on radio stations aimed at adults. It reached the Top-10 on the Adult-Contemporary chart in the fall of 1971.

The third single release from Turn Your Radio On was the title track. "Turn Your Radio On" is a song written by Albert E. Brumley and was the most widely known hit single from the album. Given that the single and album shared the same name, and the fact that it's the one of the few gospel songs from Ray to appear in countless compilation projects, also has something to do with that. Brumley also wrote "I'll Fly Away", which appears on the album. This is the back of Turn Your Radio On, by the way. "Turn Your Radio On" would go on to become one of his biggest hits in Canada as it reached the Top-5 on their Adult-Contemporary chart and the Top-10 on their Country chart. In America the single hit the Top-20 on the Country chart and the Top-25 on the Adult-Contemporary chart. In the United Kingdom it reached their version of the Top-40. Like the two predecessors, "Turn Your Radio On" didn't reach the pop Top-40 in America. A fourth single was released in the late summer of 1972 but it only had significant impact overseas. "Love Lifted Me", a rock/gospel interpretation of the gospel standard, reached the Top-10 in Bangkok which must have been a surprise!? The single didn't reach the charts in America, Canada, or England.

This reissue came along in 1982 on the CBS label. The picture of Ray has long been a favorite of mine. There's just something about that particular grin...no two grins are exactly the same and the one that comes the closest to this one is the grin that appears on the RCA Greatest Hits album of 1983. Oh yes, for those new to this blog, I'll discuss practically anything associated with Ray from his grin, facial expressions, and beard to his choice of stage clothing, his younger clean-shaven appearance, and how his performance styles have changed through the years. Now, obviously, with this being a gospel project the label could've picked a different image of Ray to use but they decided to go with the whimsical, grinning Ray which is what the general public is most familiar with.

Ray Stevens: Don't Laugh...at 30...

2012-01-20T20:50:00.001-05:00

This is going to be fun...well, all of the blogs I write are fun for me but particularly this entry where we shine a spotlight on 1982 and the Ray Stevens album out that year, Don't Laugh Now. 30 years ago Don't Laugh Now hit the record stores loaded with all sorts of wonderful songs from Ray Stevens...one in particular being "Where the Sun Don't Shine". In fact, that song and "Written Down In My Heart" were the only two singles lifted from the album. Even though the album is titled Don't Laugh Now, "Where the Sun Don't Shine" brings a chuckle as well as a smile to anyone's face when they hear it. The song is arranged in an old-fashioned gospel production which masks the whimsical lyrics. It's a sing-a-long in the truest sense. I don't know the specifics of why the album was titled what it was but I assume it was given that title given Ray's reputation for comical songs. One of the bizarre scenarios in all of music is how a lot of people singled out a few comical recordings from Ray Stevens and immediately declared him a novelty artist. At least that was what happened throughout Ray's career up until 1984 when he decided to just go comedy all the time with his recordings. Prior to 1984 Ray had only released a handful of novelty songs and only 3 albums devoted entirely to comedy songs: 1969's Gitarzan, 1974's Boogity-Boogity, and 1980's Shriner's Convention. It's mind boggling once you realize that between the years of 1968 and 1981 Ray Stevens released just 3 albums of comedy songs...meaning that his non-comedy output was much more dominant...and yet his reputation as a novelty artist remained strong throughout decades of where he issued non-comedy recordings. Since 1984 he's released a variety of comedy albums and became highly visible on the late, great Nashville Network (1983-1998) with his country comedy offerings.

"Written Down In My Heart" was issued as a standard vinyl single in 1982...plus it was released in a special gold colored edition that you see here. This same feature was also given to "Where The Sun Don't Shine" when it was issued as a single, too. The single is a love ballad and it reached the Country Top-40 in 1982. This would also be his next to last Top-40 Country hit. (He would later reach the Country Top-40 for the final time in early 1985 with a comedy song). Although Ray's singles would not reach the Country Top-40 after 1985 it didn't mean that his singles weren't popular with record buyers. Country radio had seemingly developed an intolerance toward comedy/novelty offerings and if radio stations played a comedy song it would either be during the overnight hours or early in the mornings where a lot of listeners wouldn't hear it. Ray's albums during his switch to all-comedy sold hundreds of thousands of copies...an impressive achievement considering the lack of genuine support from radio. As far as television appearances go, Ray performed "Written Down In My Heart" on an episode of Hee-Haw in 1982. He performed "Where the Sun Don't Shine" on an episode of That Nashville Music. "Country Boy, Country Club Girl" was performed during the Music City News Top Hits of the Year telecast in 1983. The show spotlighted the hit songs of the previous year. Ray co-hosted the show and I believe one of the perks of being the co-host allowed him to choose a song from his 1982 album to perform. The other host, Tammy Wynette, sang a song, too. The two of them opened the show singing "We've Got the Music in Music City".

Don't Laugh Now contains 10 songs. The album was dramatically different from the release in 1981 titled One More Last Chance. The 1981 album was heavy with slow-tempo ballads where as Don't Laugh Now has ballads, too, but they're mid-tempo. Side One (tracks 1 through 5) features just 1 slow-tempo ballad amongst the uptempo recordings while Side Two (tracks 6 through 10) features mid-tempo ballads and 1 slow song, "This Old Piano".

1. Such a Night
2. Written Down In My Heart
3. Take That Girl Away
4. Always There
5. Where The Sun Don't Shine***
6. Oh Leo Lady
7. Don't Laugh Now
8. This Old Piano
9. Country Boy, Country Club Girl***
10. Why Don't We Go Somewhere and Make Love***

***- These recordings were featured on the Collector's Series release. The original release arrived in 1985 whereas a re-issue happened in 1987. The 1987 re-issue received a CD counterpart in 1992.

Ray Stevens and Televangelists, A Silver Anniversary...

2012-01-08T04:13:00.001-05:00

The year, 1987, 25 years ago...a Silver Anniversary for a certain single from Ray Stevens. "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" came about in 1987 amidst the various scandals going on in the world of televangelism. One of the song's writers, Chet Atkins, often remarked that the song was written long before televangelists became embroiled in scandals. Obviously, though, the single's release was perfect timing as it's content spoke to a lot of people. The song's writers are Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer and it appears on a variety of Ray Stevens albums. It's home album, as I like to call it, arrived in 1987 and titled Crackin' Up. This particular album from Ray was filled with a lot of nutty comedy...as the title suggests...and "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" leads off the collection. One of the things that's noticeable about the album now, and was probably just as noticeable in 1987, is that "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" comes off as more serious than the other tracks even though it's as comical as everything else on the album. Some of the other tracks on this album include songs with titles such as "The Flies of Texas Are Upon You", "Cool Down Willard", "Sex Symbols", and "Three Legged Man". "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" found it's way onto the 1991 Greatest Hits release from Curb Records in 1991. On the collection it was track 9 while the album's final track was a newly recorded alternate take on "There's a Star Spangled Banner", a song Ray originally recorded with almost entirely different lyrics barely two years earlier in 1989. The original is on Beside Myself. The 1991 version uses the same title, melody, and chorus of the 1989 original but the verses are entirely different. The Curb collection below spotlights almost exclusively on the non-comical recordings with the exception being 1969's "Along Came Jones" and 1987's "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". A rare inclusion on this collection is his 1975 take on "Indian Love Call", a hit single from Ray that didn't get quite the attention it should've gotten in the ensuing years.

Get The Best of Ray Stevens was the third hits album released on Ray in 1987. The first, of course, was Greatest Hits and the sequel, Greatest Hits, Volume Two, shown below. This Get The Best of Ray Stevens was sold on television and it contains 2 vinyl albums worth of material. The commercial for the collection ran a little more than a minute and I saw it a few times but wish I could see the commercial again. Amazingly, though, in this era of You Tube it hasn't resurfaced. "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" isn't featured on this collection due to the fact that this album was issued earlier in 1987 prior to the single's release. Nevertheless this 20 song collection is a wonderful stroll through musical lane. The collection features his bluesy, slow tempo version of "Furthermore" from 1984 instead of the uptempo version he did in 1962.

Greatest Hits, Volume Two pulled 8 songs from Get The Best of Ray Stevens and added then current single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", as track 1 and a newly recorded song, "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", as track 5. For the longest time this was one of the only collections in print that featured his 1979 hit "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" as all of his Warner Brothers recordings (with the exception of "In The Mood") had long been out of circulation by 1987. "In The Mood", recorded as a band of chickens and released as the Henhouse Five Plus Too in 1976, is on this Volume Two release. In fact, that recording and "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" are the only recordings Ray did for Warner Brothers that appear on compilation albums in spite of the fact that he had quite a few more hit singles with the label than just two recordings. As I've often said, if you don't own the original vinyl albums that Ray released on Warner Brothers in the late '70s as I do and if you still haven't purchased the digital downloads of a trio of 1995 releases spotlighting his Warner Brothers material then you're going to be out of luck at hearing the material because there's always the possibility that one day the songs will become unavailable all over again. Two of those 1995 releases, currently available as Mp3 digital downloads at Amazon, are: Do You Wanna Dance? and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. A third release from Warner Brothers in 1995, Cornball, for whatever reason has never been released as a digital download.

One of the things that the internet allows is to travel back in time and read vintage news articles. I often do this sort of thing in my never ending research about Ray Stevens, his music, and his career. Here's a Google item, a reprint of a 1987 news article from the Gainesville Sun that appeared in their May 31, 1987 issue. The article was written by Joe Edwards and is one of those syndicated articles that are often printed in multiple newspapers. The article is a write-up of "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" and it includes quoted commentary from Ray about the song, religion, and televangelists. The song can be found on the 1993 collection below which is simply titled, Collection.

This CD was a little bit more ambitious in that it features 14 tracks instead of the standard 10-11 songs per release. The project features "Surfin' U.S.S.R." and "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O.", from 1988 and 1989 respectively. Neither single reached the country charts but over the course of time both songs have become popular recordings in his career due to their exposure on You Tube and in the case of "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O." the exposure it got at his Branson, Missouri theater in the early '90s. "Santa Claus Is Watching You" is featured on this collection, too. This recording, from 1985, became popular by way of music video exposure and the fact that it was featured on his #1 Gold album, I Have Returned. "Surfin' U.S.S.R." became a music video, too, and was seen by the millions of people who purchased Comedy Video Classics in 1992 and 1993. On Ray Stevens Live!, the 1993 home video, it includes a performance of "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O.". The performance explains why the song became such a fan favorite in concert. The last time I saw Ray in concert he performed "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" and it was great! The song was nominated for a Grammy in 1988 and he performed it on several non-country music oriented television shows in addition to the obvious country programs on The Nashville Network and the syndicated Hee-Haw series. The song also managed to get mentioned on Paul Harvey's radio program and in his columns during the televangelist scandals of the late '80s.

Ray Stevens and Ahab, a Golden Anniversary...

2012-01-01T08:06:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!! As we begin 2012 we take a look at a certain song from Ray Stevens that celebrates a Golden Anniversary this year. There were a lot of changes happening for Ray as 1962 got underway. First of all Ray moved to Nashville, Tennessee in January 1962...the same month he turned 23. In one of his first recording sessions of 1962 he recorded a song that would become his breakthrough hit, "Ahab the Arab". The song tells the story of an Arab named Ahab who's in love with a woman that happens to be part of a Sultan's harem. It's a comical love story with an Arabian back-drop. The single, in it's original form, ran well over 3 minutes...an unusually long running time for a pop music single. Mercury edited down the performance for the single release where it clocked in at 2 minutes, 47 seconds. The full length version, which includes a verse telling about the Sultan catching Ahab and the woman in the middle of an embrace, clocks in at roughly 3 minutes, 45 seconds. In interviews Ray often recalls how, at first, he wasn't happy with Mercury wanting to edit his song but everything worked out okay because the single hit the radio in the early summer of 1962 and in it's shortened form it became an immediate hit. The single would go on to sell more than 1,000,000 copies and earn a Gold certification from the RIAA. In those days there wasn't such a thing as a Platinum certification. Anything that reached a million copies in sales was certified Gold no matter how many millions a single would eventually sell. Today there's Platinum, Double-Platinum, Triple-Platinum, etc. etc. The Diamond certification is for CD's that sell more than 10,000,000 copies. The image below is an EP containing just four songs: "Saturday Night at the Movies", "Furthermore", "Julius Played the Trumpet", and "Popeye and Olive Oil". It was released during the time "Ahab the Arab" was becoming a household name. The EP was issued to radio stations only. I assume this was done because it spotlighted several songs that the label felt could potentially become hits and wanted radio stations to hear the songs ahead of time. "Furthermore", by the way, was released after "Ahab the Arab" but it didn't become the kind of hit that Ahab had become.

This is a compilation album featuring nine songs lifted from Ray's debut album for Mercury, 1,837 Seconds of Humor. The two songs from Ray's debut album that weren't featured on this collection were "Furthermore" and "The Rockin' Boppin' Waltz". The album was released by Pickwick Records and as you can tell from the album cover it's an illustration making reference to "Ahab the Arab" complete with the candy bars in the hand and the drawing of Ahab's love interest. Ahab is track six on this collection. I have this album in my collection...I found it on an on-line auction site quite a few years ago. It plays great, too. I wanted the album because of it's obscurity. I also wanted the album because I didn't have any of Ray's songs from his debut album on vinyl and so that was the main driving force behind my decision to purchase it. I still don't have a vinyl copy of 1,837 Seconds of Humor! I have it on CD, though. It was released on a CD with his second album, This Is Ray Stevens, by an Independent record company several years ago. (I have This Is Ray Stevens on vinyl by the way!)

MCA Records released this famous collection in 1987. I call it a famous collection because it became a Gold record a couple years after it's release but it didn't stop there. In the early '90s the collection was certified Platinum for over a million copies sold. The album features 10 recordings and it comes with liner notes by Ronnie Pugh. The album cover is a reference to Bonnie and Clyde, of course, and the slang term "hits" often used in gangster movies. This particular collection features "Ahab the Arab", the Monument recording from 1969, as track number eight. I was 10 years old when this Greatest Hits album was released and my grandfather bought the cassette version. In the liner notes it refers to "Ahab the Arab" being from 1962 (technically correct) but the recording on this collection comes from 1969 but there's no mention of this in the liner notes. The 1969 re-recording is funny, too, and it's this version that the public at large are more familiar with considering how many times it appeared on compilation albums throughout the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I didn't get to hear the 1962 recording of the song until the early '90s when I came across a low-budget release called Funny Man that Polygram Records released. When I played the tape and heard the start of "Ahab the Arab" with it's distinct intro I first thought the label made a mistake...this wasn't the version I grew up listening to...but low and behold I unknowingly was hearing the original recording for the very first time...the complete recording...all 3 minutes and 45 seconds of it!

Released in 1990 on the Curb label, His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits features 10 of Ray's biggest and best-known comedy songs. "Ahab the Arab", as you can see, is track number seven. As explained above a lot of the compilation albums released on Ray during the '70s and '80s featured the 1969 recording of "Ahab the Arab". The recording comes from Ray's 1969 comedy album, Gitarzan. This 1990 collection is no different considering how accessible his Monument Records material had become. Barnaby Records, the label Ray recorded for during the first half of the 1970's (1970-1975), obtained the rights to most of Ray's Monument recordings and often included them on compilation albums of the era. The original recording of "Ahab the Arab", as explained above, was on Mercury Records and usually the only time the original recording of the song appears on a CD is if the distributor is affiliated in some shape, fashion, or form with Mercury Records. This particular collection was certified Gold by the RIAA for selling 500,000 copies. Unfortunately it didn't come with any liner notes but that's okay...I assume Curb Records wasn't exactly expecting the CD to sell half a million copies considering that the CD was released around the same time as Ray's first studio album for the label, Lend Me Your Ears.

"Ahab the Arab" as mentioned above was the breakthrough hit for Ray Stevens. It reached the Top-5 on the Hot 100 and the Top-10 on the R&B chart in the summer of 1962. The single sold more than a million copies and the characters from the song lent their name to several business ventures for Ray. First off Ray's publishing company was for a long time called Ahab Music Company. This name remained until 1977 when it was changed to Ray Stevens Music...and it's remained the name of his music publishing company ever since. An illustration of Ahab's camel, Clyde, and an illustration of a palm tree, became Ray's logo. In the '70s and '80s Ray often wore a ring with the camel logo on it. You can look up images on-line of Ray from this period to see what I'm referring to. In the 1990's Ray's label, Clyde Records, became the home of his music video releases. The label was launched in 1988 but it didn't see much of an impact until 1992 when Ray released Comedy Video Classics. In one recording session in 1962 Ray recorded "Ahab the Arab" for himself and played on the recordings of LeRoy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and Joe Dowell's "Wooden Heart". All three singles sold millions of copies.

In closing here is the music video that Ray made for the song in 1995. It contains the obscure portion of the song that was edited out of the original single release. A lot of his fans were only aware of the shortened version of the song since it's the version that appears on almost all of the many compilation albums that have been issued and it's the shortened version that Ray often performs in concert. The music video was made for Ray's movie, Get Serious!, that was released Direct-to-Home Video in 1995. The music video closed out the movie.

On Ahab's 50th Anniversary enjoy the 1995 music video...

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 16...

2011-12-30T07:40:00.000-05:00

The Ray Stevens music video, "Obama Budget Plan", now sits with 1,018,737 on-line views. This is a pick-up of 18,407 views since my last blog entry on Christmas Day. The current totals for "Mr. President - Mr. President" is 419,864. The two music videos, as you can see, have a combined total of nearly 1.5 million views. Ray, like a lot of others in the music industry, typically take the last 2 weeks in the year off and rest up for the following year. 2012 as we all know is an election year...but at some point next month Ray is to release his novelty song tribute collection. Ray will also celebrate a birthday next month, too.

The Ray Stevens fans in and around the state of Florida will get their chance to see him in concert in February. He'll appear in three different locations in Florida during the month of February 2012. On the 21st he'll be at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. On February 22nd he'll be at The Lakeland Center in Lakeland, Florida. On February 23rd he'll appear at the King Center in Melbourne, Florida. As of now those are the only concert dates for 2012 but I suspect the appearances for 2012 will increase dramatically as the year goes by. These Florida dates were announced earlier this year.

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus, Part 6...

2011-12-25T03:21:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!! In my final installment of The 12 Rays of Christmas we have the final four images. Up first is the picture sleeve that accompanied the original version of "Santa Claus Is Watching You". As I remarked in previous blog entries the 1962 original plays out like a children's novelty song...but it did reach the pop charts that year...landing in the Top-50. In the original we hear shades of what the song would later become but the storyline was definitely aimed at children. At first, the song never appeared on any of Ray's albums and was a single-only release for many years. It would eventually be placed on an album in 1970 when Mercury released The Best of Ray Stevens, a look back on some of Ray's recordings for Mercury Records in the early '60s. Later on as Mercury and their affiliate labels began to re-issue a lot of Ray's earliest recordings it would become something of a tradition to see "Santa Claus Is Watching You" appear on any number of Mercury and, or, Polygram compilations. I once got a Christmas card from Ray's fan club back when it was operational and it had a picture of Ray on it (of course) and when you opened it up it had a list of all the reindeer that appear in the 1985 re-recording of the song.

This was one of the many picture sleeves that accompanied Ray's novelty song, "Bridget the Midget", in 1971. A lot of the various picture sleeves accompanied the international release and most of them used a photo of Ray taken, I assume, from the same photo session because most of the pictures show Ray with a cabin or some sort of rural building in the background. In this image, although it doesn't show up well, there's a tree that Ray's standing in front of. I've got another picture sleeve of this single in my image collection that shows Ray sitting in front of a cabin-like building in the same clothing...making me assume the photo you see here and the other one were taken at the same time. The single was a Top-50 pop hit here in America early in 1971 but overseas it became something of a monster hit...although it was, as most novelty songs eventually become, polarizing. The single had it's greatest success in the United Kingdom where it reached the Top-5 on the music charts over there. It reached the Top-20 in other countries, too. The single wasn't part of any album when it was released...it would later be placed on a re-issued Greatest Hits collection in the mid '70s. It's anyone's guess why most of the picture sleeves that accompanied the single used the same kind of backdrop but the same couldn't be said for the image below...

This picture sleeve features Ray as he appeared in 1970...I assume the picture was lifted from one of his performances on his own summer show or any number of appearances on Andy Williams' program. In this release, as you can see, there's pen and ink drawings of Bridget and her backup group. Note how the group is dressed which is a visual reference to the hippie culture of the day. The song itself is all about a go-go dancer which immediately dates the song to the late '60s/early '70s era...but material that's dated doesn't necessarily mean that it's no longer entertaining or interesting especially when Ray puts a lot of creative energy into his recordings. Aside from Bridget and her group, there's also vocal appearances by the emcee and a demented fan who attempts to come up on the stage. Based upon the fan's demeanor and seemingly limited I.Q. it's a possibility that the fan's under the influence of something although that aspect is never explored. The first time I heard the song was on a CD from 1990 called His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits. The CD came into my possession at some point in the mid '90s and the song's been a favorite of mine ever since.

Ray joined Curb Records in 1990 and his first studio album for the label was Lend Me Your Ears. Obviously the title has a double-meaning. First off is the obvious...the tie-in with the Julius Caesar play and the often quoted "lend me your ears..." phrase. Secondly the CD's title can also be seen as a request to music buyers in 1990 to give this album a listen. I remember when this particular collection was released...Ray appeared on various programs on The Nashville Network promoting it and the release of two music videos: "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night". These were his third and fourth music videos...already having filmed "Surfin' U.S.S.R." in 1988 and "Santa Claus Is Watching You" in 1985. His take on "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was along the lines of Spike Jones and it's a music video that's one of his more wildest in terms of sight gags and quick edits. The 1990 collection also features "Barbeque", "This Ain't Exactly What I Had In Mind", "Cletus McHicks and His Band from the Sticks", and others.

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus, Part 5...

2011-12-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas Eve...

A glance at You Tube this morning shows that the "Obama Budget Plan" video has obtained a million on-line views!! The total number of views, so far, is 1,000,330. This accomplishment allows Ray Stevens to add another million video to his list:

1. Come to the U.S.A: 5,730,861

2. We The People: 4,615,758

3. Mississippi Squirrel Revival: 1,672,281

4. The Streak: 1,493,209

5. Osama Yo' Mama: 1,219,562

6. Obama Budget Plan: 1,000,330

Continuing with The 12 Rays of Christmas we have 5 additional images. In my previous blog entry I posted 3 images. There will be 4 more images I'll be posting in my next blog entry on Christmas Day.

One of the confusing things for a lot of Ray Stevens music buyers is the various compilation releases that have been put on the market. Ray has no control over the release of compilation albums...the recordings are technically owned by whichever label Ray recorded them for. Potential confusion almost always arises when referring to the Collector's Series because of the two separate releases with the same title but slightly different track list and album art. This particular release, from 1987, contains 8 tracks that Ray recorded during his RCA years (1980-1982). The confusion arises due to the fact that two years earlier, in 1985, RCA released a compilation also titled Collector's Series. The original release contains the 1981 hit "One More Last Chance" but in the 1987 re-issue that song is replaced with the 1980 novelty song, "Put It In Your Ear".

The 1987 compilation features the following songs:

1. Shriner's Convention; 1980
2. You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me; 1980
3. Country Boy, Country Club Girl; 1982
4. Where The Sun Don't Shine; 1982
5. The Dooright Family; 1980
6. Let's Do It Right This Time; 1981
7. Why Don't We Go Somewhere and Make Love; 1982
8. Put It In Your Ear; 1980

What can I say about Hum It that I hadn't said already? This album cover is another favorite of mine...showing Ray as Whistler's Mother. The collection comes from 1997 and it features 10 songs...two of the songs would become music videos: "Virgil and the Moonshot" and "Too Drunk To Fish". This is the first and only album cover from Ray that features him dressed as a woman. Whistler's "son", Ray as a referee, is seen in the picture, too. When this CD was released a lot of people thought Ray was dressed up as Norman Bates' mother until he explained the concept of the painting, known as Whistler's Mother, and the comical idea of the mother "tired" of whistling and how she prefers humming much better. The album features a duet with J.D. Sumner on "Mama Sang Bass", a parody of the Johnny Cash hit "Daddy Sang Bass". Ray and J.D. performed the song together on television during a CD promo appearance. For his part, J.D. wore a wig. This CD features the following:

1. R.V.
2. I'll Be In Atlanta
3. Virgil and the Moonshot
4. She Loves Elvis Better Than Me
5. Sunday Morning
6. Too Drunk To Fish
7. Mama Sang Bass
8. My Neighbor
9. It Ain't Over Till It's Over
10. How Much Does It Cost To Fly To Albuquerque?

One of the most obscure studio albums from Ray Stevens is most certainly, Me. This album, from 1983, is a stand-out amongst the more dedicated fans for it represents one of the last albums where 95% of the material come from the pen of Ray Stevens...and it would be his last studio album filled entirely with non-comical songs for the next 20 plus years. In fact, the next studio album from Ray to feature only non-comical recordings wouldn't arrive until 2004 with the release of Thank You on his own label, Clyde Records. Me features 10 songs...with only one single, "My Dad", reaching the country charts. The single reached the charts in early 1984 but ironically it wasn't written by Ray. A songwriter/comic named Dale Gonyea wrote "My Dad". Those who pay attention to songwriters will recognize Gonyea as the writer of another Ray Stevens hit, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". There were quite a few songs from this album that Ray re-recorded this year for his Bozo's Back Again CD. I happen to think the album cover for Me is neat. On the back of the album there's a shot of a painter's work-table with accessories laying around near an unfinished portrait. I love the album and some of the songs include: "My Dad", "Game Show Love", "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out", "Mary Lou Nights", "Me", "Special Anniversary"...there's also a duet that Ray sings with his daughter, Suzie Ragsdale, "Yolanda".

When I first seen this image nearly 15 years ago while looking through on-line sites it instantly became a favorite of mine. This is the picture sleeve that accompanied "Santa Claus Is Watching You", the 1985 version that Ray recorded for MCA. The song was made into a music video and for much of the '80s and half of the '90s it was an annual staple on various music video television channels. A couple of years ago, or perhaps last Christmas, I posted this image in a smaller size and posted a picture of myself next to it. In my picture I'm wearing a Santa Claus hat and I'm also peeking around a tree. This image appeared in magazines around Christmas time, too. "Santa Claus Is Watching You" is a very funny song in my opinion...but the song's history goes back to the early '60s. Released originally as a children's novelty song in 1962 the original "Santa Claus Is Watching You" sometimes pops up on compilation releases that specialize in the Oldies format. The original is cute and entertaining but the 1985 version, with almost entirely different lyrics and emphasis, is my favorite. This 1985 version was the final song on his comedy album that year, I Have Returned. The b-side of the single is "Armchair Quarterback".

As most readers of this blog are well aware this is one of my favorite albums from Ray and the picture is worthy of inclusion in this pictorial series. One More Last Chance, from 1981, was released during the height of the Urban Cowboy era in country music. Almost everyone in country music, male and female, were wearing cowboy hats or wearing western attire. Some of the artists looked natural in the clothing while others, who shall go nameless, didn't look as natural. Some of the artists that debuted in country music during this trend had enormous hit songs but unfortunately once the trend/fad was over a lot of those artists also vanished. Some acts, like George Strait and Reba McEntire, gained their initial fame during this period but they also were a few of the lucky ones that were able to continue their successes well beyond the Urban Cowboy fad. Ray dressed up in western attire and wore a cowboy hat on and off during this period. On the back of this album cover Ray is shown wearing the cowboy hat and wearing casual clothing. This particular album is ballad heavy...features a lot of steel guitar, too, on several of the songs. One of the most inventive is his take on "Pretend", the old pop hit for Nat King Cole. The title track features a glorious blend of steel guitar and electric guitar. "Night Games", the album's closer, was a hit single for Ray late in 1980. It's a story tailor made for the times: it takes place inside a bar...providing the perfect wrap-up for an album from this period in country music.

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus, Part 4...

2011-12-23T21:31:00.000-05:00

As we draw closer to Christmas it inspires me to do a pictorial event that I call The 12 Rays of Christmas. Simply put it's 12 images of Ray Stevens taken from various points in time...most of the imagery, of course, will be from albums but a couple aren't. This particular image is the flip side of He Thinks He's Ray Stevens. Several of Ray's early albums for MCA featured hilarious pictures on the back and this one's no exception. This particular album reached the Top-10 on the Country Album chart early in 1985 and it would go on to sell more than a million copies. The album was released in the latter half of 1984 but it didn't start to race up the charts until the release of the second single, "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", in early 1985. The squirrel single reached the country Top-20 upon it's release in January 1985. You might call it an unexpected hit because, as mentioned, it wasn't the first release. The album's first song, "I'm Kissin' You Goodbye", was actually the first single late in 1984. Then came "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" and this was followed by "It's Me Again, Margaret".

The picture sleeve that accompanied the song, "Moonlight Special", in hindsight looks out of place given the fact that the image of Ray is rather calm, reflective, and serious...a complete opposite of the song. The single's b-side is "Just So Proud To Be Here". I have no idea if the song's title was inspired by the famed Minnie Pearl catch-phrase but I often assume it is given that Ray was one of Minnie's friends and for a long time a neighbor of his. This image also appeared on an issue of Cashbox magazine that I own plus it appears inside the liner notes of the 1997 Rhino CD, The Very Best of Ray Stevens. "Moonlight Special" is Ray's wild take on The Midnight Special television program complete with a Wolfman Jack parody called Sheep Dog. Three acts are spoofed: Gladys Knight and the Pips, Alice Cooper, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The song is lengthy...and a lot of it's length may have halted it's airplay potential. It's still one of the most hilarious songs he's ever recorded with funny impressions of the three rock acts I mentioned.

As of December 23rd this is the current album from Ray Stevens. Now, of course, he's released another CD called Bozo's Back Again but that is a collection of songs that features re-recorded material. The purpose of that CD was to bring back songs from the 1980's that he recorded that the public at large, for whatever reason, weren't aware of the first time around. A lot of the songs on that collection were love ballads. Spirit of '76, meanwhile, is a collection of songs in a political vein. The picture is a send-up of the portrait...also known as Spirit of '76. This particular CD features the following: "Obama Budget Plan", "God Save Arizona", "Mr. President - Mr. President", and "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore". As we head into January 2012 a lot of focus will be on the upcoming collection of novelty songs that Ray is to release. In recent interviews he's commented that the collection will be released in January...if this continues to be the actual release month and there are no delays I won't expect a lot of attention to be placed on Spirit of '76 until later in the year...but that's just my theory. This concludes the first 3 pictorials in The 12 Rays of Christmas. The rest of the imagery will be forthcoming...meanwhile...

You Tube at a glance...

Mr. President - Mr. President:
12/20: 401,837
12/23: 409,415

Obama Budget Plan:
12/20: 979,959
12/23: 997,322

Nightmare Before Christmas:
12/20: 183,963
12/23: 190,472

Santa Claus Is Watching You:
12/20: 211,430
12/23: 223,472

As you can see, the "Obama Budget Plan" video certainly has the momentum to reach the 1,000,000 plateau. It would be great if the video obtained that level on Christmas Day...but even if it reaches the million level later today or tomorrow it'll still be something to celebrate.

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 30...

2011-12-19T02:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a great treat...Ray Stevens, Boots Randolph, and Chet Atkins perform a familiar instrumental on Nashville Now in 1993. Ralph Emery hosts the show. The upload came along on December 16th but it wasn't showing up in the search results for 'Ray Stevens' until today and therefore I was unaware of the video's existence.

As far as The Nashville Network goes, 1993 was the channel's 10th anniversary. It would also be the 10th and final season of Nashville Now. The show would be replaced with Music City Tonight and feature the same format but with different hosts: Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase. This series ran through 1996 before it, too, was replaced with Prime Time Country. That particular series was first hosted by actor Tom Wopat and later, Gary Chapman. This series would remain on the air until The Nashville Network ended it's affiliation with country music in 1999. In the meantime, back in 1995, Ralph Emery returned to The Nashville Network to host a morning talk-show from Opryland. This series, which started in the mornings, shifted to the early evenings, before it was canceled in 1996.

Crook and Chase, in the meantime, had started a syndicated television program which ran for a couple of years. Upon the cancellation of Ralph's talk-show he would return a third time to host a series of hour long interviews for a show called On The Record. Ralph, by this time, had become the author of a string of successful books about country music and his experiences with the industry and the artists. Ray Stevens made appearances on Music City Tonight, Ralph's daytime and evening shows, and Prime Time Country but didn't appear in the On The Record series. A large reason for this is, probably, due to Ray not having an autobiography available.

I've posted this before but it's worth additional viewings. This clip comes from 1990 during an All-Star Salute to Ralph Emery. The video starts with a performance from Randy Travis and later we have Ray Stevens performing a song he wrote just for the event, "Ralph, You Have Embarrassed Us All". Ray is joined by Roy Clark, Kathy Mattea, and Faron Young.

Ray Stevens: Internet Video Hits, Part 2...

2011-12-18T02:30:00.000-05:00

Uploaded onto You Tube on March 11, 2010 "Caribou Barbie", a video salute to Sarah Palin, is nearing half a million on-line views. The current number of views is 469,247. If you click on the video stats it'll give a break down of several on-line sites that have embedded the video. More than 28,000 people watched the video at Ray's web-site. More than 44,000 people discovered the video from a referral. A referral, for those who don't know, are the small thumbnail images of music videos that pop up on the video screen whenever the music video you're watching comes to an end. At the conclusion of "Throw the Bums Out!" there are video referrals and according to the statistics more than 44,000 people clicked "Caribou Barbie" after watching "Throw the Bums Out!". However, the greatest referral video is "Come to the U.S.A.". Statistics show that more than 60,000 people clicked "Caribou Barbie" when they finished watching "Come to the U.S.A.". "Caribou Barbie" is 30,753 on-line views away from an exact 500,000. An actress/impersonator named Lori Stegner portrays Sarah Palin in the "Caribou Barbie" music video.

The music video is cute and filled with sight gags as you can tell. The video's release, on March 11th 2010, created a stir among those who viewed it on You Tube. 11 days later Ray uploaded another music video, "Throw the Bums Out!", on March 22. Since that particular video/song had a much more timely connection to the mid-term elections that year it overshadowed the "Caribou Barbie" video considerably. "Throw the Bums Out!" currently has 838,695 on-line views...compared to 469,247. I typically compare and contrast these two videos because of their release dates: March 11th and March 22nd 2010.

Those who want to watch 10 of Ray's political music videos on one DVD can purchase Internet Video Hits at his web-store. On the back of the DVD there are small thumbnail images taken from the various music videos. There is also a message from Ray commenting on the DVD's release and why he wanted to offer the music videos on DVD even though they're on You Tube, too.

Ray Stevens and Christmas Comedy...

2011-12-18T01:00:00.000-05:00

Christmas Day is just 1 week away...and coincidentally I came across a particular comment today. The comment centered around "Santa Claus Is Watching You". The comment wasn't very flattering and we'll leave it at that. As usual I'm always baffled why some people get all worked up and annoyed over comedy songs...but that's a discussion for another day. Nevertheless Ray Stevens is primarily known for his comical recordings and anyone who doesn't "get" why Ray would do a Christmas CD of comedy songs just doesn't "get" Ray Stevens...period!

In his career he's recorded just two Christmas CD's and a couple of holiday themed single releases. A lot of fans probably don't know that Ray, in 1960, released an instrumental version of "White Christmas". It was backed with another instrumental called "Happy Blue Year". The single was released on the NRC label. Then, in 1962, Mercury released the original version of "Santa Claus Is Watching You" in which the lyrics were aimed at children. That version is whimsical and cute but as many fans know Ray re-wrote much of the song and re-released it in 1985 while with MCA...along with a music video (his first).

However, it wouldn't be until 1997 that Ray released an actual album of Christmas songs: Christmas Through a Different Window. It would be joined by a companion piece in 2009: Ray Stevens Christmas. The 2009 release features non-comical Christmas songs.

Meanwhile...

You Tube at a glance...

Mr. President - Mr. President:
12/16/11: 389,507
12/18/11: 394,781

Obama Budget Plan:
12/16/11: 966,505
12/18/11: 974,302

Nightmare Before Christmas:
12/16/11: 177,305
12/18/11: 180,214

Santa Claus Is Watching You:
12/16/11: 198,480
12/18/11: 203,343

On the horizon for Ray Stevens is the long-awaited Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. In an interview Ray gave several weeks ago he mentioned that the collection will be released at some point in January 2012.

In late February of 2012 Ray will be in Florida for four concerts.

February 21: Peabody Auditorium (Daytona Beach)

February 22: The Lakeland Center (Lakeland, Florida)**

February 23: The King Center (Melbourne, Florida)

Each venue has their own web-page and all the information can be found there. The Lakeland Center appearance will contain 2 separate concerts. Ray will appear first at 2:30pm and again at 7:30pm. You can visit this link to read about Ray's two concerts at the Lakeland Center.

For information about the King Center appearance visit this link. I'm sure those who are able to attend these concerts will truly enjoy them!

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus, Part 3...

2011-12-16T08:05:00.000-05:00

It's Friday...at long last!! December 16th...yes, 9 more days until Christmas. Those who frequent Ray Stevens web-store already know that items ordered after December 20th will not be shipped out until the first of the year so for those who want to get anything and have it arrive within this calendar year ought to visit the store starting today through December 20th. Here's the store's link.

You Tube at a glance...

Mr. President - Mr. President:
12/13/11: 376,234
12/16/11: 389,507

Obama Budget Plan:
12/13/11: 954,747
12/16/11: 966,505

Nightmare Before Christmas:
12/13/11: 172,224
12/16/11: 177,305

Santa Claus Is Watching You:
12/13/11: 189,234
12/16/11: 198,480

The top two music videos increased more than 10,000 on-line views during the last 3 days. "Santa Claus Is Watching You" obtained little more than 9,000 views during the same time period. "Nightmare Before Christmas" obtained a little more than 5,000 on-line views.

Ray Stevens sings about Atlanta, Georgia...

2011-12-15T07:49:00.001-05:00

It's a stormy, windy, mid 50 degree morning...yes, mid 50's and it's December 15th! We'll only have a couple more days of this abnormal weather before it starts to get cold again.

I heard on the radio this morning that today marks the 72nd anniversary of Gone With the Wind. The radio host said that the movie premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. That, of course, had me thinking of the Ray Stevens song that incorporates character names and terminology from the movie. The song, "I'll Be In Atlanta", was recorded by Ray in 1997 for his Hum It comedy CD. It's one of my favorite songs on the CD and it has a bouncy sing-a-long feel to it. Interested readers of this blog page can click here and be taken to the product page at Amazon where you can purchase an Mp3 of "I'll Be In Atlanta". I saw him sing this song just once on a music program that aired on The Nashville Network. I think the show was Prime Time Country or it may have been Music City Tonight.

It isn't available on You Tube...yet...but in 1995 Ray did a music video for "I Used To Be Crazy". This song originally came along in 1989 on the Beside Myself album but Ray made a music video of it in 1995 for use in his direct-to-video movie, Get Serious! Toward the end of "I Used To Be Crazy" Ray does an impression of Prissy, quoting the line that the character in Gone With the Wind is noted for. I should note that the music video contains a lot of additional one-liners during the song's fade out which aren't included in the 1989 original.

Ray Stevens: Studio Albums

2011-12-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

1. 1,837 Seconds of Humor; 1962 Mercury Records
2. This Is Ray Stevens; 1963 Mercury Records
3. Even Stevens; 1968 Monument Records
4. Gitarzan; 1969 Monument Records
5. Have a Little Talk With Myself; 1969 Monument Records
6. Everything Is Beautiful; 1970 Barnaby Records
7. Unreal; 1970 Barnaby Records
8. Turn Your Radio On; 1972 Barnaby Records
9. Nashville; 1973 Barnaby Records
10. Losin' Streak; 1973 Barnaby Records
11. Boogity-Boogity; 1974 Barnaby Records
12. Misty; 1975 Barnaby Records
13. Just For The Record; 1976 Warner Brothers
14. Feel the Music; 1977 Warner Brothers
15. There Is Something On Your Mind; 1978 Warner Brothers
16. Be Your Own Best Friend; 1978 Warner Brothers
17. The Feeling's Not Right Again; 1979 Warner Brothers**
18. Shriner's Convention; 1980 RCA Records
19. One More Last Chance; 1981 RCA Records
20. Don't Laugh Now; 1982 RCA Records
21. Me; 1983 Mercury Records
22. He Thinks He's Ray Stevens; 1984 MCA Records
23. I Have Returned; 1985 MCA Records
24. Surely You Joust; 1986 MCA Records
25. Crackin' Up; 1987 MCA Records
26. I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like; 1988 MCA Records
27. Beside Myself; 1989 MCA Records
28. Lend Me Your Ears; 1990 Curb/Capitol
29. #1 With a Bullet; 1991 Curb/Capitol
30. Classic Ray Stevens; 1993 Curb Records
31. Hum It; 1997 MCA Records
32. Christmas Through a Different Window; 1997 MCA Records
33. Ear Candy; 2000 Clyde Records
34. Osama Yo' Mama; 2002 Curb Records*
35. Thank You; 2004 Clyde Records
36. New Orleans Moon; 2007 Clyde Records
37. Hurricane; 2008 Clyde Records
38. Ray Stevens Sings Sinatra...Say What???; 2008 Clyde Records
39. One For the Road; 2009 Clyde Records
40. Ray Stevens Christmas; 2009 Clyde Records
41. We The People; 2010 Clyde Records
42. Spirit of '76; 2011 Clyde Records
43. Bozo's Back Again; 2011 Clyde Records***

**- This 1979 album featured just one new song, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow", with the rest of the album previously recorded material from Ray's other Warner Brothers albums. I placed it in the studio album category with the asterisk because it features that one new single, which reached the Adult-Contemporary Top-20.

*- This 2002 album features three newly recorded songs, "Osama Yo' Mama", "United We Stand", and "Freudian Slip" with the rest of the material lifted from his 2000 album, Ear Candy.

***- This 2011 CD features re-recordings of songs that Ray recorded mostly in the early '80s which have long been out of print. Among the highlights is his re-recording of "Just For the Hell Of It" which originally appeared on the Cannonball Run movie starring Burt Reynolds.

In the '90s Ray's main output were music video collections...first on VHS home video and later on DVD. He continued to issue music video collections on DVD later on and currently he releases music videos on You Tube.

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus, Part 2...

2011-12-13T09:31:00.000-05:00

Ray Stevens wrote a new commentary/opinion piece yesterday...he writes about Obama and how fundamentally sound the country actually is and that it isn't necessary for the President to thirst for "fundamental change". It's another great commentary and you can read it for yourselves by clicking the following link.

I'll only be keeping up with three of the following four music videos for several more days. I'll continue to periodically make mention of his current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President, though. As you can tell, two of the videos are Christmas themed and so there's only a week or so before the activity for those videos begins to decline again. The "Obama Budget Plan" is nearing 1,000,000 on-line views...it's anyone's guess when the video will reach a million. It would be great if the video reaches a million on-line views on Christmas Day but considering that Christmas is just 12 days from now it would mean that more than 45,000 views would have to be accumulated in just 12 days time. Anything's possible, though...but whenever the day comes that the video surpasses a million views I'll write about it on here.

You Tube at a glance...

Mr. President - Mr. President:
12/11/2011: 367,462
12/13/2011: 376,234

Santa Claus Is Watching You:
12/11/2011: 183,592
12/13/2011: 189,234

Nightmare Before Christmas:
12/11/2011: 169,789
12/13/2011: 172,224

Obama Budget Plan:
12/11/2011: 935,000+
12/13/2011: 954,747

"Santa Claus Is Watching You" obtained more than 5,000 views in 2 days time. "Mr. President - Mr. President" obtained almost 10,000 views over the last 2 days. The biggest jump in numbers, though, is "Obama Budget Plan" which saw the video's on-line view total jump from a little more than 935,000 views on December 11th to nearly 955,000 views today...an increase of nearly 20,000 in 2 days. If it would happen to have another increase in views of that magnitude 2 days from now the video would then be in the 975,000 range and certainly possible to reach a million views, if not on Christmas, surely by the end of 2011.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 7...

2011-12-11T02:15:00.001-05:00

Ray Stevens is a great entertainer...and I can't wait to hear his upcoming novelty song collection set for release in January!! The collection will feature 9 CD's and an accompanying booklet. I was hoping a pre-order would become available but at the moment no such luck. I have no idea if this collection will be sold only at Ray's web-store or if it'll also become available on Amazon and other places. Whatever the case once it becomes available for purchase I'll send off for it and then it'll probably take me several days to digest everything. 9 CD's is A LOT OF MUSIC!! In the meantime let's look at the statistics of a few of Ray's music videos...

"Mr. President - Mr. President" at a brief glance:

View total on 12/4/2011: 358,402
View total on 12/11/2011: 367,462

"Santa Claus Is Watching You" at a brief glance:

View total on 12/1/2011: 166,250
View total on 12/11/2011: 183,592

"Nightmare Before Christmas" at a brief glance:

View total on 12/1/2011: 158,237
View total on 12/11/2011: 169,789

As you can tell, the current video is approaching 370,000 on-line views. Now, with it being the Christmas season it shouldn't come as no surprise that his two seasonal music videos are performing strongly on-line. "Santa Claus is Watching You" increases by more than 17,000 while "Nightmare Before Christmas" has an increase of more than 11,000 views in a span of 10 days.

The "Obama Budget Plan" video, which some have been nick-naming 'Obama Money', has more than 935,000 on-line views.

A few days ago a new upload appeared on You Tube featuring a sing-a-long performance from The Andy Williams Show. The musical number features Andy, Ray, Dusty Springfield, and the Osmonds. As far as audio goes it's excellent to hear but it's too bad the visuals aren't in the same league. Don't get me wrong, though, it's not too horrific visually but it's obviously not the clip that was broadcast on TV (you can tell that by the time clock that runs on the bottom of the screen).

According to the uploader the episode this performance originated from aired in 1969, the year Ray became a recurring performer on Andy's program...

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 6...

2011-12-04T11:34:00.000-05:00

It's The Best of Ray Stevens...a release from Mercury Records in 1970 spotlighting 11 songs recorded by Ray between the years of 1961 and 1963. The ironic aspect of the collection is most of the songs made up Ray's 1963 album, This Is Ray Stevens. In hindsight Mercury should have re-released the 1962 and 1963 albums in 1970 but that wasn't on the agenda back then. 1970 was a banner year in Ray's career as he hit #1 on the pop chart for the first time...and he hosted a TV show in the summer...and the song that went #1 would end up winning a Grammy in early 1971 in the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance category. Considering all that went on in 1970 for Ray Stevens I assume Mercury was eager to re-introduce earlier songs from Ray right at the time "Ahab the Arab" was the biggest hit of his career. Another irony about this 1970 release is you get a live performance of "Ahab the Arab" complete with an introduction by country DJ Ralph Emery...so you don't actually get the hit recording of the song. I know this sort of thing irks some people but if you're as big a fan of Ray Stevens as I am you already have plenty of copies of the hit recording of "Ahab the Arab" elsewhere that it doesn't matter that an obscure version is featured on this particular collection.

This cassette version, released in 1987, cuts off the top row of illustrations that appear on the vinyl release. What you get with the cassette are 6 illustrations whereas on the vinyl copy the album cover has 4 more illustrations that appear behind the album's title. The same 11 songs on the vinyl album are here on the cassette release, though. I've often remarked on this blog that this particular collection is where I first heard the much younger Ray Stevens. Keep in mind that when this release became a part of my collection I was still unaware of the vast amount of recordings that Ray did...I was only familiar with the handful of cassette tapes that my grandparent's owned and that I'd listen to. I was still uninformed and in the process of discovering a lot about Ray during that time period. There's still a rush of excitement, even now, if I hear a song that Ray either wrote, produced, or arranged for someone else...and this holds true if I come across vintage pictures of him or find video of him that I've never seen before. The excitement's still there. I'd like to know who came up with the idea that you can't be a fan/supporter of a singer for years/decades. I'd like to know so I can tell him or her that they're wrong.

1. Ahab the Arab
2. Funny Man
3. Harry the Hairy Ape
4. It's Been So Long
5. Speed Ball
6. Santa Claus Is Watching You
7. Butch Babarian
8. Loved and Lost
9. The Rock and Roll Show
10. Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills
11. Bubble Gum the Bubble Dancer

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 15...

2011-12-04T06:34:00.000-05:00

It's an early Sunday morning...December 4, 2011...and on a personal note I reached the age of 35 two days ago on December 2nd. It dawned on me a couple of hours ago that when I started this fan-created blog spotlighting the talented Ray Stevens I was 31 going on 32. It's been a fast 3 years...a lot of it breezing by and aided primarily by the activity going on in Ray's career. When I started this blog in 2008 Ray didn't have a You Tube page...he wasn't making music videos for on-line viewing...and he wasn't affiliated with any political movement. Today, of course, Ray has a highly viewed You Tube page, releases music videos on You Tube every 4 or 5 months, and is affiliated with the conservative political group collectively known as the Tea Party. I'm thrilled with all of the awareness his music videos have been getting and love all the exposure he's been getting by appearing on politically oriented TV and radio programs.

The latest music video from Ray, Mr. President - Mr. President, is approaching 360,000 on-line views. At the moment it's at 358,402. This is a pick up of more than 8,000 views in less than a week. It should vault past the 360,000 mark in a matter of days...and if it does it'll be another consecutive week of 10,000+ on-line views. Ironically, though, his previous music video continues to garner even higher on-line views. I call it ironic because the video's been available since April 2011 and it's still having strong numbers. The video I refer to is the "Obama Budget Plan" and at the moment it has 920,600 on-line views. When I last checked the numbers for that video it had 905,670. That means an increase of 14,930 on-line views. The economy serves as a backdrop for the music video and without fail there always seems to be bad economic news coming in daily...going hand-in-hand with what the music video shines a comedic spotlight on.

Ray Stevens and Santa Claus...

2011-12-01T09:10:00.001-05:00

One of the classic music videos from Ray Stevens is "Santa Claus Is Watching You". The video, Ray's first, dates back to 1985 and at one time was a staple of The Nashville Network's various music video programs during the holiday season. I remember seeing the video multiple times every year in December for a number of years. The song itself dates back to the early '60s when Ray originally released it as a pop single. It reached the Top-50 at the time. That particular recording, though, was aimed at children. Ray recorded the original for Mercury Records and it appears often in various compilation CD's issued around this time of the year.

The version featured in the music video below, as mentioned, comes from 1985 and it features a completely different music arrangement as well as lyrical emphasis. This time around the story is much more in line with a much more older audience as Ray sings about faithfulness and adultery...warning the woman that she better treat him right and be faithful because Santa's watching. The video contains a bit of irony toward the end as the wife ultimately is shown being unfaithful on the most joyous of all holidays.

As mentioned, the music video appeared annually on The Nashville Network for nearly 10 years. It appears on Ray's ground-breaking 1992 home video, Comedy Video Classics, too. In July 2009 the by then 24 year old music video made it's You Tube debut and since that time it's gotten 166,250 on-line views. It being a holiday video it typically only sees action during this time of the year. If you hadn't seen it by all means click the arrow and watch!

The music video below is of a more recent vintage...it was uploaded onto You Tube in November 2010 and has 158,237 on-line views so far. It's titled "Nightmare Before Christmas" and it's a very funny story about political correctness and all it's silliness. The video was recently featured on Internet Video Hits, a collection of Ray's You Tube music videos released on DVD. That particular release contains 9 of Ray's political You Tube music videos (those released since December 2009) plus the Christmas music video below...

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 42...

2011-11-28T06:00:00.002-05:00

This is the image of Ray that appears on the Have a Little Talk With Myself album. Here it's used as a picture sleeve for an overseas release of "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", one of the singles from the 1969 album. The b-side, "The Minority", comes from Ray's 1968 album, Even Stevens. As most of Ray's fans are aware, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" was the first single to reach the country music charts for Ray. Ray was not being marketed as a country singer at that time but starting with this single and moving forward he'd frequently have songs cross over to the country charts. It wouldn't be until the late '70s that there was ever a concentrated effort to market Ray's music to country audiences. The Have a Little Talk With Myself album features Ray's interpretations of contemporary pop songs with a few all-new songs thrown into the mix. It is on the 1969 album where Ray covers songs made popular by The Beatles, for instance, as well as songs associated with Blood, Sweat, and Tears as well as the Hair stage play. The only songs on the album that weren't cover songs are "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", "The Little Woman", and the title track, "Have a Little Talk With Myself". Johnny Cash recorded "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" a year after Ray and that's why it's technically not a cover song for those who may assume that Johnny recorded the song first. The album has never been re-issued on CD or Mp3 but selections from the album often appeared on many low-budget releases and compilations throughout the '70s and much of the '80s.

Ray, 42 years later, continues to make music and tour. As I write this I assume he and his crew are already in Canada or at least on their way. Ray appears tonight and tomorrow in Niagara Falls up in Ontario, Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center. He's appearing there in the Winter Festival of Lights series. The concert today will be at 2pm and then on Tuesday November 29th the concert will start at 7pm. I'll be on the look out for any reaction from those who attended the show. I don't know if he'll perform Christmas songs or his classic songs considering that the political comedy he's currently doing has what I'd consider a largely American identity and therefore an audience in Canada perhaps may not be able to relate to it or appreciate it...but for those up near that venue here's the information:

Venue: Scotia Bank Convention Center

Where: Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada

First show: November 28, 2011 2pm

Second show: November 29, 2011 7pm

Ray Stevens: Mr. President...

2011-11-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

Today marks an anniversary, of sorts...it was 2 months ago that Ray Stevens uploaded his current music video onto You Tube. "Mr. President - Mr. President" arrived on September 27, 2011 and since that time it's gotten more than 300,000 on-line views. As of now the actual count is 350,191 views. In the video Ray portrays the part of a news reporter stating all kinds of problems going on in America and he asks the President to tell the public how he's going to deal with the nation's problems. The music video, at various moments, inserts an actual video clip of Obama from a news conference where he looks into the camera rather intently like he's listening to a real reporter. The song is so good, so catchy, but it's so short...clocking in at just over 2 minutes...it makes you want more and more. The song is from his political comedy CD, Spirit of '76. His previous music video called "Obama Budget Plan" is steadily climbing...it's now at 905,670 on-line views. It's steadily approaching the 1,000,000 plateau.

Ray Stevens and the Spirit of '76, Part 10...

2011-11-26T08:28:00.000-05:00

Taking a look at Amazon this hour I find that the current Ray Stevens project, Spirit of '76, is ranked on two best seller lists that I have never known existed until today. A third list is the more familiar "Comedy" survey. The CD is ranked in the Top-50 on a list called "Poetry, Spoken Word, and Interviews" and one called "Radio Shows" while it ranks inside the Top-100 on the "Comedy" list. The CD's been available on Amazon since August while the Mp3 counterpart's been available on Amazon since April 1st.

The CD features "God Save Arizona", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and "Mr. President - Mr. President". All of these songs have become hit on-line music videos. The most successful being "Obama Budget Plan" at just over 900,000 views and "God Save Arizona" racking up close to 830,000 on-line views. The current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is nearing 350,000 views.

The conservative comedy videos continue to resonate with people...some, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, despise the videos while those who feel the mainstream media prop up a liberal point of view in their news reports appreciate the videos that Ray Stevens has put together the last two years.

The Spirit of '76 track-list is below. No Tea Party supporter or any conservative Republican should be without this CD, in my opinion:

1. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore {music video available}
2. Mr. President - Mr. President {music video available}
3. God Save Arizona {music video available}
4. Cap'n Trade the Pirate
5. My Uncle Sam
6. November Storm
7. Mi Casa Su Casa
8. Grandpa Voted Democrat
9. Obama Budget Plan {music video available}
10. News Machine
11. New Normal

Spirit of '76 can be found at Amazon or by clicking the link to Ray's web-store.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 5...

2011-11-25T19:01:00.000-05:00

Good evening Ray Stevens fans! We're 1 month away from Christmas...being it's November 25th. Also, of course, we're nearing 2012...an election year...and one of the most popular New Year's wishes is to make 2012 the year Obama's reign of socialism and massive Government dictation comes to an end when he's voted out of office in November 2012. These last 3 years have been the groundwork for the President's long-term visions for the country and if he were to get 4 more years it'll have disastrous and long-lasting impact on generations to come. Who in their right mind would want to light their homes with dim lights, plan your own funeral if a medical procedure in the Government's eyes is seen as too costly, or drive around in cars where you have to charge them up every 10 miles!? This, in my opinion, is the vision of Obama and those he surrounds himself with. I've not even began to bring up the debt that he's racked up the last 3 years.

Meanwhile...on a happier note...

There's been another new You Tube upload of vintage Ray Stevens. The latest is a clip featuring Tom Jones performing a song in which the name is unknown. Tom's performance opens up the clip and then at the two minute fifty-three mark Ray Stevens takes over and sings "Gitarzan". The clip, as with the other two I've embedded, come from 1970. The video clips themselves come from a You Tube member named Jonesing4Tom.

Ray's current music video, "Mr President - Mr. President" has 347,526 views. This is a pick up of over 6,000 on-line views during the last couple of days. "Obama Budget Plan" vaulted past the 900,000 mark and now sits with 901,544 views.

Christmas season is officially underway today and so it's appropriate to remind those who hadn't already seen it that Ray put out a comedy Christmas music video last year titled "Nightmare Before Christmas". The song is from his comedy Christmas CD, Christmas Through a Different Window. This CD was recorded and released in 1997 but was later re-released. A non-comical Christmas CD titled Ray Stevens Christmas came along in December 2009. Currently the two Christmas CD's are being sold together in one exclusive order at Ray's web-store.

Click the Ray Stevens Christmas offer and it'll take you to his web-store where there's more information about the items. Obviously this is for those who don't already have these collections. It's an extremely low price, I think, for 3 CD's and a copy of the above music video. Search the store and you'll find the Bozo's Back Again CD, too, plus Spirit of '76 which I assume will get some more publicity as we get closer to November 2012. Oh, and the Internet Video Hits is also on full display in a banner at his web-site.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 4...

2011-11-23T21:44:00.000-05:00

A late check-in tonight...Thanksgiving Eve 2011...I'm actually writing this blog in a sort of rushed delivery given that in half an hour I'll be heading off for work but I wanted to showcase a video clip I came across earlier this morning in the meantime.

A couple of months ago a video clip of Ray Stevens and Tom Jones surfaced on You Tube. The clip was well over 5 minutes in length showing the two artists singing various Ray Charles songs. Yesterday a new clip was uploaded and it features Ray, Tom, and Scoey Mitchell singing "Walk a Mile In My Shoes". This particular song was written by Joe South and it appears on Ray's 1970 album, Everything Is Beautiful.

Wasn't that great? Of course it was! I continue to hope more and more vintage clips of Ray Stevens surface on You Tube. As most people may know one of the things that I hope will resurface is Ray's 1970 Summer show for Andy Williams. To this day I have no idea why it's never been offered on DVD when so many music nostalgia programs are consistently on late-night TV. There's even a few channels on my cable line-up that specialize in nothing but infomercials.

Ray's variety program isn't celebrated as other singer-hosted programs from the same time period are but I still hope it'll find it's way onto a DVD or a clip or two or three will end up on-line.

Meanwhile, Ray's current music video "Mr. President - Mr. President" has 345,319 on-line views. His previous video, "Obama Budget Plan", is seeing an increased number of views enabling it to have an on-line view total of 896,791. Yes, as you can see, it's inching toward 900,000 on-line views. Could this video top 1,000,000 by the end of 2011? It's hard to tell. The disaster that was the so-called Super Committee designed to deal with the nation's budget and deficit woes no doubt increased the exposure of the "Obama Budget Plan" music video because it wasn't that long ago that the video had just crossed over the 800,000 total and here it is close to 900,000.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 3...

2011-11-20T02:11:00.000-05:00

On this early Sunday morning I come with a link to nearly 170 pictures of Ray Stevens that were posted at the Imperial Palace's Facebook page. One picture in particular, the third picture in row 6, looks as if he's doing an impression of Groucho Marx. Comments are open to the public...even those who weren't able to appear.

Ray's next couple of concerts for 2011 will take place in Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Ray appears at this venue on back to back days: November 28th and November 29th. His appearances are part of what's called the Winter Festival of Lights. Lorrie Morgan, based upon the venue's web-page, is a co-headliner but there's no information regarding whether or not the two will share the same stage or if in one concert Lorrie plays the part of the opening act and in another Ray returns the favor so it's difficult to determine how the concerts are going to be presented. Those who are planning on going to the concert can easily find out information by calling their number: 1-800-563-2557 or sending an e-mail to tickets@WFOL.com

Since the first concert is going to take place 8 days from now it would make more sense to call the venue directly using the number I supplied. You can also visit this link to see the information that I just wrote about. The venue seats 5,000 people so I'd not wait until the last minute to inquire about the concert.

Meanwhile, the following Imperial Palace Facebook link will take you to the pictures showing Ray on stage at various moments in the concert Saturday night.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 2...

2011-11-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

A little over 10,000 people have seen the Ray Stevens music video, "Virgil and the Moonshot". The video was uploaded onto You Tube rather low-key back in May of this year. The music video comes from 1997...one of two music videos he did that year. The other video, "Too Drunk To Fish", is also on You Tube.

"Virgil and the Moonshot" is all about a guy who works at NASA but decides to innocently sit inside a space shuttle...envisioning himself as a first-rate astronaut. Things get intense as Virgil can't resists pushing a brightly lit button...and from there the adventure in outer space begins. Toward the end of the song several talk-show hosts and news programs are mentioned as we're told all of them want Virgil to appear on their programs given how popular he became.

Long-time songwriter associate of Ray's, Buddy Kalb, appears in the video as the head of Mission Control. Ray's brother appears near the end of the video where Virgil is seen being waited on hand and foot. The brother is wearing the suit and holding the contract papers. I do not know who plays the other roles.

Just in case you missed my last blog entry I posted a link to the Examiner web-page where Jeremy Roberts interviews Buddy Kalb regarding Ray's upcoming novelty song encyclopedia box set. Based upon information Ray himself has said in the past and the comments from Buddy in the recent interview the Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music is going to be an amazing product. I can't wait to get the collection...I think I may have said that a million times by now!?!

This 2010 Great Awakening T-shirt is something I don't typically wear because T-shirts are too form fitting which is why I switched several years ago to button shirts.

I have 2 t-shirts that I bought last year from Ray's web-store. I bought them not to wear...just to have for my collection.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet...

2011-11-19T09:29:00.001-05:00

Well, it's a Saturday morning...November 19th...later tonight is the Ray Stevens Biloxi, Mississippi concert at the Imperial Palace. I wasn't able to see the Lou Dobbs program last night on the Fox Business Network due to some family events taking place and so I was looking forward to seeing a video clip at the web-site I gave a link to in my previous blog entry. Well, I checked the show's web-page and saw that they uploaded just three video clips from last night's episode and neither upload contained Ray Stevens. I have no idea if the segment will be uploaded...so if anyone saw the program you can fill us all in on what happened.

In the meantime a new interview with songwriter Buddy Kalb surfaced moments ago on the Examiner web-site. This is the same site that featured other interviews with Buddy Kalb as well as an interview with Ray Stevens and an interview with the person typing this blog entry.

Click here to read the most recent interview from Buddy Kalb...within the interview there are links to the previous interviews I mentioned and there are slide-shows and a video link to a 1974 Ray Stevens performance on British television. The main focus of the interview deals with Ray's upcoming Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music which is set to be released early next year. The collection will contain 108 recordings and Buddy talks about the inspiration behind the mammoth treasure chest of comedy songs and how everything came about over the last 2 years. This is going to be a comedy/novelty song lover's must-have collection in my opinion.

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 36...

2011-11-18T09:35:00.000-05:00

When you click the Sun Herald Promo you'll see a promo for the upcoming Ray Stevens concert in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Imperial Palace. I intentionally hadn't written any new blog entries since November 14th because I wanted my previous blog entry to be at the top of the page for awhile instead of buried in the archives. Tomorrow (November 19th) is the day of Ray's concert which I'm sure will be a success. I'm sure the link I provided will expire at some point in the future but for now it's active.

*** Tonight Ray Stevens is scheduled to appear on Lou Dobbs' television program which airs on the Fox Business Network. ***

Ray's involvement is slated to begin at 7:10pm Eastern time tonight. The show has a web-page and from the looks of it the segments become available for viewing on that site.

Meanwhile, his latest video titled "Mr. President - Mr. President" is continuing it's steady pace...at the moment it's gotten 337,467 on-line views. This is a pick-up of nearly 7,000 views in 4 days...indicative that it'll garner nearly 10,000 views during the course of the week.

Ray Stevens In Biloxi, Mississippi...11/19/2011

2011-11-14T01:40:00.000-05:00

Good Monday morning...it's the start of another work week...but for those down in Biloxi, Mississippi you all have a chance to see Ray Stevens in concert at the Imperial Palace this coming Saturday night, November 19th. The information is contained within the link provided. On November 28th and 29th Ray Stevens will be in Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center.

The latest releases from Ray Stevens include a CD of serious songs...re-recordings of some of his obscure songs from the '80s on a CD called Bozo's Back Again. In addition to that CD there's also the DVD release of Internet Video Hits that I wrote about a couple of blogs ago. In the political vein there's Spirit of '76 which was released earlier in the year at his web-store prior to it's nationwide release a couple of months ago. That CD features 11 songs...4 of the songs have become You Tube music video sensations: "God Save Arizona", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and his latest, "Mr. President - Mr. President".

Who: Ray Stevens

When: November 19, 2011

Venue: Imperial Palace Casino, Resort, and Spa

Where: Biloxi, Mississippi

Time: 8pm

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 17...

2011-11-14T01:01:00.000-05:00

In this Retrospective installment we go back 17 years in the career of Ray Stevens to take a look at 1994. This was one of the busiest times in his career where a lot of his success was coming from the home video market. It was around this time in 1994 that two of Ray's home video releases were still among the Top-10 in home video sales. Comedy Video Classics, the 1992 collection of music videos, had sold more than 200,000 copies in retail stores beginning in 1993 (following it's year long advertising campaign on TV). That particular home video sold millions by way of TV advertisements. He followed it up in 1993 with Ray Stevens Live!, a home video of one of his Branson, Missouri concerts. Technically it was a partial concert with some of the performances edited out and placed on the sequel, More Ray Stevens Live!. After the Ray Stevens Live! home video was released to retail stores in the late summer of 1994 it became another retail sales success. Each of the home videos had lengthy chart runs...in early November of 1994 Comedy Video Classics had been on the charts almost 80 weeks while the newest, Ray Stevens Live!, had been charted for nearly 30 weeks.

In the meantime, while Ray's home video releases were selling unprecedented numbers, his publishing company received an award for "I Can't Reach Her Anymore", a hit single for country singer Sammy Kershaw in 1994. This was the second publisher award bestowed upon Ray in association with a Sammy Kershaw recording...the first being 1992's "Cadillac Style".

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 24...

2011-11-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

In Retrospective 24 we take a look at the year of 1987 in the career of Ray Stevens. This was the year that marked the 30th anniversary of Ray's earliest recordings in 1957. This was also the year that MCA Records issued not one, not two, not three, but four separate projects on Ray Stevens! Those four releases were: Greatest Hits, Crackin' Up, Greatest Hits Volume Two, and Get the Best of Ray Stevens. The year was marked by the success of "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", a single from Ray Stevens that satirized televangelists and spoke to thousands upon thousands of people who experienced the scandals that were taking place at the time. A topical single it became a hit slowly...crossing over into the mainstream to such an extent that it was instrumental in garnering an invitation to appear on The Tonight Show in addition to write-up's from various newspaper columnists (Paul Harvey in particular). The song would get a Grammy nomination in 1988. It was written by Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer.

Ray, for a short period of time, did a series of animated music videos for several of his older songs. These video collections were released to retail stores by Curb Records in 2006. Each DVD features 5 music videos. Gourmet Restaurant is named for a song that Ray recorded in 1987 on the Crackin' Up album. Featured on that particular DVD, in addition to "Gourmet Restaurant", is "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty"...both songs come from the 1987 Crackin' Up album. Much of these animated videos have since been uploaded onto You Tube and you can see several of them when you visit Ray's You Tube channel, raystevensmusic, all one word. Crackin' Up features 10 comedy songs for those who don't yet own a copy: "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", "Three Legged Man", "Cool Down, Willard", "I'm My Own Grandpaw", "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty", "Sex Symbols", "Gourmet Restaurant", "The Flies of Texas", "Doctor, Doctor Have Mercy On Me", and "The Day That Clancy Drowned".

Get The Best of Ray Stevens was an album advertised on television and in newspaper advertisements. Years before Ray sold millions of home videos in the 1990's this 2-LP collection was being sold on TV and the official commercial shown Ray singing snippets of the songs. Commercials like this used to appear frequently for albums released by Heartland Records, too. Unfortunately I only saw the commercial a couple of times and couldn't tell you much about it...except that Ray appeared in various suits and costumes much like in the commercial he did for Comedy Video Classics in 1992. The vinyl album in the picture opens up, like a reading book, to reveal the songs and credits. Each vinyl disc is housed in a separate sleeve. The collection basically combines both Greatest Hits releases (plus or minus a couple of songs).

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 35...

2011-11-13T07:36:00.000-05:00

During the CMA festivities that took place in Nashville during the week of November 7, 2011 Ray Stevens made several appearances. He often appears at the publisher awards but usually there isn't an in-depth or conversational interview that takes place. An exception to the rule occurred when Ray found himself being interviewed by a radio DJ, who uses the name of Danger Frog, from a Pittsburgh radio station. A lot of country radio stations from around the country make the annual trip to Nashville to attend the festivities surrounding the CMA Awards.

The clip of Ray's interview was uploaded onto You Tube recently and here it is...

Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw, Part 5!!!!!

2011-11-13T06:27:00.001-05:00

Good Sunday morning Ray Stevens fans!! In my previous blog entry I posted about the happenings of Ray Stevens in 1986. That particular blog post was nearly a week in the making due to some unfortunate circumstances. Back on November 6th, around 2am, my computer monitor stopped functioning and so the blog I was in the middle of writing (the one called Retrospective 25) was saved in the draft folder. I never got the opportunity to get back on-line until late Saturday afternoon (November 12th) and so it was nearly 1 week before I could put the finishing touches on the 6 day old blog entry.

Due to the fact that my monitor stopped functioning I wasn't able to write a blog surrounding the appearance of Ray on Hee-Haw later that night. The appearance was exceptional (in my opinion!). He wore a red shirt and performed "Isn't It Lonely Together" during the first half hour...with the camera doing all sorts of visual tricks at various moments in the song. Prior to him singing the last line of the song the camera gave an extreme close-up of his face. The second performance was the high-energy enthusiastic "Gitarzan". I'm hoping both performances end up on You Tube as his debut appearance did. In his debut appearance on Hee-Haw he performed "Turn Your Radio On" (which was considered his most recent release) and "Along Came Jones". Strangely enough in his second appearance on the show he didn't perform any current release. These two 1972 appearances would be it for a period of 3 years...returning in 1975...and from then onward appearing almost annually for the rest of the show's lifespan.

In the meantime, while being off-line, Ray had conducted a series of interviews but only a couple of them, so far, have become available for audio playback. The interview was conducted by radio personality, Michael Berry, of KTRH radio in Houston, Texas. The interview runs more than 16 minutes and both parts were uploaded onto You Tube...

Part 1...
Ray Stevens KTRH interview

Part 2...
Ray Stevens on KTRH

One of the things that I was able to do on November 4th, a couple days prior to my off-line status, was place an order for the new DVD from Ray Stevens titled Internet Video Hits. Around the time of the DVD's announcement several people wondered why Ray would want to release a DVD of music videos that people can see on-line 24/7. I suspected that the reason for the DVD release was so people could have a collection of the music videos on one DVD that they could watch on their TV and also have the DVD as a way to introduce the music videos to those that aren't interested in being on-line for whatever reason. A lot of people are still in the dark when it comes to being on-line and using a computer and so the DVD is a perfect way of giving those who choose to be without a computer an opportunity to see what they've been missing. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, this DVD features 10 music videos. There's a message from Ray written on the back of the DVD case explaining the reason why this project was put together.

The music videos in the collection are:

1. God Save Arizona
2. Come to the U.S.A.
3. We The People
4. Caribou Barbie
5. Mr. President - Mr. President
6. The Global Warming Song
7. Throw the Bums Out!
8. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore
9. Obama Budget Plan
10. Nightmare Before Christmas

Those who want a copy of this DVD for your personal collections need to simply visit the web-store at Ray Stevens' official web-page. A link to the DVD's product page is located here.

His current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President", increased by nearly 30,000 on-line views since my last look-in 6 days ago. The current total is 329,453. The video is a little over 1 month old.

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 25...

2011-11-12T17:20:00.000-05:00

In this particular blog entry titled Retrospective 25 I'm spotlighting events that took place in the career of Ray Stevens in 1986...25 years ago.

What exactly was happening in the career of Ray Stevens in 1986? Well, for one thing, he was riding high on a wave of newly found popularity...a situation that just happened to be something of a recurring theme in his overall career. Every so often, while retaining his core fan base, he often becomes discovered by an entirely different audience...then, once they become enmeshed within his core fan base he's discovered by other people...on and on, down through history, this sort of ebb and flow effect has enabled Ray (in my opinion) to endure for decade upon decade in spite of the fact that music critic after music critic has long pronounced "the novelty song" a surefire way to kill a career rather than prolong it. 1986 is the year that Ray enjoyed his first and only #1 album...the album in question is I Have Returned and it wasn't an immediate chart success. Over the course of half a year, starting in the latter part of 1985 and into the spring of 1986 the album slowly climbed up the country album list week after week. It ultimately reached #1. A previous album (released late in 1984) reached the country Top-5 in early 1985. In the image above it's the cassette version of 1986's Surely You Joust.

Are there any other Ray Stevens fans out there who are overcome by giddiness, excitement, and full-blown euphoria after a vinyl album of Ray's arrives in the mail? How about having those same feelings if you come across a vinyl album of Ray's at a flea market? I'll expand this further by asking if any Ray Stevens fans have those feelings once they see the flip side of the album jacket...revealing imagery and, or, art work that is new to the eye. When the vinyl album arrived in the mail of Surely You Joust, Ray's 1986 album, I knew of the image beforehand but didn't know it come from the flip side of the album jacket. When I first saw the image of Ray hoisted in the air by a crane in a junkyard I assumed it was a rarely seen publicity picture for magazine or newspaper usage...little did I know that it's origins were from the actual vinyl album. The picture comes from January 4, 2008...a few weeks after it arrived in the mail from some on-line seller at eBay. I already had the cassette copy...it had been my grandfather's originally. He bought it new in 1986.

In the first image the cassette version shows three songs listed: "Southern Air", "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?", and "People's Court". The project was released at a time in country music where there were all sorts of clashes going on between various style trends. In times past country radio, as a whole, attempted to equally promote all the various sub-genres of country music within it's musical umbrella. In 1986 and moving forward country radio began to slowly remove certain styles of country music as well as artists of a certain age from the airwaves and replace them with brand new artists emerging on the country scene that tended to fit marketing strategies or a preferred sound. In addition to this country radio began to increase airplay exposure of acts that had been in the business a few years and had been overshadowed by long established acts.

As I'm sure most are aware, Ray Stevens has both a Facebook and Twitter page in addition to his official web-page. I, too, have a Twitter page but I rarely post personal thoughts there. I basically post links to Ray Stevens videos or news stories about Ray or I re-tweet messages from Ray's page. I sometimes provide links to any number of blogs that I've written or ones that I've come across by others.

I came across a blog today that mentioned the one you're reading now...

Unfortunately, though, the blog entry was written way back in April of this year! The reason why I wasn't aware of it until now is because the search engine I normally use didn't include that particular blog in their search results. I sometimes switch search engines from time to time to compare how detailed one search engines results are in comparison to another. It was while I was temporarily switched to a different search engine that I came across the April 2011 blog entry. The blogger said that my blog page on Ray Stevens is probably the best reference site on the internet. The blog I'm referring to is called R S Crabb Music Review & Top Ten Site. The entry is called On the Subject of Ray Stevens.

Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw, Part 4!!!!

2011-11-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

In a couple of minutes I'll be ordering the Internet Video Hits DVD from Ray Stevens that I wrote about in my previous blog...but the main reason I'm writing this brief entry is to alert people to Sunday night at 8pm Eastern time. This is the time when RFD-TV will air their weekly episode of Hee-Haw. The episode airing tomorrow night was originally broadcast in 1972 and it features Ray Stevens and Donna Fargo as the special guests. Earlier in the year Ray's first appearance on Hee-Haw was reran on RFD-TV and tomorrow night we'll get to see his second appearance. Fast-forwarding 39 years to November 5, 2011 we see that Ray's current music video on You Tube, "Mr. President - Mr. President", has 310,245 views. This is another increase of nearly 10,000 views in a matter of a few days.

Ray Stevens: Internet Video Hits...

2011-11-02T08:44:00.000-04:00

Good Wednesday morning...also, welcome to November! Yes, I know it's November 2, but it's my first blog entry of the month. A couple of days ago I wrote about an upcoming DVD from Ray Stevens titled Internet Video Hits. The DVD is now available for purchase at Ray's web-store. Click the above link for more information. I'll be purchasing mine this coming Friday.

The collection features 10 music videos taped during the years of 2009 through the current 2011 video, "Mr. President - Mr. President". The current music video vaulted past the 300,000 mark and has 301,328 on-line views at the moment. It's an increase of nearly 10,000 on-line views in a few days time.

1. God Save Arizona; 2010
2. Come to the U.S.A.; 2010
3. We The People; 2009
4. Caribou Barbie; 2010
5. Mr. President - Mr. President; 2011
6. The Global Warming Song; 2010
7. Throw the Bums Out!; 2010
8. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore; 2011
9. Obama Budget Plan; 2011
10. Nightmare Before Christmas; 2010

Currently the music videos of "Throw the Bums Out!" and "God Save Arizona" are neck and neck in on-line view totals. "Throw the Bums Out!" has 822,825 on-line views while "God Save Arizona" has gotten 822,720 on-line views! The "Obama Budget Plan" has 848,469 views.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 14...

2011-10-31T07:48:00.000-04:00

Halloween day...October 31, 2011...I posted a Halloween themed blog a couple of days ago where I spotlighted some of the songs Ray recorded with a Halloween overtone. Search the archives on the right side of the screen for the blog titled The Entertaining Ray Stevens, Part 2. In this particular blog entry I decided to post the other side of The Best of Ray Stevens, a compilation that Mercury Records issued on Ray Stevens in 1970. This release features material Ray recorded during the years of 1961 through 1963. It's a combination of album songs and single releases. The collection is notable for a very rare recording of "Ahab the Arab" from some point in the early '60s. I do not know, even to this day, when this performance was recorded. The recording is made more rare by the fact that country music personality, Ralph Emery, is heard at the beginning introducing Ray to a small audience. My guess is this is an audio taken from a television program...I know Ralph hosted a pop music program at one time in the mid '60s and perhaps that's where this audio comes from!? Wherever it comes from it's an obscure recording. Purists are dismissive of the recording and complain that it doesn't belong on a collection like this but I have a differing opinion on the matter.

The liner notes, as you see here, were written by someone named Bob Scherl. Since the collection was released in 1970 the liner notes slip in references to some of the songs Ray recorded in the late '60s (which aren't part of this collection). Tracks 6, 7 and 11 were originally released as commercial singles exclusively and weren't part of his 1962 or 1963 albums for Mercury, which is where 7 of the songs on this 1970 compilation comes from.

The songs on the collection were all written by Ray Stevens:

1. Ahab the Arab
2. Funny Man; 1963
3. Harry the Hairy Ape; 1963
4. It's Been So Long; 1963
5. Speed Ball; 1963
6. Santa Claus Is Watching You; 1962
7. Butch Babarian; 1963
8. Loved and Lost; 1963
9. The Rock and Roll Show; 1962
10. Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills; 1961
11. Bubble Gum the Bubble Dancer; 1964

Ray's 1962 album for Mercury is titled 1,837 Seconds of Humor. Tracks 9 and 10 in the above collection are from that album. His 1963 album for Mercury was titled This Is Ray Stevens...tracks 2 through 5 and track 8 are from that album. Track 1 was previously unreleased while tracks 6, 7 and 11 were issued as single-only releases. Some of Ray's singles featured b-sides that have not yet appeared on any commercially released album. His version of "When You Wish Upon a Star" is the original b-side of "Scratch My Back" from 1962. The b-side has never made it to any LP or CD in the last 49 years. "Scratch My Back" never made it to the Hot 100 but was released as a follow-up to "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills".

"Don't Say Anything" is the b-side of 1963's "Butch Babarian". "It's Party Time" is the b-side of 1963's "Speed Ball". A song that I commented about several blogs ago, "Laughing Over My Grave", is the b-side of 1964's "Bubble Gum the Bubble Dancer". A couple of other singles, both the A and B side, that Ray recorded for Mercury have never been available since their original release: 1965's "Rockin' Teenage Mummies" and it's b-side "It Only Hurts When I Laugh" as well as "Mr. Baker the Undertaker" and it's b-side "The Old English Surfer". The releases in 1964 and 1965 came after he had signed with Monument Records. The recordings took place at some point in the early '60s when he was still with Mercury.

The Entertaining Ray Stevens, Part 3...

2011-10-30T03:13:00.000-04:00

In the embed below you'll hear a fairly recent interview that Ray Stevens gave. The interview took place on October 27, 2011 on a radio program called Conscience of Kansas hosted by Paul Ibbetson. Ironically, the embed has the image of Ray's 1983 album, Me, which I wrote of in the previous blog entry.

Since the interview took place on a politically-driven program the focus was on his political comedy and politics in general. The host relates a story of how he first heard of Ray Stevens and strangely enough it nearly mirrors how I first heard of Ray Stevens, too, except I learned of Ray nearly 12 years afterward in the mid '80s.

The current video smash, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is nearing 300,000 on-line views. The up to the minute total so far is 294,118 on-line views. Those who've been asking if he'll put out a DVD of his political music videos will get their wish in a couple of days. An upcoming DVD from Ray will feature all 10 music videos that he's released since December 2009. I've seen commentary from fans during the last several months wishing to have these videos on a DVD collection that they can play on their TV so they won't always have to be at a computer in order to watch them. The collection is titled Internet Video Hits and it'll become available November 2!! As I said...the release of the DVD will be in a couple of days!

Before anyone can ask...yes, you can pre-order it at Ray's web-store and here's the link...

Internet Video Hits.

Now, obviously, while you're there you can also wander on over to the CD area and read information about his latest CD, Bozo's Back Again, which I wrote about in my previous blog entry.

Ray Stevens...Bozo's Back Again...

2011-10-28T10:35:00.000-04:00

Good Friday morning! I checked the mail this morning and the CD that I ordered last Friday had arrived. Actually, though, I never checked mail on Thursday and so it arrived yesterday. The CD in question is Bozo's Back Again from Ray Stevens. It consists of 12 tracks...one of the songs, "Priceless", has never been available before. The song is about the little things in life, their costs, and life's excesses and their costs, but Ray tells us that there's one thing out there that's "Priceless". Now, going into it, I knew that the songs on here were re-recordings of past songs that Ray had done...on his web-page he mentions that these are some of the best songs you've never heard. His statement is accurate in terms of general audience...the dedicated fans are familiar with these songs...but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment one gets listening to the songs. I loved each of the songs...I grinned a lot while listening to them. The songs marked with a double asterisk were written by Ray Stevens.

1. Bozo's Back Again (Ray and Buddy)
2. Priceless**
3. Just For The Hell Of It**
4. Oh, Leo Lady**
5. Game Show Love**
6. Another Fine Mess (Ray and Buddy)
7. My Dad (Dale Gonyea)
8. Me**
9. Kings and Queens**
10. Dixie Hummingbird**
11. Written Down In My Heart (W.T. Davidson)
12. Ruby Falls (Buddy Kalb)

One of the things that stands out is that all of the songs...each and every one of them...are non-comical. Also, given that a majority of the re-recorded songs on here cover material from the early '80s, there's not that big of a difference in the vocalizations. As we all know Ray's earliest recordings featured a somewhat deeper vocalization (specifically the late '60s and into the early '70s) and by the late '70s onward his voice become smoother. Since this CD contains songs from Ray's past it's not a big surprise to the dedicated fans that he's the writer/co-writer on a lot of the songs. I love that several of the songs from his obscure, under-rated, and tragically ignored 1983 album, Me, are spotlighted on here. Ray gives us "Me", "Game Show Love", "Kings and Queens", and a stellar re-recording of the emotionally charged "My Dad"...all four of those songs originated on that 1983 album. Admittedly I don't own the soundtrack to the Cannonball Run movie so I don't know if there's a longer version of "Just For The Hell Of It" on that soundtrack or not...but I'm familiar with the recording that played in the movie. This re-recording features an opening verse that wasn't heard in the movie version and so I was surprised to hear this additional part of the song.

Much of the songs written on Bozo's Back Again, as I mentioned, originated from Ray Stevens himself. On several of the songs his long-time songwriting partner, Buddy Kalb, is credited as one of the writers. The clever final track, "Ruby Falls", was written by Buddy. Although the general public may not know who Buddy Kalb is he's no stranger to a lot of the fans of Ray Stevens. His name has appeared as many times as Ray's in the songwriter credits...much of Ray's songs during the last 25+ years were either written by Buddy, written by Buddy and his wife Carlene, or written by Ray and Buddy...and yes, there's even been a few songs where Ray, Buddy, and Carlene are the credited writers. In the songwriter credits his name appears more formally as C.W. Kalb, Jr. but almost everyone refers to him as Buddy.

A few days ago I was alerted to the release of 3 CD's from Buddy...he's recorded 3 CD's of self-written songs...quite a lot of the songs were recorded at various points in time by Ray Stevens but the recordings on the CD's will be of Buddy himself. Also, there are many songs that have never been recorded by Ray featured on the CD's. The curious who want to take a look at the material can click the following Buddy Kalb CD's and be taken to the page that displays the 3 CD's. You'll need to click the More Info button to see the song titles.

As mentioned, quite a lot of the titles will be familiar to Ray Stevens fans. The one who alerted me to the CD's is the same one who interviewed Buddy recently. I've posted a link to the interview before but here it is again... Jeremy Roberts interviews Buddy Kalb.

The Entertaining Ray Stevens, Part 2...

2011-10-24T07:25:00.000-04:00

One of the CD's from the Entertaining Ray Stevens is New Orleans Moon, a collection released in 2007 which features marvelous recordings from Ray centering on all things Louisiana...specifically New Orleans and it's music/culture. I've written about this big easy CD several times so I won't spend a lot going over what I've already covered. I'll supply a link to Ray's web-store for those who want to purchase a copy of the CD. On Sunday Night Football the New Orleans Saints clobbered the Indianapolis Colts by a score of 62-7! In reflection of that I decided to highlight Ray's New Orleans CD from a few years ago once again. I remember quite well when this CD was released...and I remember the confusion I felt when very little hype/publicity came for the CD outside of the New Orleans area. I don't know if Ray did any concerts in the Southern states or not that year...but the CD deserves to be known by more people than just the dedicated fans. The collection features the one new song, the title track "New Orleans Moon", and the rest are his versions of songs associated with Louisiana. The song was written by Ray and Chuck Redden. Those who pay attention to songwriter credits will recognize Chuck's name on several other songs that Ray's recorded within the last several years. Chuck wrote "Midnight in Baghdad", a song found on Ray's We The People CD from last year. On Spirit of '76, Ray's CD from early this year, Chuck co-wrote "November Storm" with Ray and Buddy Kalb. On the Hurricane CD that Ray released in 2008 Chuck wrote "Down Home Beach" and co-wrote "Bubba, The Wine Connoisseur" with Ray and Buddy Kalb. Ray and Buddy rewrote a lot of the lyrics of Chuck Redden's "The Real Battle of New Orleans" in 2005. Ray released it as a CD single under the alternate title "The New Battle of New Orleans".

Here's the link to Ray's web-store where you can see a track list for the New Orleans Moon CD.

From the sounds of New Orleans we travel back to the sounds of screams...1965's spooky novelty single from Ray Stevens titled "Mr. Baker, the Undertaker". It's Halloween week all across the country...climaxing on Halloween night: October 31st. A lot of towns celebrate Halloween on the actual holiday...but a lot of other towns do the annual Halloween thing on the Thursday preceding the holiday. On October 27th it will be what's called Beggar's Night around here...where people dress up in costumes and go door to door getting candy. As mentioned, other places do this Beggar's Night on the actual Halloween night. I have no idea why Beggar's Night has always been on Thursdays in my area but that's the way it's been for decades upon decades. "Mr. Baker, the Undertaker" tells the story of a mortician's love for his work. It's filled with a lot of mortician jokes and funeral home references as one could imagine. The song features a repetitious background choir of voices singing the title of the song after almost every line. You'll be able to tell that the choir of voices is Ray who often over-dubbed his own voice to create a harmony effect. He doesn't do this a lot these days but once upon a time he did.

In addition to "Mr. Baker, the Undertaker" Ray's also recorded other Halloween-style songs. "Laughing Over My Grave" is currently available as an Mp3 on Amazon. It became available in August and I mentioned it a few blogs ago. The song isn't comical in the same way Mr. Baker is but it has it's funny moments. It's more or less a love song about a woman who's had enough of a man's lying and cheating and she's out for justice. The comical aspect comes from how Ray delivers some of the lines when he's playing the part of the fearful husband and what his wife may be capable of doing to him. You can purchase the Mp3 for only 99 cents at Amazon's Mp3 store.

It was around this same era when Ray recorded the "Rockin' Teenage Mummies" as well. That particular novelty song dealt with a group of mummies that make it big as rock singers...eventually leading to an appearance on Ed Sullivan's show. It wouldn't be until 1988 that a Halloween theme found it's way into a Ray Stevens song and it was accomplished with "The Booger Man", a bluesy comical song describing the legend of many people's nightmares. The song is on his 1988 album, I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like, which is out of print. The CD version was released in 1990...which has long been out of print. There has never been an Mp3 reissue and so a lot of people's best bet is to track down the album on eBay and invest in a record player as I did several years ago. In 1990 Ray recorded "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and to date that's been the last song he's recorded that could fit in with the overall Halloween concept of scary stories, ghosts, graveyards, etc. etc. He made a music video of the song in 1990 and given that it's been kept in print you can easily find an Mp3 of the song on Amazon. The video that Ray shot in 1990 and uploaded onto You Tube in 2009 is located below. Those familiar with 1992's Comedy Video Classics will know right away where this video was lifted from.

The Entertaining Ray Stevens...

2011-10-24T04:43:00.001-04:00

It's Monday morning already!?!?

According to several people the two Ray Stevens concerts in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee over the weekend were an entertaining experience. A couple of people on Facebook commented that they loved the show and I saw a few tweets echo the same sentiments. The shows were either sold-out or near sell-outs...there was never a final word given on the sales status but chances are the venue was a near sell out.

The next stop for Ray on the concert trail is the IP Resort, Casino, and Spa in Biloxi, Mississippi. This concert will happen on November 19th at 8pm. The venue's Facebook page suggests that it'll be a 2-hour concert and run until 10pm but the Casino's main page doesn't list a concert duration. In fact, if you click Ray's name at the Casino's main page it takes you to the Facebook link I provided above. The tickets for this concert went on sale back in the summer...according to the venue July 15, 2011 was the date.

There's not been any word if this particular show is a near sell-out or not but those in that vicinity and want to see the legendary Ray Stevens during his limited concert series should check things out when you click either of the links I provided.

Ray closes out November appearing in Canada at the Winter Festival of Lights concert series at the Scotiabank Convention Center on November 28th and November 29th. Here's the promo at the venue's web-page.

The most recent look at the view total for Ray's current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is 273,380. The song comes from his CD, Spirit of '76.

A few blogs ago I mentioned that Ray has a new CD out called Bozo's Back Again. It was a surprise release as there were no advanced alerts that a CD was on it's way. I put my order in for the CD on Friday. I ordered the CD from Ray's web-store this past Friday so I'm hopeful that it'll arrive no later than the first week of November...hopefully it'll arrive by the end of the month considering that the 31st is a week from now and by that time my order will be more than a week old. I'll post about the CD's arrival, of course. Here's the link to the CD...

Bozo's Back Again.

As I touched upon in a previous blog, the songs on the CD are re-recordings of little known album tracks from Ray's past. There's one song, "Priceless", that I assume is brand new. At least I hadn't heard a song from Ray Stevens with that title before. I look forward to hearing all the songs and can't wait to review the CD, too!!

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 29...

2011-10-23T12:36:00.000-04:00

An upload I came across on You Tube this morning is this...a song called "Baby The Magic is Gone" by a group known as The Velvets featuring Virgil Johnson. Research shows that the group used the lead singer's name to eliminate confusion with another group known as the Velvets.

The recording, according to the upload information, comes from 1965. Some internet sites say it was recorded in 1966. As you can see from the video it's a Monument recording and it was produced by Ray Stevens. From time to time I embed You Tube videos by artists or groups that feature production work from Ray Stevens. I also like to embed videos of songs that were written by Ray Stevens but recorded by other artists (specifically the recordings made in the '60s). Given that the embed is small...I downsized the original embed because it was too big for the page...but given the size of the embedded video you may or may not be able to see Ray's name on the right side of the screen under the producer credits.

A second recording by the group, whose lead singer was a man named Virgil Johnson, was actually uploaded back in January 2010 but because the uploader didn't use Ray's name as a tag I had no idea of it's existence until this morning. This recording, "Let the Fool Kiss You, But Don't let the Kiss Fool You", is the B-side of "Baby The Magic Is Gone".

Wasn't the production of those songs wonderful? The singing was good, too. While listening to the songs you can't help but imagine Ray singing them. Since he used this certain kind of sound for a lot of his own recordings during the mid and late '60s it's easy to imagine Ray singing these songs, too.

Ray recorded for Monument Records between the years of 1966 and 1969. Monument released their last commercial single on Ray early in 1970. Anyone care to guess what single it was? It was his version of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight". The b-side is "The Fool on the Hill". The single number is Monument-1187. Each song comes from his final studio album for Monument titled Have a Little Talk With Myself. I've got that album...on the back it shows Ray playing piano and in another picture laughing along side the album's co-producer, Jim Malloy. The previous Ray Stevens album from 1969, Gitarzan, featured a three person production team: Ray, Jim Malloy, and Fred Foster. Ray's first studio album for Monument, Even Stevens, hit in 1968. It featured Ray and Fred Foster as the producers. Here's a bit of amusing irony: Jim Malloy's son, David, became a highly successful record producer and was involved in a songwriting partnership trio. Eddie Rabbitt was one of those songwriters and the other was a writer named Even Stevens! I always found it sort of amusing that one of David Malloy's songwriting partners had the same name of an album Ray Stevens recorded during a point in time when David's father, Jim, was associated with Ray.

This year in Ray Stevens history looks at 1994...this was the year that Ray won his 9th and final Comedian of the Year trophy from the fan-voted Music City News awards. Ray had been selected as the top comedian in country music by Music City News readers for the previous 8 consecutive years starting in 1986. In 1994 he won for the 9th consecutive year. Music City News continued to hand out awards through 1999. The winners of the comedian category during the awards final years (1995-1999) were Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Gary Chapman. Foxworthy, if I'm not mistaken, won in 1995, 1996, and 1997 while Engvall won in 1998 and Chapman won in 1999(?) but don't quote me on any of that information. After Ray didn't win in 1995 or 1996 I lost interest in the awards and so I didn't pay much attention to who won or lost. Ray had won it so many times it was almost expected that he'd always win it but as history shows that wasn't the case. I don't believe Ray was nominated during 1998 or 1999!? I could be wrong about that. All I know is there was all of a sudden a rush of country comics, all built around the Jeff Foxworthy 'redneck' routine, that had emerged in the mid '90s and it was simply impossible for a more traditional country comedian to dethrone that style of humor once it took off across the country. It reached a peak when the Blue Collar comedy tours started happening during much of the following decade (2000-2009).

In the meantime, during the Music City News final years, rival magazine Country Weekly had started a fan-voted awards program called the Country Pick Award. Ray won in the Best Comedian category in 1995...but lost out to other country comedians in the years that followed.

Meanwhile, after the demise of Music City News in 1999, the awards became affiliated briefly with Country Weekly, and then CMT took over and since 2002 the telecasts have largely been built around music productions and the award categories honor music videos now instead of audio recordings. This, of course, means that the nominees would be only the videos that CMT airs...leaving out a lot of videos by other artists that don't make the CMT playlist.

The CMT awards telecasts, if played back to back with a Music City News awards telecast, would be like night and day as far as similarities. Classic episodes of the Music City News awards are available on DVD. Commercials for the DVD often appear on the RFD-TV network.

Elsewhere in 1994...Ray Stevens received a publishers award for "I Can't Reach Her Anymore", a huge hit single for Sammy Kershaw. 1994 is also the year that Ray Stevens Live!, a home video release from 1993, became available for purchase in retail stores following the year long mail-order exclusive. After it hit retail stores it was eligible to appear on the weekly Billboard charts and it eventually reached the top...competing against his previous home video from 1992, Comedy Video Classics.

Lastly, in 1994, Ray began working on what would become the movie, Get Serious!. The movie, for the longest time, didn't have an official title. I have fan club newsletters from late 1994 and early 1995 where it's referred to as something like LFSDCVM. I don't have the newsletters in front of me at the moment to supply the actual acronym but it basically stood for Long-Form Story-Driven Comedy Video Movie or it could've been Long-Form Story-Driven Comedy Music Video. Whichever the case it wasn't referred to as Get Serious! until some point in 1995 prior to it's late summer/early fall release. The movie, 110 minutes in length, stars Ray and a host of other performers. Sandwiched between the spoken dialogue are 10 music videos. Several of Ray's music friends made cameo appearances: Chet Atkins, Johnny Russell, Charlie Chase, George Lindsay, and James Gregory. Jerry Clower appeared several times throughout the movie playing the role of Ray's manager. Connie Freeman and Michael Airington co-starred as Charlene MacKenzie and Damien Darth. Ray's songwriting partner, Buddy Kalb, appeared as Bubba/Dudley Dorite while Tim Hubbard appeared as Deputy Coy. In the "Shriner's Convention" music video, lifted from this movie, Ray plays both Bubba and Coy. A few days ago Ray made the announcement on Facebook that they're thinking about releasing the Get Serious! movie onto DVD for the first time. The movie had previously only been available on home video so it's long overdue at getting a DVD release.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 13...

2011-10-23T02:47:00.001-04:00

If one takes a look at Amazon's search results for Ray Stevens CD's you'll come across three CD releases that according to the information will be released in January 2012.

Everything Is Beautiful
Turn Your Radio On
Misty

The bizarre thing about these releases is that they feature the same picture of Ray Stevens...two of the CD's contain the exact same picture, color scheme, and lettering while a third CD just features the same picture of Ray. The picture comes from 1970 during a performance on a television program. I'd say it's from his 1970 summer TV show. The CD's are being released by a label known as Pazzazz Records. As of this writing there is no track listing available and so it's pretty difficult to dissect the CD's without knowing what's on them...the second time around. The one titled Everything Is Beautiful features 2 CD's while the other collections feature just 1 CD each.

The ironic thing is these collections were previously available several years ago. The CD titled Misty was originally released in 2006 and it featured 15 songs. I'm assuming that with the resurgence of Ray's mainstream popularity, thanks to 2009's "We The People" music video on You Tube, that Pazzazz is hoping to tap into an even larger audience than before!?

To further explain what I just wrote read the following...

Prior to 2009 it's safe to assume that only the devoted fans, the dedicated fans, and comedy music fans in general were purchasing Ray's products and going to his concerts.

You see this happening much more in country music than in pop music but once an artist gets established and builds a fan base it's pretty much set in stone that no matter what happens in the music industry and whether a singer is on the radio anymore or not it's always been a safe bet that the fans would continue to show support for their favorite artist well after the general public's moved on to someone else. So, not surprisingly, the last thing the general public knew of Ray Stevens prior to 2009 were his early and mid 1990's TV commercials for a string of music video projects and they also recalled his Branson, Missouri theater (which he performed in during 1991 through 1993 and again from 2004-2006). What that means is that the general public knew very little of Ray's contemporary happenings and many assumed he retired years ago or assumed he was not even among the living. A lot of people were far more familiar with his older recordings than they were his recent recordings. Keeping all that in mind...December 2009 rolls around and "We The People" hits You Tube. The song/video became known as 'Obama Care' by many people who discovered the video...even today bloggers refer to the song as 'Obama Care' instead of it's actual title.

Anyway, once the video became an on-line hit, hundreds upon hundreds of people were shocked and they started asking one another "is this the same Ray Stevens who did The Streak?? I thought he died!". As I mentioned several blogs ago many people actually thought Ray died years ago. Since so many people, judging by their on-line comments, hadn't kept up with Ray's career I've since started referring to the period of 1999-2009 as the lost decade. In some of the comments at You Tube several people mentioned that they hadn't heard much about Ray since the days of "The Streak" way back in 1974! Since those comments came in December 2009 it meant that 35 years had passed between the release of that song and "We The People". I found it hard to believe that people hadn't heard much about Ray in more than 30 years but yet that's what a lot of people were saying.

Obviously with the video being political and a protest against what amounts to Government run health care there have been a long list of critics (liberal-progressives) who belittled the song and it's fans and marginalized Ray Stevens and his fans. Since the release of the video Ray's become associated with the Tea Party and often performs at political fundraisers sponsored by Tea Party organizations. The political direction in his career took some people by surprise...a very few early on pulled the familiar "I've been a long time fan but..." routine...yet by and large Ray's fans had no animosity toward his decision to do political comedy. If truth be known, much of Ray's political feelings mirrored his fans' political beliefs, so I've always felt that the ones complaining about the political overtones in his music are either not interested in politics at all or they never were fans to begin with and are just saying they were to create a negative perception that they hoped would be spread around and accepted as reality.

Fast forwarding to 2011...and 20,000,000+ on-line views later...yes, you read that correctly...according to the stats at Ray's You Tube channel his total upload views are 20,408,237. This is the total of the number of on-line views of each of his music videos added together. Five of his videos have gotten at least 1,000,000 views while quite a few others have gotten half a million. The current view totals for the Top-10 Ray Stevens video uploads are as follows...

1. Come to the USA; 2010: 5,609,434 views
2. We The People; 2009: 4,573,905 views
3. Mississippi Squirrel Revival (1992); 2009: 1,521,109 views
4. The Streak (1992); 2009: 1,347,695 views
5. Osama Yo' Mama (2001); 2009: 1,192,006 views
6. Obama Budget Plan; 2011: 828,182 views
7. God Save Arizona; 2010: 819,238 views
8. Throw the Bums Out; 2010: 817,419 views
9. Caribou Barbie; 2010: 455,319 views
10. Thank You (2004); 2010: 411,598 views

...and the current video, at the moment, is ranked #14 among Ray's most-viewed uploads:

***14. Mr. President - Mr. President; 2011: 269,288 views***

Notice the numbers gap between video #9 and video #8. Ray's current video's only been on-line for 3 weeks and we'll see how high it rises in the days and weeks to come. His previous video is ranked #6.

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 28...

2011-10-16T07:02:00.002-04:00

Originating in 1976 is the Ray Stevens version of "You Are So Beautiful". The single is known among pop audiences as a hit for Joe Cocker but Ray turned it into a bluegrass sing-a-long in the tradition of "Misty". Ray's version of "You Are So Beautiful" reached the country Top-20 and it was his debut single for Warner Brothers, the label he joined upon the conclusion of his lengthy, successful stay on Barnaby Records (which had begun in 1970). It was with Warner Brothers where his singles started to become more and more marketed toward country music stations and it's where the appearances on country music television programs became even more frequent than they'd been in the past. Ray had what I'd call a peculiar track record when it came to single releases. He was almost exclusively a pop music commodity from his earliest recordings in the late '50s and on into the early '70s. It was where his singles and albums were having their biggest impact. Within the pop music umbrella he was experiencing some success on the R&B charts (early '60s) and the Easy-Listening format (early to mid '70s). Then, almost like a natural progression, Ray's singles and albums started to have their greatest impact with country music audiences (mid '70s onward). I've studied and researched his career and there's nothing that comes up from the early '70s to explain how his singles were getting country music acceptance while at the same time he was maintaining a pop music reputation/image. Several of his singles in the early '70s charted exclusively country even though he wasn't actually being marketed as a country singer at the time. It's one of the truly unique things you'll see. It's also one of the genuine forms of pop-country crossover success as well. In today's music climate singers and record labels deliberately release a "pop version" and "country version" of a song...but it used to be a pop or country song, as recorded, would crossover if lucky enough...and without any re-mixing for either format.

The image of Ray comes from his 1976 album, Just For The Record. From time to time I like to spotlight his Warner Brothers era simply because I love the songs, first and foremost, and I love to hype material that I feel is under-rated. As I mentioned before in earlier blogs that's why I rarely write much about the signature songs of Ray Stevens. I feel that people already know all there is to know about those songs and so I try and spotlight obscure hits and album tracks that the public at large is unaware of.

Ray recorded four studio albums for Warner Brothers in addition to 3 additional tracks released independent of an album. Here's the breakdown:

Just For The Record; 1976
Feel The Music; 1977
There Is Something On Your Mind; 1978
Be Your Own Best Friend; 1978

Late in 1976 Ray released the single-only "In The Mood" backed with "Classical Cluck". Each recording consisted of chicken clucks, cow sounds, and goats. The recordings were released as the Henhouse Five Plus Too. In 1979 Ray released the single "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". Originally available as a single-only, the success paved the way for a compilation release which featured the hit single as the only new song on the collection. The rest of the album consisted of songs Ray recorded between the years of 1976 and 1978. The album was titled The Feeling's Not Right Again. The album cover is a parody of a release from Barry Manilow in 1975 titled Trying To Get The Feeling. I've posted the images of each album a couple of times in my archives. Ray was with Warner Brothers through mid 1979 and many compilation releases that came along from 1980 onward singled out his Henhouse Five Plus Too recording of "In the Mood" and the 1979 Manilow spoof but overlook his other recordings for the label. This was the norm until 1995...

In 1995, nearly 20 years after Ray joined Warner Brothers in 1976, the label released three separate collections on Ray: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. The collections were long overdue in my opinion and it introduced a lot of fans, myself included, to a bulk of recordings Ray did for the label that had been out of print for nearly 20 years. I heard a lot of his Warner Brothers recordings for the first time in 1995. I was still several years away from starting my vinyl album collection and so those 3 1995 releases were a goldmine for me. Imagine the excitement I felt hearing how he performed "You Are So Beautiful", for example! Not only that but he also recorded "Money Honey", "Talk To Me", "One Mint Julep", "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash", among others. More great songs include "Save Me From Myself", "Set The Children Free", "L'amour", "Cornball", "Two Wrong's Don't Make a Right", "Once In Awhile"....I could name them all but you get the point. Since I've got his vinyl albums from this period I've been able to hear the songs that didn't make it on the 1995 collections. The only songs from Ray's late '70s albums not to appear in the 1995 releases were: 1976's "OM" and "Gimme a Smile"; 1977's "Junkie For You", "Get Crazy With Me", and "Road Widow"; and 1978's "With a Smile", "You're Magic", "Comeback", "There Is Something On Your Mind", and the "Banned in Boston Trilogy". The first three songs from 1978 are from his Be Your Own Best Friend album. The latter two are from There Is Something On Your Mind. It's anyone's guess why those nine recordings were omitted. There were 29 recordings issued in total on those 1995 collections. As you can tell, one release featured 9 songs while the other two featured 10. Unfortunately, the only way people will be able to hear those omitted songs is by tracking down the vinyl albums on eBay or other on-line shops. In hindsight those 9 omitted recordings could've been featured. One collection could've had 13 songs, another with 13 songs, and the third with 12 songs...but that wasn't the way it happened. Maybe Warner Brothers will re-issue those collections and tack on those omitted songs the second time around!? I wouldn't hold my breath, though!

I also wouldn't hold my breath when it comes to the President getting his priorities in order...

Ray Stevens sings all about it in 2011's "Mr. President - Mr. President"...

Ray Stevens and the Spirit of '76, Part 9...

2011-10-16T05:28:00.000-04:00

Good early Sunday morning all Ray Stevens fans! Yesterday the 1972 performance of "Along Came Jones" by Ray Stevens was uploaded on You Tube. The performance comes from his first appearance on Hee-Haw and it can be seen by clicking this link. Specifically, this was the second performance from Ray during the episode. His first performance was his current single at the time, "Turn Your Radio On". That performance is also on You Tube and I posted about it in my blog several months ago. Hee-Haw was a fun show to watch no matter who the special guests were. Whenever a singer that I was a fan of appeared as a guest then it made the show even more fun. The show currently airs on the RFD-TV network on Sunday nights at 8pm Eastern, the Sunday night episode re-airs Monday mornings at 10am Eastern, and then episodes typically pulled from 1969-1971 are shown Thursday evenings at 6pm Eastern.

For the curious, Ray's current music video titled "Mr. President - Mr. President" has gotten more than 240,000 on-line views in 2 weeks time. As of this writing Ray hasn't appeared on any TV or radio program to promote the video even though a part of it was played on a couple of Fox News programs: Fox and Friends along with The O'Reilly Factor. The song was played in it's entirety on Mark Levin's radio program a couple of Friday's ago while Tom Marr was a guest host. Ray's previous video, the "Obama Budget Plan", has 811,420 on-line views. That particular video was uploaded 5 months ago and it appears the current video will more than likely reach 300,000 within the upcoming week based upon the pace that it's on. By comparison, Ray's current video having more than 240,000 views in 2 weeks is higher than the total on-line views of "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" released on You Tube by Ray 8 months ago. That particular video, as funny as can be, has 236,099 on-line views at the moment.

As I touched upon in earlier blogs during the spring of 2011 the big reason why, I think, that particular video hit real big in it's first couple of weeks and then faded was mostly due to the controversial full-body scans at airports being in the news nearly 24/7 for a couple of weeks and then other things came along to push it from the headlines. As most people realize topical songs are only as big as the topicality of the subject matter. Once the topic of a song gets pushed from the headlines then often what happens is any song, story, or commentary about that topic gets swept under a rug. Also, given that millions of people don't even step foot inside an airport it was perhaps difficult to translate to those who don't have experience with airport security procedures. Nevertheless the video hit a nerve at the right time as evidenced by it's meteoric rise in views during the spring of 2011. "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and "Mr. President - Mr. President" are on his Spirit of '76 CD. The CD also contains his emotional song, "God Save Arizona". A video of that song has more than 800,000 on-line views.

On the subject of Ray Stevens and his tour schedule...I'm a bit baffled that those who attended his concert in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina back on October 8th never wrote any blogs, posted on any message boards, or wrote on Ray's Facebook or Twitter page about their experience attending the show. The show took place at the Alabama Theater and I've periodically checked Facebook, Twitter, and Google's blog results but still there's not been any commentary/review of the concert from those who attended unless those who've written their reviews aren't using 'Ray Stevens' as a keyword in their tag box or label box. If this is the case their review(s) won't show up when people do searches for Ray Stevens on the internet. Anyway, like I said, I'm just a bit baffled why nobody's come forward (yet) about their time at Ray's concert.

Ray's next concert will be October 21st in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee at the Country Tonite Theatre. Ray will do two concerts that day. The first show will be at 3pm and the second at 8pm. According to a post on Ray's web-site back on October 10th, the 8pm concert was nearly sold-out...those who've not bought any tickets to the show yet and you're wanting to attend I'd suggest you call the venue and see if there's any tickets left for the 8pm show and obviously if it's sold-out get tickets to the 3pm show. Everything you want to know is located in the Event section of Ray's web-page located here. Ray's page gives what I assume to be the local number for the venue. At the Country Tonite page they also list an 800 number for tickets: 1-800-792-4308.

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 27...

2011-10-12T08:50:00.001-04:00

It's a rainy Wednesday morning...but those Ray Stevens fans in Florida have a lot to cheer about. Three additional concerts have been added to Ray's line-up for early 2012. Previously only the Daytona Beach concert on February 21, 2012 was posted but now there are going to be 3 additional concerts in 2 cities. On February 22 he'll do 2 concerts at the same venue in Lakeland, Florida. As you can imagine it's a day and night performance at the Lakeland Center. The first show is 2:30pm and the second show is 7:30pm. The details are here. On February 23 he'll do a concert at the King Center in Melbourne, Florida. At the moment his web-site indicates the concert is at 1am but that's obviously a typo. This appearance in Melbourne hasn't been added to the venue's web-page yet. I'm often suspicious/skeptical of future concert dates that aren't listed at the venue's page yet but I assume once they go on sale his name will be added to the King Center's web-page. In total this brings his appearances in Florida to 4 concerts during the month of February: 1 in Daytona Beach on February 21 at the Peabody Auditorium; 2 in Lakeland, Florida on February 22; and 1 in Melbourne, Florida on February 23.

Meanwhile...the current music video hit from Ray Stevens, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is continuing to obtain tens of thousands of views each day. In my previous blog I mentioned the video had 177,232 on-line views and that it needed a little over 20,000 additional views to crack the 200,000 mark. The video surpassed that plateau a couple of days ago. When I checked the numbers after my previous blog it was up to 185,843. A further check saw the video with 197,758 views. Still, another check of the numbers the following day saw the video at 208,155. A few minutes ago I looked at the totals and as of now the video's got 218,008 views. As mentioned it's getting tens of thousands of views daily.

On October 11th (yesterday) a new CD from Ray Stevens became available for purchase. The release came from out of nowhere and I was alerted to it by another fan of Ray's. The CD is a collection of songs that are from his past and apparently is designed to introduce a lot of his younger/newer fans to some of the songs that he originally recorded at various points in his career that are no longer in print and are hard to find. Those like myself who have almost everything he's recorded in some format or another (vinyl, cassette, CD, and Mp3) will recognize a lot of the song titles. At Ray's web-store he's posted a note about the CD and he uses the word "re-produce" and so it's a safe bet that the songs are all re-recordings. The original recordings are often owned by whichever label he recorded them for...and a lot of artist's in Ray's generation often have to re-record previous songs just to keep the material in print and available. Since Ray published and produced/arranged just about everything he's recorded he technically owns the actual songs but the recordings are owned by a record company. It gets complex/confusing to a lot of people who don't differentiate between the ownership of the written song and the ownership of the recorded performance of the song. However, there's a slight chance that the CD features the original recordings with new instrumentation.

I plan on purchasing the CD at some point and when I do I'll write a review about it.

This CD is titled Bozo's Back Again. Longtime fans will immediately recognize this song. There is one song on the CD that I've never heard and I believe it's the only new song on the whole CD. It's the song called "Priceless". You can check the CD and it's contents at his web-store located here. As you'll notice, the CD's got 12 songs altogether. Several of the songs date back to his 1982 and 1983 albums. The oldest song on here to get re-recorded is 1977's "Dixie Hummingbird".

1. Bozo's Back Again
2. Priceless
3. Just For The Hell Of It
4. Oh, Leo Lady
5. Game Show Love
6. Another Fine Mess
7. My Dad
8. Me
9. Kings And Queens
10. Dixie Hummingbird
11. Written Down In My Heart
12. Ruby Falls

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 34...

2011-10-08T12:14:00.000-04:00

Good Saturday afternoon!!

CONCERT ALERT!! Ray Stevens performs tonight in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina at the Alabama Theater!!

The show kicks starts at 7pm.

Those who attend the show I hope will blog about it or give commentary on-line about the show and what he sang or what he spoke about. Obviously I'm envious of those who can go! Ray isn't appearing anywhere near my locale this time around...hopefully in 2012 he'll stop at a venue a wee bit closer to me. For those who live nearby and want to go at the last minute here's the link to the concert page...

Alabama Theater

In the meantime, the current on-line video from Ray Stevens "Mr. President - Mr. President" is a smashing success. It's gotten more than 177,000 views since it's debut on September 27th. On the October 7th episode of Mark Levin's radio program the fill-in host, Tom Marr, played the song. Mark's program is heard by millions of people daily. The video's been getting anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 views per day since it's arrival as to how it's nearing the 200,000 mark in little more than a week's time. Specifically the video's gotten 177,232 views. 22,768 is what's separating it from the 200,000 plateau. Given that the video's been getting at least 20,000 views per day it wouldn't be out of the question for the video to reach that mark rather quickly.

Stepping back a few years, though, we come to an obscure song from Ray Stevens called "Laughing Over My Grave". Originally released as a single-only...the b-side of "Bubble Gum the Bubble Dancer" in the mid '60s on Mercury.

As you can see, I've got the vinyl single but the b-side's never been kept in print. However, to tie in with Halloween, a record label's issued a low-budget various artist CD of Halloween-style songs. Ray's mid '60s b-side, "Laughing Over My Grave", is one of the songs chosen for the project. You can click the Amazon link below to get more information about the song's availability...

Amazon Mp3

Ray Stevens and the Spirit of '76, Part 8...

2011-10-03T02:33:00.000-04:00

After having been uploaded on Wednesday September 28th I'm excited to report that the latest on-line music video from Ray Stevens, "Mr. President - Mr. President", has obtained more than 70,000 views during the last 5 days. The exact numbers at the moment are 72,946. It'll need a little over 27,000 additional views to reach 100,000 and I feel it'll accomplish this within a matter of days. The song, as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, comes from his current CD titled Spirit of '76.

This CD already boasts several other songs that have become music video hits: "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and "God Save Arizona". It's anyone's guess if there will be more music videos to emerge from the collection but there's certainly several more that would make funny videos, though, but for now "Mr. President - Mr. President" is the big video at the moment.

Ray began his phenomenal on-line music video success in the late winter of 2009 when he issued a music video of "We The People" which called out Obama Care for what it is. Since the release of that music video in December 2009 Ray's been asked to appear at numerous political fund raisers and political gatherings generated largely by local and national Tea Party groups.

In addition to these appearances he's also been a frequent guest on several programs on the Fox News Channel and it's sister station, the Fox Business Network. Sometimes he'll give an interview but sometimes just a snippet of his latest video will be shown. Earlier in the year he made the rounds on a couple of Fox Business programs promoting the "Obama Budget Plan" video. That video's gotten close to 755,000 views since it's arrival back on April 25, 2011!

Ray Stevens sings about Mr. President!!

2011-09-28T08:32:00.000-04:00

Good Wednesday morning...the much anticipated new music video from Ray Stevens hit the internet today and it's gotten over a thousand views so far. "Mr. President - Mr. President" is one of the songs from his current Spirit of '76 CD and it's a song that he previewed during his C-PAC performance earlier in the year. When I heard the song for the first time during his C-PAC appearance I felt that it should become a single/video. The reason I felt that way is because the song's very funny and I think it's timely. The President, on his own, has painted himself into a corner. Given how rigid his far left ideology is and how it's played a big factor in his decision making it's useless for him to "try" and portray himself as a centrist President. If he tries to he'll only look like a phony and a fraud but somehow I think he'll forgo that inevitable conclusion and attempt to deceive the electorate once again in 2012. This Ray Stevens song goes a long way at poking fun at Obama's image...an image that the President himself created with his attitude and demeanor toward his role as the President. In other words the President has his priorities mixed up as he continues to show little respect for America's values and traditions. This is a very funny song in my opinion and it should become another big hit on the internet and reach more than half a million people during the latter half of 2011.

Ray Stevens In Concert...

2011-09-26T02:54:00.001-04:00

Hello all...as a reminder...Ray Stevens will be out on the concert trail for several dates starting in October 2011. He'll get things started with an upcoming concert at the Alabama Theatre in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The show will be on Saturday October 8th at 7pm and all of the information can be found by clicking the theatre's link in the previous sentence. He'll close out October by appearing at the Country Tonite Theatre in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It'll be this concert, which takes place on Friday October 21st, that Ray will do two shows. There will be a 3pm show and an 8pm show. Ray will then do three shows in November. The first one will take place in Biloxi, Mississippi on November 19th at the Imperial Palace Resort Spa. This show will start at 8pm and it'll be in what the venue calls Studio A on the second floor (for those familiar with the venue!). Ray will then be appearing in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada on November 28th and 29th at the Scotiabank Convention Center. He's appearing during what the venue is billing as a Winter Festival of Lights and you can read all about it here. As you'll see, the venue's web-site has him paired up with Lorrie Morgan but there's no indication of which artist will perform first or if Lorrie appears just on the 28th or if Ray only appears on the 29th. It indicates that the November 28th appearance will be at 2pm while the November 29th appearance will be at 7pm. Ray's web-page states that he'll appear at this venue on both days so it's safe to say that Lorrie will also be appearing on those two days as well. Once you visit the Scotiabank Convention Centre's web-page with the link I provided you'll be able to examine the venue's site and call for information. Lastly, in February 2012, Ray will be appearing at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach, Florida. The exact date is February 21, 2012 and the show starts at 7pm. This venue is the only one to feature a press release that promotes his current success with political on-line music videos. You can buy tickets well in advance at their web-site. Meanwhile, according to a tweet posted on his Twitter page, Ray will soon be releasing a brand new on-line music video for "Mr. President - Mr. President", a song from his current Spirit of '76 CD. A lot of us have been hoping for a music video of this particular song and I can't wait to see it once it gets uploaded in the not too distant future.

Ray Stevens and those Green Jobs...

2011-09-17T08:42:00.001-04:00

As global warming and the goal of "green jobs" continues to prove to be just a glorified dream of the far left and the rabid environmentalists. Last year Ray Stevens issued a music video addressing the global warming silliness. The video contains a lot of sight gags and so if you can't read the news crawl at the bottom of the screen due to the size of the embedded video you should watch it on You Tube at it's full size. The video, as mentioned, was released in June 2010 and it's a very funny story. The song also points out that there's nothing wrong with the people who are skeptical about global warming and all this green energy stuff. The trend lately is to accuse those who question global warming as being anti-environment and anti-planet.

Notice how similar that is with the current American Jobs Bill? Obama wants to blame Congress and those who oppose the huge sum of Government spending as being anti-worker. Even today he's demanding that Congress pass his jobs bill without delay...words we all heard during the Obama Care debate. Oops, that's right, there wasn't much of a debate...the Democrats rammed it through Congress. Now that the Republicans control the House it's clear that Obama's increasing annoyance with the process will be his main talking point going forward. I assume he's realizing everything isn't so rosy when his party doesn't control everything as they once did? It's the American way having debates in Congress instead of the quasi-dictatorial method that the President apparently prefers. Considering he likes to try and bully Congress and issue executive orders on everything that he knows wouldn't pass Congress the traditional way it's not very difficult for his critics to accuse him of attempting to turn America into any one of the socialist nations in Europe.

This brings us to the green jobs factory known as Solyndra. The breaking news is still fluid over what the White House or what Obama's underlings knew when the company received half a billion of our money. The company was refused a Federal loan in 2005 but it received the loan under the Obama Administration. Video of Obama visiting the plant in 2010 and gushing over the plant's goals is all over the internet. The bottom line is more than $500 million of tax payer money was wasted on this company. The big questions include whether the President was acting on political whim and attaching personal feelings toward a company that he authorized a tax payer loan to in spite of any warning signs that the company was headed for bankruptcy. Some say the President will blame the company for providing false information to them prior to the loan approval...time will tell what happens, though.

"The Solar Powered Song" was not issued as a single/music video by Ray Stevens but it's a very funny song from his 2010 album, We The People. Here's a link to the Mp3 at Amazon's store...

Solar Powered Song

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 12...

2011-09-11T05:59:00.000-04:00

Continuing on with the patriotic/military slant for today's blog entries I thought it would be nice to put three Ray Stevens CD's on display. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry Osama Yo' Mama: The Album was released early in 2002. The exact date was February 12, 2002. The song, "Osama Yo' Mama", reached the Country singles charts in December 2001, peaking in the Country Top-50 based pretty much on the airplay it got on morning radio programs where playlists are a little bit looser. It also hit the Country Single Sales list in December as well as the Hot 100 Single Sales list. It made it's debut on the country singles chart during the last week of 2001. Based upon sales of the "Osama Yo' Mama" / "United We Stand" CD single it remained charted on the Hot 100 Single Sales list for more than 15 weeks (peaking in the Top-10) while on the Country Single Sales list it remained charted for more than 30 weeks (peaking at #1). The music video of the song came along in early 2002 and lastly, the full-length CD in February 2002. The sales of the CD single, as mentioned in a previous blog entry, enabled it to be named the fifth most popular selling country song of 2002. As noted previously, all of this success was accomplished with little to no significant airplay on country or pop radio. The album which Curb Records issued in February 2002 consisted of 10 recordings. The unique aspect of the CD is that 7 of the 10 tracks had previously appeared on an exclusive CD that Ray released in 2000. I say exclusive because it was only available for purchase through his web-site and as a result the general audience was unaware of it's existence. That CD, Ear Candy, is listed in his discography at his web-site but it's no longer available for purchase at his web-site store. The tracks from Ear Candy that didn't make an appearance on Osama Yo' Mama: The Album were "King of Christmas", "The Dog Song", and "No Lawyers in Heaven". "The King of Christmas" and "The Dog Song" would later make an appearance on the more widely distributed Box Set in 2005 but "No Lawyers In Heaven" has never made an appearance beyond it's debut on the 2000 Ear Candy release. The song was written by two legendary writers: Paul Craft and Billy Edd Wheeler. In Bluegrass circles the song became a big #1 hit for the artist, Charlie Sizemore, during this past summer. It's his version that gets airplay on the local classic country radio station in my area. It was funny, though, because I knew of this song from Ray's recording of it 11 years ago but some people out there believed it to be a brand new song.

Osama Yo' Mama: The Album track list:

1. Osama Yo' Mama (2001; music video available)
2. Hang Up and Drive (2000)
3. Safe At Home (2000)
4. Freudian Slip**
5. Deerslayer (2000)
6. Bon Temps Roulette (2000)
7. The Hustler (2000)
8. The Lady on the Radio (2000)
9. Gone For Good (2000)
10. United We Stand (2001)

"Freudian Slip" made it's debut on this 2002 CD. However, I'm not sure when it was actually recorded. It could've been recorded in 2000 for the Ear Candy CD but cut out at the last minute but it also could've been recorded in 2001 prior to 9/11. It has a 2001 copyright date but that can be misleading due to the fact that "The Lady on the Radio", which appeared on the 2000 CD, shows a 2002 copyright date within the credits of the 2002 CD. A sequel to "Osama Yo' Mama" appeared in 2003, "Hello Mama". This song was available as a single only and a music video came along the same year.

In spite of the success Ray was having in 2001, 2002, and into 2003 it would take the release of a 2009 music video and this 2010 CD before a national audience took notice once again. In the wake of this CD's release much of the comments from music listeners and music critics alike was that this was Ray's first release in many years and in some articles the writers made it sound as if Ray hadn't put out anything since his home video projects in the early '90s. Since those projects were sold using TV commercials that aired nationally chances are that was the last time they heard of anything new from Ray Stevens!? That's just a theory, though. In previous blog entries I've deliberately highlighted the projects that Ray released between 1996 and 2008. Why? Well, it's because of the overwhelming belief by some that Ray was in retirement before "We The People" came along in 2009. The "We The People" music video became an enormous viral hit on You Tube. It was released in early December 2009 and by February 2010 it had surpassed 2,000,000 on-line views. The song, all about opposing Obama Care and the damaging effects it'll have on the country's medical programs, enabled Ray to become known as a political entertainer. The viral success of the music video led to the ultimate release of this CD in the spring of 2010. The We The People CD features 22 songs and it includes a bonus DVD of 4 music videos. Since 2010 was a mid-term election year the music and the videos from this collection resonated with a segment of the country and suddenly Ray Stevens found himself participating in Tea Party functions both large and small performing the political songs that people discovered on You Tube. "We The People", "Caribou Barbie", "Throw the Bums Out!", "Come to the USA", and "The Global Warming Song" are just four of the music video releases on You Tube connected to this 22 song CD. "Thank You", Ray's patriotic song and video from 2004, was placed on this 2010 collection because it fit the mood of the CD and it had the potential to reach an entirely new audience the second time around thanks to You Tube. "Thank You", for instance, is one of the songs Ray released in 2004 which was during that point in time, 1996-2009, in which music critics and many bloggers said he was in retirement! In fact, some critics used headlines suggesting that Ray came out of retirement to tackle the political issues of the day. That's how out of touch they were! The CD would reach the Top-60 on the Country album chart but would go on to reach the Top-10 on the Comedy Album chart. All of the commercial success and popularity of this collection is tied to his music video successes on You Tube which advertised the music to millions of people. The collection was in the Top-10 on Amazon's various top sellers rankings for several months.

We The People track list:

1. We The People (music video available)
2. Caribou Barbie (music video available)
3. Stand Up
4. Three Fractured Factions
5. Dear Andy Griffith
6. The Global Warming Song (music video available)
7. Let's Roll
8. Solar Powered Song
9. Fly Over Country
10. We Are the Government
11. The Fallen Ones
12. Come to the U.S.A. (music video available)
13. If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus
14. Kings and Queens
15. Obama Nation
16. Throw the Bums Out! (music video available)
17. Sucking Sound
18. Safe at Home
19. Thank You (music video available)
20. Pledge of Allegiance/Star Spangled Banner
21. Mr. Businessman (live version)
22. Midnight in Baghdad

DVD videos:

1. We The People
2. Thank You
3. Caribou Barbie
4. Throw the Bums Out!

This particular collection is the current release from Ray Stevens. It was initially issued in the spring of 2011 with limited availability. The collection wasn't released to wider distribution until the summer of 2011. It was in February 2011 that Ray issued the music video, "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", and he embarked on a mostly talk radio tour. He visited several morning shows on FM radio, too. The song/music video spoofed the TSA and the invasive security procedures taking place at airports. The song dealt with a topical issue that was all over the news for a period of several weeks. To date the music video's gotten over 200,000 on-line views. In my opinion this is due to the fact that the topic of the TSA and the idea of spoofing the airport security procedures requires some sort of personal experience from the video watcher in order to fully enjoy the song. There's a large segment of the population that doesn't fly and therefore they have no experience with airports and so a song about airport security isn't going to connect with that part of the population no matter how funny the song and music video are. Still, it's a top notch performance from Ray and his music video co-stars. Upon the release of the Spirit of '76 CD it was discovered that the previously released "God Save Arizona" is among the track list. This bit of information technically makes the song the lead-off single while "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" becomes the second release from the collection. "God Save Arizona" had only been available as a single and an on-line music video prior to it's inclusion on this CD. That particular song/music video deals with the Federal lawsuit between the United States and Arizona over illegal immigration. The video's gotten over 800,000 on-line views. After "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", Ray released the "Obama Budget Plan". This music video, to date, has 671,155 on-line views. The video, obviously, saw a dramatic increase of views during the peak of the debt ceiling debate several weeks ago. It was just above 500,000 views in mid August and now it's approaching 700,000 in less than a month's time. This CD didn't reach the national charts largely due to the limited advertising that it received. Who knows what 2012 holds in store, though. It being an election year we may see further publicity arise from this collection. There are a couple of songs on here that will fit the election season next year.

Spirit of '76 track list:

1. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore (music video available)
2. Mr. President - Mr. President
3. God Save Arizona (music video available)
4. Cap'n Trade the Pirate
5. My Uncle Sam
6. November Storm
7. Mi Casa Su Casa
8. Grandpa Voted Democrat
9. Obama Budget Plan (music video available)
10. News Machine
11. New Normal

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 11...

2011-09-11T02:52:00.000-04:00

It's an early Sunday morning...September 11, 2011...it's around 2:30am. I've always been somewhat of a night-owl. Having a third shift job through the week causes me to be wide awake during the overnight hours on the weekends. Today marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11 as everyone with any ounce of a brain should know. Yesterday I wrote a blog about Ray's song, music video, and CD lampooning Osama bin Laden. Earlier in the year bin Laden was captured and killed...but that obviously didn't mean that the country should go back to a September 10, 2001 mindset and for the most part it hasn't. Some on the far left of the political spectrum, judging by blog blurbs that I read and things I heard from liberals on talk shows, some of them actually felt like since bin Laden was captured and killed that the military should pack up and leave that region and put "all of this" behind us and focus on other things. Today, on the anniversary of 9/11, I wonder if those people will feel that same way or will they be overcome by the emotional displays that'll be upcoming throughout today and realize that 9/11 isn't just something that people can "get over" due to bin Laden's death. As some of the far left should know even those who didn't have family members or friends on those planes or in those buildings on 9/11 it still left an impact on people all across the country. As was stated by many journalists, reporters, bloggers, and commentators: September 11, 2001 will be a date that'll be remembered forever along side December 7, 1941 and July 4, 1776.

Ray Stevens and 9/11...

2011-09-10T12:35:00.001-04:00

It was nice seeing some web sites out there make mention of the Ray Stevens comedy song from 2002 skewering bin Laden titled "Osama Yo' Mama". A couple web sites you could tell begrudgingly made mention of it...almost apologetically...but yet it was nice seeing some web sites rightfully cite the importance of Ray's single during that time period. I've read commentary over the last 10 years regarding Ray's song. Some people understand the song and they also understand that performing comical songs is what the general public is most familiar with when it comes to Ray Stevens. Given this reputation it shouldn't have been no surprise that he'd come up with a song that captured the mood of many people while at the same time dressing it up in a comical delivery. Other artists put out patriotic songs and much in the same way Ray Stevens kept with his reputation the same held true for other artists, too. Charlie Daniels, for example, put out a song called "This Ain't No Rag It's a Flag". The song was right on and it was the kind of in your face commentary that Charlie is known for in a number of other songs.

Hank Williams, Jr., Toby Keith, Darryl Worley, Aaron Tippin, Clint Black, and Alan Jackson all contributed material centering on the military and a post 9/11 world in the months and years following September 11, 2001.

Some of the songs that were hot in late 2001 and into 2003 were "Have You Forgotten?", "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue", "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Flies", "American Soldier", "America Will Survive", "Iraq and Roll", and of course "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?". Clint Black's "Iraq and Roll" is pronounced "I Rock and Roll" when you hear it but it was spelled as such for obvious reasons. That song, Charlie's "This Ain't No Rag It's a Flag", and Ray's "Osama Yo' Mama" must have hit too close for comfort due to the fact that all three songs, while popular with record buyers, weren't well received on radio.

Ray's single, as a matter of fact, ranked #5 for all of 2002 based on it's sales. It was on the Country Singles sales chart for nearly a year...while the song made it to the country Top-50 (based on airplay). The Country Sales chart ranked commercial singles that were selling in walk-in stores and in on-line stores. CD single sales and digital download sales data were combined. Later on this chart was discontinued as the CD single gave way to the digital download and different weekly charts were created to cater to the digital age.

It's a perfect example of a single that's popular with the public and it's sales prove this fact but radio failed to embrace it. Charlie's single, not labeled as a "novelty song", did manage to reach the lower portion of the country airplay Top-40. This was due to the spotty acceptance it got from some of the D.J's and partially due to the publicity it got when Charlie refused to appear at a CMT gala where this song was banned from being performed (in spite of being one of the top selling singles in country music at the time!). The fact that the gala where this song was banned from being performed was the Country Freedom Concert is even more ironic. Research shows the song was recorded in October 2001 and released in early November. Clint Black's "I Raq and Roll" was issued in 2003 and reached the country Top-50 based upon airplay. It was a single-only release, too.

"Osama Yo' Mama", on the other hand, came along late in 2001 as well and was first available as a CD single with Curb releasing it under the name Osama Yo' Mama: The Single. It's b-side was "United We Stand". The b-side was originally a huge hit single in 1970 by the group Brotherhood of Man. Ray's version is outstanding...if one didn't know the details behind Ray's recording you might think it was recorded in the '70s based on it's arrangement/sound...that's how well Ray re-captured the song's mood. Each song would eventually be released again by Curb Records on the full-length CD titled Osama Yo' Mama: The Album. The CD single and the full-length CD featured the same art work and that's why the label used "The Single" and "The Album" when they issued them to record stores. The "Osama Yo' Mama" music video came along early in 2002. The full-length CD reached the Top-30 on the Country Album chart...an incredible accomplishment considering it's title track was not heard much on country radio.

The 2002 music video's been seen by more than a million people on You Tube since it's 2009 upload. The number of on-line views for the video are 1,171,304!

Enjoy the Ray Stevens video...and remember 9/11 and it's impact on the nation...

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 10...

2011-09-05T04:34:00.001-04:00

Labor Day Monday! Ray hasn't recorded too many songs that could be classified in the working man sub-genre of country music but he's recorded a few songs that tie in with it. I use the phrase "working man" because that's the most often used description even though everyone knows women work, too. Although Ray hasn't did too many working men songs I'd qualify some of the songs he's done about the country's economy part of that genre because the overall economy has to do with money, income, taxation, debt, and deficits...and there's not too many people who work for nothing and so songs about working and songs about the economy sometimes go hand in hand.

The song I always make reference to right away is "Working for the Japanese", a song Ray recorded in 1991. I reference this song because it's the first one he did specifically about the nation's economy and it's trading practices. The song, quite amusing and satiric, actually created some controversy among advertisers afraid that the song would offend Japanese businesses from sponsoring American radio programs. The song is harmless, actually, but if you're highly emotional and prone to hyper-sensitivity over practically anything then you may have issues with the song. That same year Ray recorded "Juanita and the Kids" which skewered the I.R.S. and had fun with the decades long stormy relationship between the I.R.S. and the working class. In the song the I.R.S. is auditing Ray and it's revealed who makes up his family...much to the embarrassment and disgust of the Government workers (as seen in the music video).

Two years later, in 1993, Ray recorded "If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus". This particular recording takes aim at the I.R.S. again by wondering why Uncle Sam can't just settle for 10% and leave everyone alone. It originally appeared on the CD titled Classic Ray Stevens which I feel a lot of people over-looked given it's unusual title. A lot of people, even today, when they see it listed on Amazon or Itunes assume that the CD is filled with previously recorded songs. The fact is all 10 songs were brand new at the time. The CD's title was a reference to the classical music design on the CD's cover.

Meanwhile, "If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus" was re-recorded by Ray in 2008 and released as an Mp3 single. The re-recorded song would appear on Ray's 2010 CD, We The People. Around this same time Ray recorded "Sucking Sound" which spoofed the political climate and Ross Perot specifically. Originally available on the CD, Hurricane, the song would end up being among the 22 songs on 2010's We The People. You almost get the feeling that slowly but surely Ray was gravitating toward political humor by the middle of last decade but he wouldn't completely submerge himself in it until 2009's music video release of "We The People".

The latest on-line numbers for the "Obama Budget Plan" music video are 642,806. The so-called big speech from the President is suppose to occur on September 8th...this coming Thursday...where he unveils what some call a jobs plan. Obviously such a speech taking place in September 2011 means that all of his plans and policies of the last 2 and a half years never worked. We all knew this but there are a lot of people who would have you believe otherwise. Now he's going to put on a show on September 8th and all of us feel that he's going to blame Congress and but the blame on a lot of other people...curiously leaving himself out of the equation except when it comes to casting himself as the mediator-in-chief and creating a storyline where Congress is to blame for everything while he's sat helpless watching it from the sidelines. Without the speech having aired that's my theory of how everything will be spun.

There are a lot of other theories as to what he'll say on the 8th and how he'll attempt to emotionally manipulate practically any scenario and recite sob stories from a sob family from sobville, U.S.A. He's not above using people's misfortunes to bolster his own potential political fortunes...he's did such things before by using children and using the disabled to emotionally manipulate an outcome or to serve as human props on stage while he's spewing venom against who he sees as "filthy rich and greedy". So, frankly, this September speech from Obama isn't going to change people's opinions or change people's feelings or their mood. He'd have to be delusional to think otherwise...and maybe he is?!? I believe he feels that people are going to just overlook all of the laws and policies that he's set in place (how anyone can overlook Obama Care is beyond me!) but nevertheless he's going to hope that people set aside all of that which is why he's always ridiculing those who challenge the things he's said or done.

He wants people to think everybody who disagrees with his views are from another planet or aren't living in reality. The truth is Obama's not living in reality and I feel he wants people to shrug off the realities of unemployment and high anxieties and simply vote for him again on the promise that "we just need more time to get things done". Yeah...he needs more time alright...more time to damage the country with his radical, economically destructive policies.

Ray Stevens in September...

2011-09-04T07:35:00.001-04:00

In this first blog entry of September it's with wonderful elation that I share three Ray Stevens music videos with you all. These music videos were put together by Ray back in 2000 but they hadn't been officially uploaded onto You Tube until a few days ago. The upload dates show May 25, 2011 but these were not available for viewing back then or I would've made mention of them at the time. "Virgil and the Moonshot" and "Gitarzan" were uploaded by Ray in May. Perhaps the three music videos located below were intended for the same release date but at the last minute were put on hold. Whatever the story is behind why these three videos have an upload date of a few months ago when they weren't available for viewing until a few days ago will probably remain a mystery...but enjoy them nonetheless...

First up is 2002's "Hello Mama", the sequel to "Osama Yo' Mama". The sequel was released as a promo single only and was often available on eBay. The music video came along in 2003. Musically it carries the exact same melody as "Osama Yo' Mama" but it differs greatly with the lyrics. In the sequel we get to hear Ray as bin Laden and George W. Bush but, of course, we get to hear Ray as Mama...and the music video is hilarious.

The second music video is "Freddie Feelgood and His Funky Little Five Piece Band". The song originally was released as a single in 1966! Ray did this music video decades later in 2000 on a home video titled Funniest Video Characters. This is the song where Ray gets to show off his scat-singing prowess by vocally mimicking a range of instruments.

The third music video is "Juanita and the Kids", also from his 2000 home video. The song was originally recorded by Ray in 1991 so it wasn't decades old by the time a music video came along. The video is wickedly funny. The song is all about the IRS.

In the obscure trivia department: 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of Ray's first Grammy win. In early 1971 he won for "Everything Is Beautiful". He won in the Best Male Pop Vocal category. The song was nominated in four other categories for Ray and in one category for Jake Hess. So, in total, the song received 6 nominations and won in 2 of the categories. As mentioned, Ray won for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance while Jake Hess won for Best Sacred Performance. A year earlier Ray's "Gitarzan" was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. "Love Lifted Me" was nominated in 1973 in the Best Inspirational category while in 1976 he received 2 nominations for "Misty" (winning the Best Arrangement category). Ray would receive 2 more nominations in the years that followed. A 1980 nomination for Best Comedy Recording for "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" and a 1988 nomination in the same category for "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". In total Ray had 11 nominations and 2 wins.

A video clip that goes back to 1970, right around that "Everything Is Beautiful" era, appeared on You Tube a few days ago. It's a video of Ray Stevens and Tom Jones singing a medley of Ray Charles songs. It's a classic...showing Ray and Tom bantering and trading verses.

Ray Stevens discusses Obama and other issues...

2011-08-30T07:51:00.000-04:00

Good Tuesday morning all you Ray Stevens fans!! I came home from work to find that at some point yesterday Ray submitted an opinion/commentary to Fox News and it was published in their opinion section. To read Ray's commentary on Obama all you have to do is click here and read it for yourselves. I was thrilled to read the commentary and enjoyed it greatly. It will no doubt make it's way onto the liberal blogs and afterward will predictably become maligned and trashed and called everything you can think of. I was surprised to find that Ray wrote an opinion piece since it's something that I never would've thought he'd do considering his songs and videos speak for themselves but it was great seeing him enter the commentary realm in this sort of way, too. Who knows if he'll do this regularly or not?! In the meantime his current music video, "Obama Budget Plan", has enjoyed 592,445 on-line views so far!

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 9...

2011-08-29T09:11:00.000-04:00

Released in 1988 is this comedy album that I've written about before...the collection of songs is called I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like as you can see. The album was almost overshadowed by the on-going success of his 1987 topical single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". In previous blog entries I've mentioned the fact that a lot of newspaper columnists and commentators outside of country music were discovering Ray's 1987 single months after it had been a hit. Paul Harvey, for example, wrote a column about the song in early 1988 (nearly a year after it's release). In the meantime Ray's 1988 album featured 10 comical recordings...some of the recordings were adventurous in that their sound and production were unlike anything on previous Ray Stevens comedy albums of the era. The album's main attraction, at the time, was "Surfin' U.S.S.R." which Ray sang in the style of the Beach Boys. The music video offers visual gags...particularly a scene where Ray, dressed as a sailor, holds up a picture of John Lennon whereas his ship mates hold up pictures of Vladimir Lenin. The John Lennon reference is a nod to The Beatles song "Back in the U.S.S.R.". I've often felt that "Surfin' U.S.S.R." was inspired by the two extreme sounds of the Beach Boys "Surfin' U.S.A." and The Beatles "Back in the U.S.S.R.". The video contains other exclusive content not found on the audio recording...specifically the opening scene where Ray plays the part of an off-camera news broadcaster informing us about a meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev. In the exclusive content life-size puppets of Reagan and Gorbachev (along with their wives) appear on screen. Ray does vocal impressions of both Reagan and Gorbachev.

As you can see this is the 1988 vinyl record resting on top of my record player. These pictures are from 3 years ago and I've since gotten a different record player. Of course, I listened to the album once I stopped taking pictures! At the time that the pictures were taken the 1988 release had been around for 20 years. I may have posted these pictures in 2008 but again I may not have. I often like to spotlight albums and singles from Ray that reach a milestone of sorts and 2008 would've been this album's 20th anniversary. In addition to "Surfin' U.S.S.R." the other commercial single was "The Day I Tried To Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive". That particular single made the country charts for a few weeks in 1988...ironically, though, the first single didn't reach the charts in spite of the Cold War topicality of the music video. Those were the only two songs issued as commercial singles from the album. In hindsight there should have been emphasis put on his wicked parody of the Michael Jackson song, "Bad". Ray covers the song and turns it into a country free-for-all. A song that appeared originally on 1987's Greatest Hits, Volume Two titled "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis" makes an appearance on this 1988 album. The dark humor of the song and it's melody fit in perfectly with the various styles heard on this collection. On this 1988 album Ray dabbles in the sounds of the Beach Boys, plays around with the blues on "The Booger Man", spoofs Michael Jackson, incorporates Jordanaire-type harmony vocals in "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", plays the part of a bewildered husband and father in "Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex", and closes out the collection playing a couple of hippies commenting about their silver anniversary on the "Old Hippie Class Reunion". If all this wasn't exciting enough we get to hear "Blood and Suede"...a comical story dressed up as a haunting tale of a car wreck in Los Angeles. The song comes complete with Ray as the gruff, history laden storyteller. The serious, escalating music and hushed tone vocal delivery masks the obvious hilarity of the lyrics.

Track List:

1. Surfin' U.S.S.R.
2. The Booger Man
3. Mama's in the Sky With Elvis
4. Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex
5. Bad
6. The Day I Tried To Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive
7. Blood and Suede
8. Ethelene the Truckstop Queen
9. I Don't Need None of That
10. Old Hippie Class Reunion

Ray Stevens and Comedy Music...

2011-08-29T00:42:00.004-04:00

A few days ago a brief article on Ray Stevens appeared in a newspaper. The article gave some spotlight on the upcoming comedy song Encyclopedia that Ray's working on plus it mentioned the enormous success he's been having on You Tube with his political music videos. I wasn't going to spotlight it because it is a brief write-up but then I decided that since I want this blog to be rather thorough then I should include any write-up I come across, large or small, that's been written about Ray since late 2008.

Upon reading that article return here and click the following links to hear audio interviews from Ray.

The first interview is what I'm calling a contemporary classic that took place on WSM radio with Eddie Stubbs earlier this month. The Intimate Evenings series featured Ray as a special guest on August 1st and the audio archive is available below. The show ran 2 hours in real time, including commercial breaks. The archives don't include commercials but there are edits where commercials originally aired...

Ray Stevens: 8-1-11.

In a previous blog I mentioned a recent interview Ray gave...that recent interview took place on WLAC radio on Devon O'Day's program entitled Plain Jane Wisdom. The audio link is below...

Ray Stevens: 8-15-11.

Strangely enough Devon O'Day co-wrote one of Ray's songs but it wasn't brought up in the conversation. Devon co-wrote the love ballad "Meanwhile" with fellow DJ Gerry House and singer Billy Dean. The song can be found on Ray's 1993 CD, Classic Ray Stevens. It was during the WLAC interview that Ray named quite a few of the songs that'll be on the Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music.

Ray Stevens On Hee-Haw, Part 3!!!

2011-08-29T00:05:00.002-04:00

Early Monday morning here...a few minutes past midnight...August 29th. On Sunday night the 1972 Hee-Haw episode with Ray Stevens re-aired on RFD-TV. This particular episode first aired on RFD-TV back in late February of this year. After it's February air-date RFD, for whatever reason, began re-running the 1971-1972 season for a second time. Here's hoping that the rest of the 1972-1973 season airs this time around. Ray will appear for a second time during this season. Ray appeared on episode's 78 and 88 in 1972...a 10 week span between appearances...so looking at this year's calendar if all goes well and my math is correct that second 1972 episode featuring Ray will air on November 6th.

As I touched upon in previous blog entries about this episode it marked the arrival of several key cast-members: Misty Row, Marianne Gordon, and Gailord Sartain. In the case of Sartain he wasn't mentioned in the opening credits but he appeared several times in police uniform on the show.

George Lindsey, who'd been appearing on and off as Goober throughout the 1971-1972 season, appeared several times on the 1972-1973 season opener but wasn't featured in the opening cast call either. Ray Stevens performed "Turn Your Radio On" and "Along Came Jones" but didn't participate in any of the comedy sketches. A lot of this happened due to the fact that a lot of the comedy sketches were taped during sessions in which the guest stars weren't at the studio. By the mid '70s and especially throughout the '80s the guest stars were often featured in quite a few of the sing-a-long comedy sketches but in the earliest episodes of the program many of the guest stars were on hand to sing their songs and that was it. The season opener for 1972, with Ray Stevens as a guest, will re-air on RFD-TV later this morning at 10am Eastern.

Arlene Harden and Dizzy Dean are the other guests. Check out my previous entries titled "Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw" and "Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw, Part 2!!!" for further commentary about that particular episode.

In the meantime, Ray's current Spirit of '76 CD is ranked among the Top-40 best selling Amazon Mp3's in the Singer-Songwriter category.

As you can tell I did a redecoration project on this blog page. I removed the Ray Stevens time-line that ran along the right side of the page to only showcase a few items. I did this because the time-line was rather lengthy and it ran quite a long way down the side of the page. Even though I've always known the time-line was lengthy I decided to shorten it up considerably to where it ends right around where the third blog entry ends. This way the blog page looks a lot more concise and compact which is how I prefer it looking for awhile.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 8...

2011-08-28T11:59:00.005-04:00

Good Sunday afternoon! As August winds down it'll soon be September, of course, and in case you all hadn't stopped by I'm here to inform everyone that Ray Stevens' web-site has gotten a major overhaul as far as the design is concerned. Here's the link to the New Web Page. It's still raystevens.com but for those who frequently visited the site you'll notice the design change immediately. One of the additions to the page is what they're calling "Ray TV". This section of the site contains all of the music videos that he's uploaded onto You Tube over the last 2 years. This allows people to watch his videos on his own web-site without actually having to visit his You Tube channel. Another change is the Twitter feed. On the former web-page the tweets would be live and any tweet that mentioned 'Ray Stevens' would be visible on the Twitter feed. However, on the new page, only the recent tweets from Ray's account are shown. From the looks of it the Twitter box will feature just 4 updates at a time.

The Ray Stevens web-store has also been revamped. Also, it may just be my imagination, but it looks as if a lot of items that once were for sale are now unavailable. The background, which used to be a light blue, is now white which makes the lettering and graphics stand out a lot more and it makes things look sharp and more crisp. There are multiple tabs, just like on the previous web-page, indicating the various sections of the site. The tabs at his site are:

Home, About, News, Events, Ray TV, Music, and Store.

Obviously, "Store" is where you purchase his items. "Events" is the new tab name for the previously named "Tour" which lists the concerts Ray will be giving this year. The section will also, I assume, be used to promote TV or radio interviews that he'll participate in next year. Ray has four concerts scheduled for later this year...1 in October and 3 in November. Two of those November concerts will take place up in Canada. He is scheduled to appear in Florida in February 2012. When you visit his web-page and click "Events" you'll be able to see a more detailed over-view of where he'll be appearing. The home page contains a big banner advertising his current CD, Spirit of '76. Later this year he is suppose to release the much-anticipated novelty/comedy song salute which will feature at least 100 songs. The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music should be available soon. No release date's been announced but in a recent interview Ray listed quite a few songs that he recorded that'll be on the collection. Among those mentioned were "Mairzy Doats", "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah", "Haunted House", and "Dang Me" just to name a few. He's re-recorded a few of his own songs for this collection, too. In other interviews he mentioned "Open the Door, Richard", "Three Little Fishes", and "The King is Gone and So Are You" as songs that'll be on the Encyclopedia.

The current view count for the "Obama Budget Plan" music video is 584,041.

He's Still Ray Stevens To Us!!

2011-08-22T01:15:00.003-04:00

If I were super-talented I'd write a song called "He's Still Ray Stevens To Us" because that's what I often feel like saying anytime I come across a blog or read a comment left on some social network site that doesn't have positive or flattering words to say about Ray or his music. Now, due to my not having the patience or the discipline to write a song with such a title I decided to use that for the name of this latest blog entry. He's still Ray Stevens to us...the fans...those who appreciate the music, the laughs, the concerts, the TV and radio appearances he's done in his career. A big reason why I say he's still Ray Stevens to us is because there's some who've made commentary over the course of the last several years suggesting that Ray's somehow changed and isn't the same anymore. I happen to feel that Ray's the same...only difference is he's more vocal about topical issues now than he ever was. Who's to say that Ray never held these same views years ago? Who's to say the Ray Stevens of 1980 didn't hold a lot of the same economic and social views he does today? The only difference, as I said, is he's more vocal about his viewpoints now than he was then.

Does that make his music no good because he's decided to incorporate a political element to his recordings now? He's still Ray Stevens to us...he's still funny, he can still sing, he still produces and arranges his own albums which obviously shows that he's still heavily involved in the making of his records whereas most of his peers (the ones who are still recording) don't get that involved. All of these things the long-time, hardcore Ray Stevens fans already know...but that can't be said for those who really aren't long-time fans but pretend they are just to either stir up trouble or to, well, stir up trouble. It exists mostly on social media sites and occasionally it bleeds over onto places like Amazon, too, where quite a few customer reviews turn much more into artist bashing than a legitimate review...and you guessed it...most of the "bashing" takes place from those who position themselves as "long-time fans". I've read plenty of comments from 'long-time Ray Stevens fans' who didn't really know much about Ray at all beyond a couple of songs. So, because of those experiences and several others through the years, I continue to doubt people's sincerity when they use the "I've been a long-time fan..." routine. In my way of thinking you can't possibly be a "long-time fan" of anybody or anything and not know quite a lot about whatever or whoever you're a fan of. It defies the entire concept of being a fan if you know very little about a singer or an actor/actress or athlete that you profess to be a "long-time fan" of.

He's Still Ray Stevens to Us...and with the release of this 22 song CD in 2010 Ray Stevens cemented his new-found reputation as a political entertainer and the numbers speak for themselves. Two of his politically themed music videos have gotten more than 3 million on-line views. "Come to the U.S.A." satirizes the illegal immigration problem in America by sarcastically welcoming illegals to the country because once they get in they'll have a great ol' time. This particular music video has it's share of critics...it's a highly emotional topic...and so far it's gotten 5,463,343 on-line views. The video hit in the summer of 2010. "We The People", on the other hand, is the video that launched Ray's journey into political entertainment. The song emerged late in 2009 followed soon after by a music video. The song's lyrics deal with opposing Obama Care. The critics tried to marginalize the song and it's video but when that wasn't working they tried to make Ray out to be some sort of "right wing kook" and when that didn't work they finally moved on. Interestingly, when "Come to the U.S.A." was issued as a video the critics tried and tried to label Ray as a right-wing zealot but that accusation fell on deaf ear's too, just as it should. "We The People" so far has gotten 4,499,002 on-line views.

He's still Ray Stevens to us!! This is his most recent release...it's the Spirit of '76. The CD contains "God Save Arizona" in which the music video has gotten 792,233 on-line views which is quite amazing when you consider the video's uniquely topical in that it deals with the Federal Government's lawsuit of Arizona over it's illegal immigration policies. So it was more about a specific court action rather than something political...even though politics is never far away when it comes to these kinds of things. In my opinion the far-left political stance of the Attorney General and Obama ignited a lot of the turmoil for their out-right refusal to respect Arizona's law and I put the blame on those two for the drama that followed. For those who yet haven't heard the song it's a serious performance...it's not funny or remotely humorous. The song gives his serious side a chance to shine for one of the few times in a music video. Illegal immigration has always been a hot topic but among the mainstream media it became a top news story throughout much of the summer and early fall in 2010 and as a result this music video and "Come to the U.S.A." musically commented on the activity.

Elsewhere on the CD there's "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" which also deals with a topic that was hot and seemingly on everyone's minds for a period of a couple of months but then the topic suddenly vanished. By that account it's a novelty song in the truest sense of the word! The song/video spoofs the TSA's airport security procedures. The video is quite comical and it takes some jabs at some political figures along the way. The video was going along great (earlier in the year) but then, as the topic started to fade from attention, the same thing happened with the video's impact as it currently sits just below the 200,000 mark in on-line views. The exact number is 199,857. He 'bounced back' with the following video aimed at the Federal budget. The "Obama Budget Plan" has gotten more than half a million on-line views so far...it's current total is 558,490. The video's been on-line since late April and so it's not like it's brand new but it's the most recent one he's uploaded. A lot of the reason why that video got much more on-line activity than the TSA song is because the budget and the deficit is something that affects everyone in some way or another. The economic/fiscal policies of the Obama Administration impact all Americans and the "Obama Budget Plan" humorously skewers the mishandling of the economy. On the other hand not everyone's had an experience with the TSA...and for some segments of the public the humorous song wasn't connecting with them as much.

Starting with 1957's "Silver Bracelet" and going through his most recent recordings in 2011 no matter what comes and goes and no matter which music style he's singing you're bound to be entertained by Ray Stevens. No matter what a hip music critic might say or what some far left political blogger might say, deep down, He's Still Ray Stevens To Us!!

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 14...

2011-08-19T17:31:00.004-04:00

A couple of days ago Country Weekly published a brief review of the current Ray Stevens CD, Spirit of '76. The review can be found here. The review is positive...rating the CD 3 and a half out of 4 stars. The review mentions three songs from the CD and it mentions Ray's You Tube success. The on-line review also includes an embedded video of "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", also known as the TSA song. Also, there's a link to purchase the digital download at either Amazon or Itunes. I highly recommend it! This Spirit of '76 is a companion piece to the collection he put out last year, We The People. That collection features 22 songs and the current one features 11 songs.

The "Obama Budget Plan", the current video, sits with 547,380 views so far. Ray's video from last year about illegal immigration, "Come to the U.S.A.", is mentioned in the review as is "Mi Casa Su Casa"...which is a further tale of illegal immigration found on the Spirit of '76 CD.

Expect the topic of illegal immigration to heat up again as Obama and company (Department of Justice and Homeland Security) enact shades of the proposed Dream Act. The plan is to offer amnesty to all illegal immigrants...turning a blind eye to the obvious fact that they're here illegally. Obviously this plan is part of Obama's re-election campaign. You don't need 10 years in college to figure out Obama's agenda and strategies.

It seems as if the Democrats care more and more about shoring up votes than seriously trying to solve the country's problems. Is it any wonder why Obama's really never been off the campaign trail? In my opinion and probably the opinions of millions of others the President is an arrogant, vain, out of touch, incompetent man-child whose answer to everything is blame this and blame that but never can the blame, in his mind, be put on him. It must be nice being the President for nearly 3 years but feel entirely blameless and fail to see that your policies are the result of this dismal atmosphere in America and overseas.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 7...

2011-08-14T23:36:00.002-04:00

In the previous blog entry I posted a vinyl promo single of a Ray Stevens song. Today's blog entry spotlights a CD promo single. These are what were typically sent to radio stations beginning at some point in the late '80s and all throughout the '90s. CD promo singles are still being manufactured today but with more and more consumers purchasing music on-line it's becoming increasingly rare to find a CD single. This particular CD promo single comes from 1991 and it's for the Ray Stevens hit "Working for the Japanese". Note the clever way that the arrow on the single begins in front of Ray's name and it points to the song title and then the arrow continues onward and ends at the songwriter's name. Ron DeLacy wrote the song and another clever use of the arrow ties in with the subject matter of the song: economics! Unfortunately for this single it fell victim to the very subject it was satirizing. A lot of advertisers, sensitive to the song's satire, threatened to pull their ads off various radio stations if the song continued to get airplay. As a result the song was removed from quite a few stations spelling an end to it's meteoric rise in popularity. In one written account of what had happened it was made clear by a DJ in Texas that his listeners didn't have any objections about the song and that it was one of their biggest requests. It was quite clear that as early as 1991 DJ's, nor the listeners, had any say on what was being heard on the radio anymore. It was now becoming crystal clear that radio consultants and advertisers were clearly calling the shots and that the days of listener feedback and DJ input was long gone when it came to what songs were heard on the radio. Is it any coincidence that around this same point in time, 1991/1992, a lot of established, popular country singers were having increasing difficulty getting their current songs on the radio? No, it wasn't a coincidence...it was a deliberate plan...but that's a topic for another time. Around the time of Ray's 1991 single he was just starting his incredible run in Branson, Missouri at his famed theater. He'd experiment with and conquer the home video market from 1992 through 1996 before returning to audio recordings. Ironically 20 years after "Working For the Japanese" Ray has a current video single about economics...this time it's all about the out of control debt and deficit titled the "Obama Budget Plan" which has more than 523,000 on-line views as of this writing.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 6...

2011-08-14T22:20:00.006-04:00

From the pen of Layng Martine, Jr. comes this 1974 hit from Ray Stevens entitled "Everybody Needs a Rainbow". As you can see from the color of the label this is what was considered a promo single...only sent to radio stations. The commercial release featured a much more colorful image of the tree branch with the melted vinyl record on display. The melted vinyl is on this label, too, but the all-white backdrop doesn't necessarily highlight it too much. As I discussed previously the "melted vinyl" look is in my opinion the record company's way of saying their music is hot. Anyway...the promo singles had a white backdrop and over the last several decades they've become commonplace at flea markets both on-line and off-line as a lot of radio station material found it's way to the public domain. "Everybody Needs a Rainbow" reached the country music Top-40 in addition to charting in the Adult-Contemporary format. On AC radio (known as Easy-Listening and, or, Middle-of-the-Road at the time) the single peaked inside the format's Top-20...clearly indicating that it was a much bigger hit with slightly older pop audiences than mainstream country fans. That kind of thing is something I've always pointed out through the years of having this blog in publication and it's always a fascinating study in how a song that can be a smash in one format can fall on deaf ears in another. The song's title sums up what it's about...it's an uplifting song about always having goals or dreams because it would be too boring if everything came easy. The b-side of "Everybody Needs a Rainbow" is a song called "Inside" from the 1973 Losin' Streak album. "Everybody Needs a Rainbow" wouldn't appear on an album until a compilation album came along in 1992 called A Brighter Day which featured more than 15 gospel and inspirational recordings by Ray. Incidentally, "A Brighter Day" was originally found on his 1970 album, Everything Is Beautiful. Later on "Everybody Needs a Rainbow" was featured on the Varese Sarabande CD entitled All-Time Greatest Hits in 2002. "Everybody Needs a Rainbow" and "Inside" both get AAA+ ratings from me!

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 13...

2011-08-12T14:46:00.009-04:00

Ray Stevens Spirit of '76 collection is ranked at #86 in sales on Amazon's Comedy CD list. The CD collection officially went on sale on Amazon this past Tuesday (August 9) where it had been on pre-order for a couple of months. The Mp3 digital download, however, had been available since April of this year so a lot of the more die-hard fans of Ray Stevens already had the collection on their computer's music program long before it went on sale in CD format. Some use Windows Media Player, some use Real player, some have their music sent to their Itunes library to hear the audio files they purchase. The "Obama Budget Plan" has 511,281 on-line views! With the video having over half a million views it allows it to join the ranks of several other videos that Ray's released on You Tube which have gotten half a million views and higher. The insipid budget plan that was signed by Obama recently has temporarily pushed the budget topic off to the sidelines but it'll be a hot topic once again. The economy will always be a priority...and with the economy in poor condition and unemployment still well over 10% nationally...the debt, deficit, and budget isn't too far off the radar.

That unemployment percentage I gave includes those who've stopped looking for work or are working part-time in low paying jobs or whose jobless benefits have ran out and therefore are no longer counted as "unemployed" given that they no longer can make a weekly or bi-weekly unemployment claim. When the jobs numbers come out and whenever there's a drop in unemployment it's not wise to foolishly believe it's because companies are hiring again. A lot of factors have to be weighed in before one reaches the conclusion that companies are hiring again. Chances are people are being dropped off the unemployment registry because they've reached a benefit deadline and are no longer able to draw unemployment.

In the latest attempt to divide people, Obama apparently is now going down the "let's all get along" route due to his realization that it's potentially the only way he can salvage his presidency. I don't know of anyone who'll fall for the scheme but I'll bet some out there (the absolute clueless) will feel empathy. His most recent sound-byte revolves around him bemoaning the political structure that's been in place for decades upon decades. All of the sudden when it looks as if he's starting to come across as vulnerable in the eyes of Independent voters the time has apparently come for the White House to kick start a divisive dialogue that places America's political landscape as being broken and in their opinion Obama's the right person to fix it.

Nothing's wrong with America's politics, Mr. President...but I feel there's something fundamentally wrong with you.

Obama's been in office since January 2009...it's August 2011...he can't separate himself from what's taken place since he's became President. He and his campaign workers will no doubt try and spin his presidency as being a victim of a broken political system but the facts still remain that he's the President and it's his party which controls the Senate and up until January 2011 they also controlled the House of Representatives. Obama's Administration will no doubt use the Republican controlled House as a scapegoat and perhaps use it as a divisive tool but that doesn't erase the facts of what decisions and policies have been put in place since January 2009. Does he think that the American voters in 2012 are going to be dumb enough to believe that a Republican controlled House is responsible for things that took place prior to their arrival in Congress in 2010?!? Maybe he and his Administration thinks the voters have short-term memories?

The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress dating back to the middle of last decade. The smart and informed voters aren't going to fall victim to the "there's something wrong with America's politics" argument. The informed, smart voters will see that for what is: Nothing more than a campaign tool of which the desired result is to have people arguing over political discourse and spend less time fuming over Obama's policies and decisions. In other words, Obama would love it if the voters would just ignore the turmoil and problems going on and ignore the policies that he's responsible for and simply turn off all the politics and vote for him again for old time's sake. He won't be able to re-create a 2008 euphoria but apparently he feels if he can sour people on politics they'll ignore what's going on in Washington and as a result be ignorant to his unpopular policies. You see, if you're uninformed and, to put it bluntly, ignorant, you won't realize the damage and financial destruction that his Administration has heaped upon the country. Then, in theory, once an electorate is ignorant or is soured on politics Obama can act as a savior bent on "fixing" America's politics (for the better?) and the voters will cheer him on as a savior, prophet, God, messiah, etc.

So, for now, it looks as if he and his Administration (and the mainstream news media) are going to invent a problem (political discourse) and project it as some sort of social crisis and Obama will come riding to the rescue.

It says a lot about an Administration when they have to either invent a crisis or find a mundane topic and twist it into something vital in an effort to create potential positive publicity when a President's own record will do more harm than good.

If anyone reading this can't see this latest scheme for what it is then you're exactly who the Obama Administration is catering to.

My message to whoever gets the Republican nomination for President is to continue to rub Obama's nose in his own failures and make him defend his policies. When voters or candidates look at the facts it's a slam-dunk win for any Republican. As it's been said over and over and over Obama's the worst President since Jimmy Carter. Carter's time in office is strikingly similar to Obama: both had issues with oil companies and the oil business in general, there were high gas prices (cheap compared to 2011), high unemployment, big Government expansion, and massive entitlement incentives. Those who said Carter had personal charm were probably correct...but all the charm and all the talking couldn't get him re-elected in 1980. This same thing can happen in 2012...all the charm(?) and brow-beating that Obama revels in won't get him re-elected if the Republican nominee points out every single fault of Obama and points out all the negatives that happened since he took office in 2009.

Common sense and facts must win out over charisma, smooth talk, and mile wide grins. With a few exceptions the voters threw a lot of the bums out of Washington in 2010...but more work is needed in the Senate since a lot of those members will be up for re-election in 2012. In November 2012 it'll once again be time to "Throw the Bums Out!" as Ray Stevens suggests in this music video...

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 5...

2011-08-07T18:13:00.005-04:00

In the career of Ray Stevens 1979 is highlighted by one song in particular...a satirical spoof entitled "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". What you see is half of the lengths that the publicity department went to in their promotional campaign of Ray's song. The other half of the promotional campaign would feature an album on Ray in which the cover of the album would be another spoof of a Manilow release. The single was written by Dale Gonyea and it became a Top-50 pop hit in 1979 but it reached the Top-15 on the Adult-Contemporary lists. This is important to point out because the Adult-Contemporary format is where Barry was the airplay king...having a solid string of virtually uninterrupted Top-5 hits dating back to early 1975. Manilow's streak of Top-20 successes would continue on AC radio through 1986 but Ray's single came at a time (1979) when Manilow was reaching his peak on Top-40 pop radio even though he still had nearly 8 more years of AC success ahead of him. That's why it's so ironic that Ray's spoof of Manilow hit bigger on AC radio than on pop radio...you'd think the format that wasn't playing Manilow as much (pop) would've had a field day with "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" but instead the exact opposite occurred: favorable AC radio played the Manilow spoof.

The hit single spawned the album I earlier mentioned...the album was a compilation project built to support Ray's unexpected hit single. That album, The Feeling's Not Right Again, mocks the album design of Manilow's 1975 release, Tryin' To Get The Feeling. This 1979 single and the chicken clucking "In The Mood" from late 1976/early 1977 are the two recordings that Ray Stevens did for Warner Brothers that often get included on compilation projects. He had more hits for Warner Brothers than just those two releases but given that those two are in the comical/novelty vein probably explains why compilers single out those two recordings in particular. Most compilers like to spotlight his comical recordings more than the non-comical...but then again, some projects feature more non-comical selections than comical...it all depends, I guess, on which record company is putting the collections together and which audience they're aiming to attract.

Ray Stevens and Obama Money, Part 12...

2011-08-05T15:00:00.004-04:00

The following audio clips, broken into 3 parts, comes from a radio interview Ray Stevens did on the Clay and Marty Show on KERN radio (also known as Takin' Care of Business). The interview took place back on June 11, 2011 and so it's nearly 2 months old by now but it's chock full of funny commentary and topical humor from the hosts and Ray, too. As most are well aware the debt and deficit will continue to be a big story no matter the can kicking that went on in Congress the other day...so the conversation between Ray and the KERN radio hosts is still "in the moment" as the saying goes. The interview is great!

Anyway...I don't believe I was aware of this interview back in June...maybe I knew of it but couldn't listen to it on-line and in the months since had forgotten about it...but whatever the case the audio clip was uploaded onto You Tube yesterday and I've listened to all 3 parts of the interview and like I said it's great and wonderful and any other positive adjective one wants to use.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The "Obama Budget Plan" music video is slowly but surely reaching half a million on-line views. The most recent total is 471,145. I predicted mid August to be the time when it makes the half a million mark. On August 9 Ray's Spirit of '76 will become available all over the place. It's only been available as an Mp3 digital download at his web-store and a few other on-line stores but starting on August 9 the CD version will become readily available on Amazon and other places for those who prefer to purchase a CD rather than purchasing Mp3 audio files on-line. The CD has actually been available for purchase at Ray's web-store for a couple of weeks but the CD won't go on sale to the general public until August 9 (this coming Tuesday). The CD version's been available for Pre-Order at Amazon for a couple of weeks.

The songs featured on Spirit of '76 are:

1. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore (music video on You Tube; 191,792 views)
2. Mr. President - Mr. President
3. God Save Arizona (music video on You Tube; 785,111 views)
4. Cap'n Trade the Pirate
5. My Uncle Sam
6. November Storm
7. Mi Casa Su Casa
8. Grandpa Voted Democrat
9. Obama Budget Plan (music video on You Tube; 471,145 views)
10. News Machine
11. New Normal

The on-line views of those music videos will obviously grow in total as the days, weeks, months, and years go by. I also predicted that Ray might emerge with a new on-line music video in the weeks to come. The current video, "Obama Budget Plan", is sitting on 3 months and so he's just about due for another music video so maybe a new one is in the works!? When it's released, of course, I'll blog about it!

The 2-hour Ray Stevens interview...

2011-08-02T15:18:00.004-04:00

On August 1st Ray Stevens was the special guest on WSM radio's Intimate Evenings series hosted by Eddie Stubbs. The show aired for 2 hours and was available for on-line streaming but for those who didn't hear it here's a run down of some of the things that went on...

The show took place at the Ford Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The program opened up with "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills". Eddie introduced Ray and the two of them spoke about the song becoming a chart hit in 1961 with Ray bringing up that he'd been recording and releasing songs for several years prior to his arrival on Mercury Records but none of his releases had reached the national charts until "Jeremiah Peabody" came along. He made mention that his earliest recordings made local radio station charts but didn't break out nationally. Ray spoke of his 1960's single, "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon", and how it led him to write "Jeremiah Peabody" given how the Sgt. Preston single (a novelty song) had racked up more sales than any of his previous releases to that point. Ray, around this time in the interview, also spoke of his desire to get back out on the road much more than he's been lately. A running joke throughout most of the first hour of the program had Ray playing the part of an artist desperate to do any kind of show...constant reminders of how available he is often found their way into the interview.

Eddie, a couple of times throughout the program, remarked on how packed the venue was and that they had to bring in extra chairs to accommodate all of the people who stopped in to hear Ray speak about his experiences in the music industry and hear tidbits about the songs he's written or recorded. Eddie asked Ray about the gospel songs he's recorded and this led into Ray speaking about his dad's favorite song being "Turn Your Radio On". Ray spoke of his days under the guidance of Bill Lowery and about the years he spent working on local radio programs in Georgia with Joe South, Jerry Reed, Billy Joe Royal, and Tommy Roe. Ray spoke of how Nashville has changed so much since the early '60s and commented that the easy-going, open-doors attitude of late '50s and early '60s recording studios is what enabled him to get his foot in the door. Ray remarks that his Sunday school teacher was instrumental in getting him in contact with Bill Lowery.

Ray recounts his first meeting with Ken Nelson, of Capitol Records, in the late '50s. Ray had made a demo recording at some point in 1957 which Lowery sent to Ken Nelson. One thing led to another and Ray found himself with a recording contract on Capitol's subsidiary, Prep Records, when he was still a teenager. Although not mentioned in the interview it was also during this time that it was suggested that Ray use a stage name. His birth name is Harold Ray Ragsdale...but neither "Harold" nor "Ragsdale" in the minds of the promotional department at Capitol had a lot of pizzaz and so the decision was made to have him use his middle name, Ray, and his mother's maiden name, Stevens, and from that moment on he would go by the name 'Ray Stevens'.

The conversation shifts to his modern-day recordings with Eddie remarking how incredible it is that at this point in Ray's career he's still highly active and working on multiple recording projects. Eddie only had to mention the phrase "Obama Budget Plan" and it sent the audience into applause and laughter...for the audience was well aware of the song's content and the music video. Eddie also asked about "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" and this led into Ray speaking of his recent experience with political songs and mentioning his C-PAC appearance several months ago. The audience laughed and cheered during his humorous quips about the current situation in Washington. Eddie played "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" and Ray commented afterward that during the C-PAC event he appeared on a political discussion panel. He remarked that he felt that a good number of the politicians on the panel, in general, perhaps only knew of him by way of the older songs from the '60s and '70s and probably weren't too sure why 'Ray Stevens' was sitting on a political panel discussing such heavy topics as the debt, deficit, and health care. He mentioned that as soon as he started into "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore" he could feel electricity in the air from the audience...he said that they enjoyed it and got a kick out of it. After speaking a little about the Spirit of '76 Eddie plays "Obama Budget Plan".

Eddie, in all seriousness, asked Ray where he comes up his song ideas...instant laughter from the audience resulted from that question. Eddie plays "It's Me Again, Margaret" and how the song's writer, Paul Craft, had released the song nearly a decade before Ray's more familiar version was recorded. Ray commented on the inclusion of the 'dirty laugh' and he re-created the laugh several times during the conversation surrounding the song. From there Eddie brings up "Misty" and Ray talks about how that recording and it's arrangement came into being. It was during this point in the program that Eddie gave some spotlight on Ray's arranging skills. He marveled at Ray's talents at being able to hear songs play out in his head and know which instrumentation to use and everything else that goes into arranging music. He credits Bill Justis with teaching him how to be a music arranger. Eddie brought up Ray's multi-instrumental talents and the numerous recording sessions for other artists that Ray participated in during the '50s, '60s, and early '70s. Ray said that he used to smoke...but quit in 1969. He also commented that session musicians were paid around $50.00 per session.

Hour 2 kicked off with "Ahab the Arab". Ray gave the history of the song and Eddie commented that during the same recording session as "Ahab the Arab" Ray played on LeRoy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and Joe Dowell's "Wooden Heart". The recording, according to Ray's recollection, happened in January 1962 and it was released as a single in the spring. Out of the blue Ray mentioned that he was working on a book about his career and life with the help of his songwriting associate, friend, and business partner Buddy Kalb. He didn't give a release date but said that it's in the works!

Eddie named off several of Ray's songs. Eddie and the audience chuckled when he got to "Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues". Ray remarked that the single wasn't that big of a hit in America. He felt that it was possibly due to political correctness. It's a possibility because political correctness, in it's earliest stages, was starting to creep into television around the turn of the decade (1970-onward) and as the years went by more and more regulations on what could be seen on TV or heard on the radio became more and more prevalent. Ray, defending the song, commented that he was simply wanting to do a song with the Chipmunk sound effects...this caused laughter from Eddie and the audience...and then Ray commented that it became a big hit in England.

Ray's version of "Oh, Lonesome Me" is played. The conversation then turns to Ray's reputation for zany, comical recordings. Eddie brings up the One For the Road collection and the conversation of travel and being on the road leads to "Hang Up and Drive", a song Ray recorded about people driving and talking on their cell-phones.

Eddie brings up how busy Ray continues to be and this leads into a discussion about Ray's sit-com, We Ain't Dead Yet. The sit-com had a trial run on a former web-page that Ray's people operated called Ray Stevens Backstage. It was a premium web-page and it was up and running for nearly 2 years before it went off-line. Those who were members of this site were able to see a few episodes. I hope a general audience will be able to see the shows one day. They're funny, cute, and unique.

Eddie mentions that Ray won two Grammy awards...one for "Misty" and another for "Everything Is Beautiful". Streaking came up and this led into Ray talking about where the idea of the song came from and how he was able to get a jump on the fad nearly a month before it was all over the national news. "The Streak" was played and by then the program was nearly over. Eddie remarked that the Intimate Evenings series had never featured a performer primarily known for comedy but given that this was something new for the series he wanted Ray to have the honor of being the first comedian to make an appearance should they decide to have other comical entertainers stop by in the future. The show closed with Ray's song, "Thank You", from the We The People collection.

All in all the interview was great! Ray's had a varied career that encompasses just about every aspect of the music business: singing, songwriting, producing, arranging, and session playing. There were some highlights of his career that they didn't get around to discussing such as his You Tube music video successes; his revolutionary home video sales successes in the 1990's; his years in Branson, Missouri and the story behind "Shriner's Convention". I have no idea if the interview will be archived at WSM's web-site or not. I'll check their web-site periodically and see if an audio link becomes available.

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 4...

2011-08-01T06:09:00.005-04:00

The Very Best of Ray Stevens, released in 1975, features 12 tracks recorded by Ray between the years of 1968 through 1975...plus one recording from 1961. The album was first released internationally in 1974 with a different picture of Ray...basically it was the picture of Ray that appears on his Turn Your Radio On album of 1972. That version features 14 tracks. In America the LP was released in 1975 with a bearded Ray Stevens on the cover and 12 tracks instead of 14. This wasn't the first appearance of a bearded Ray Stevens on an album, though...that distinction goes to 1973's Losin' Streak. One of the earliest pictures of him in his now well familiar bearded appearance was a 1969 publicity picture for "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". As you can tell from the track list, the America release included emphasis on the early to mid '70s. The fact that the LP starts off with "Misty" and includes another 1975 hit, "Indian Love Call", indicated that the record label wanted to continue to spread the exposure of those two songs beyond the country format. Once upon a time a Greatest Hits or a Very Best of... collection was bought by casual fans and the public in general. Studio albums were often bought by the dedicated fans. This fact inspired a lot of record labels in the '80s, specifically, to fill out a lot of Greatest Hits releases with songs that didn't exactly reach the weekly music charts...but since the general public would most likely purchase a 'hits' collection rather than a studio album it enabled a lot of songs that otherwise wouldn't have gotten much attention the chance to shine and become familiar to listeners.

It wasn't uncommon for a song to become popular through exposure on compilation releases. Quite a few of the compilation CD's put out on Ray Stevens in the '80s and '90s contained a lot of non-hits but due to the exposure the songs continually got on a lot of compilation releases the songs became just as popular and familiar with listeners as the songs that made the charts. "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O." is a single from Ray in 1989...it didn't reach the charts but everyone in his fan-base knows of the song. Ray Stevens is one, if not the only, artist able to have popular songs and albums without the benefit of ranking among the Top-10 with each and every release. This is why I've constantly said chart rankings mean nothing to Ray's career. A lot of artists live and die with each chart ranking or agonize over why something peaked at #3 instead of #1...with Ray Stevens I've always gotten the feeling that he really doesn't care if one of his songs or albums charts at #1 or #101...as long as he's satisfied and his audience is pleased then all of the other stuff is just icing on the cake if it happens.

The track list for the America released Very Best of Ray Stevens is below:

1. Misty; 1975
2. Unwind; 1968
3. Turn Your Radio On; 1971
4. Everything Is Beautiful; 1970
5. Mr. Businessman; 1968
6. Indian Love Call; 1975
7. The Streak; 1974
8. Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills; 1961
9. Nashville; 1973
10. The Moonlight Special; 1974
11. Gitarzan; 1969
12. Ahab The Arab

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 3...

2011-07-31T16:38:00.004-04:00

Unreal is quite an album from Ray Stevens. The collection came along in 1970 as the second album by Ray Stevens on the Barnaby label. Officially there are three exclamation points after the album's title but I hardly ever include them whenever I write about the album. This album includes a lot of topical songs...a keen understanding of history will go a long way for some to enjoy the collection as most of the songs deal with some sort of news item of the day. Protests, social turmoil, anti-war riots, and general chaos were on the menu during the late '60s/early '70s era. This one album, in particular, seriously tackled a lot of the issues of the day and it's one of his all-time best. The political aspect of a lot of the songs are common sense, middle-of-the-road observations of the 1969-1970 political scene. Ironically, much in the same way that a lot of Ray's modern-day songs reflect a common sense approach to 2011 politics the very same thing was happening on this album but with an obvious 1970 flavor. I always like to point out this 1970 album whenever a modern-day critic accuses Ray of "being political all of the sudden". Those who really pay attention to Ray's music are well aware of this album and are aware that Ray's an Independent thinker and continues to be one...in spite of what his critics would have you believe.

The album contains 11 songs...9 of which were written by Ray Stevens! The only songs that Ray didn't write were "Come Around" and "Talking". In the case of the latter Ray's brother, John, wrote the song. A writer credited as B. Smith wrote "Come Around".

The album's title, Unreal, or Unreal!!! as it appears on the album cover, as far as I know was lifted from "Sunset Strip". Within the song's chorus the background vocals (all Ray Stevens I might add!) can be heard singing "something Unreal about you!" several times. "Sunset Strip" is arranged to show reverence to the sounds of the Beach Boys. The song became a Top-20 hit on the Easy-Listening chart.

1. Sunset Strip
2. Can We Get To That? (social comment)
3. Imitation of Life (love song)
4. Night People
5. America, Communicate With Me (political/topical)
6. Come Around (social comment)
7. Loving You On Paper (topical)
8. Dream Girl (love song)
9. Monkey See, Monkey Do (social comment)
10. Talking (political/topical)
11. Islands (love song)

Besides "Sunset Strip", the album contains another Easy-Listening Top-20 hit...the very topical "America, Communicate With Me". The song is often misinterpreted today as being a full-on 100% show of support for liberal politics and the anti-war movement but in reality, if you listen carefully, Ray's political Independence is heard loud and clear as he examines the problems going on in the country and he offers his solutions on how problems can be solved.

The most revealing aspect of the song's true intent, for those still unclear about the song's message, is near the end when he sings about remaining loyal to the country and in spite of the wars and protests going on...brought about by both political parties...that he'll continue to be a patriot that won't turn his back on the country or wish it were like some foreign land whose people have no freedom or rights. The song, as I mentioned, has a distinctly Independent flavor and I can bet that Ray wrote the song and put it out to give a voice to those who were often over-looked by the extremes in both political parties. All anyone has to do is listen to the song's opening lines to understand how Independently thought out the song is...but nevertheless some people out there who've discovered the song in the last several years have gone to great lengths to paint the song in a decidedly liberal direction perhaps in the hopes of undermining Ray's modern-day political success with conservatives and those who consider themselves members of the Tea Party? Whatever their motive is the facts always defuse the left-wing bomb throwers of the world.

"Night People", "Sunset Strip", "Imitation of Life", "Islands", and "Dream Girl" depart from the political, topical, and social comment nature of the album. So it's like half the album is distinctly political and topical while the other half of the album breaks up the mood, just a bit.

The 1970 album was issued on CD and Mp3 in 2005. It marked the first time that all the songs from the album had been in commercial circulation in more than 30 years. Up until 2005 Ray's Barnaby albums had remained in the vaults and never re-issued on CD...but that all changed when Collectible's Records re-issued 6 of Ray's Barnaby albums in 2005.