Isn't it wonderful having the music of Ray Stevens to enjoy?? This particular album, Me, is 40 this year. This album was released on the Mercury Records label and featured co-production work from Jerry Kennedy. If you've visited Ray's CabaRay showroom in west Nashville you know doubt have seen photos of Jerry Kennedy as well as noticed the red leather booth named for him. There are several red leather booths located inside the showroom named for other music industry producers, too: Shelby Singleton, Fred Foster, Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley, and Billy Sherrill. Now, just in case you're curious, Jerry Kennedy was one of the top record producers for the Mercury Records label and their subsidiaries. He is also a musician and played on all kinds of recording sessions...and is an important person in the career of Ray Stevens. When Ray was originally on Mercury Records in the early 1960s the recording sessions were usually, but not always, produced by Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy. Ray Stevens, in addition to being a singer/songwriter/musician he is also a music arranger and so in addition to being his own music arranger he would arrange the songs that other recording artists on Mercury or a subsidiary (such as Smash Records) would be recording. When Ray returned to Mercury Records in 1983 a lot of time had passed between those early recordings during 1961-1965 and then-present year, 1983. Jerry Kennedy had racked up dozens upon dozens of number one hits as a record producer for much of the Mercury Records country music roster throughout the '60s and '70s. Those recordings included songs by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, The Statler Brothers, Roger Miller, and Tom T. Hall...just to name a few.
The legend, Ray Stevens, strikes a familiar pose in this 1983 photo. Mercury Records issued the Me album in the latter half of the year. I don't have any kind of inside information or anything detailing his recording contract but apparently it was a one-album deal and Me came along late in 1983. Cashbox magazine featured a brief news item in their March 26th issue about Ray signing a recording contract with Mercury/Polygram. There were a series of single releases that weren't promoted much, if at all, until the release of "My Dad" in the latter half of 1983. From the pen of Dale Gonyea this ballad was a tribute to fatherhood and fathers in general. It is not the same song that Paul Petersen recorded in the 1960s from The Donna Reed Show. I feel the need to mention that because you'd be surprised by the amount of internet sites that credit the song, "My Dad", as being a song recorded by both of them with no explanation given that the two songs share the same title but nothing more. More on that single release later. However, the first single release from Me happened to be the ballad, "Mary Lou Nights". It's such a great song...a bouncy yet bluesy love ballad detailing the not so romantic topic of a couple breaking up. The harmonica is the main instrument. Cashbox magazine did a brief write-up of the single in their June 4, 1983 issue. In the September 10, 1983 issue of Cashbox there was a passing mention of a new single release from Me titled "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out". This song, too, is a wonderful twist on the heartbreak ballad with a joyous/up-tempo chorus. Those two single releases, in particular, are just more reason why we fans love the music of Ray Stevens so much. You're often not going to get the same old-same old with a Ray Stevens recording. It doesn't matter whether he's the writer or co-writer or if it's an outside song written by somebody outside the inner circle of the umbrella of Ray Stevens Music. Ray's skill as a record producer and music arranger means every song he records will seem as if he wrote it. This talent is why a lot of people just assume that he writes everything he records...his reputation as a writer precedes him.
Mercury Records released the Me album in September 1983...and in doing research months ago I came across a Cashbox magazine album review in their September 24, 1983 issue. It was a positive review that mentioned several of the songs from the album and pointed out that the album cover was one of the most memorable...referring to the fact that other recording artists at the time were content to have large close-up's or a generic publicity photo serve as an album cover. One of the long standing traditions in Ray's career are his eye catching album covers. The B-sides of the first two single releases happened to be: the bouncy "Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee" was the original B-side to "Mary Lou Nights". The B-side of "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out" happened to be the clever "Game Show Love". I challenge any of you that find that song online to try to pick out all of the catchphrases and game show titles within the lyrics.
Mercury released "My Dad" as a single in December 1983 and the publicity surrounding it arrived at the midway point in January 1984. The sentimental and sensational ballad entered the Cashbox country singles chart on February 11, 1984...his first appearance on the country music singles chart in almost 2 years. Throughout most of 1984 Ray promoted the Me album and continued touring the country and making himself familiar to viewers of The Nashville Network...as other country music artists were doing (well established and newcomers). Ray had been a familiar face on local, regional television outlets for at least a decade by 1984...appearing in print advertisements and doing TV commercials for Farm Best and their successor, Flav-O-Rich Dairy. The B-side of "My Dad" is the album's title track, "Me". The Me album, turning 40 this year, is a great album and one that has not been re-issued in the digital age. His daughter, Suzi, has a guest vocal on the song, "Yolanda". As mentioned in the beginning of this blog entry Me happened to be a one-album deal for Ray Stevens while at Mercury Records...reuniting, creatively, with Jerry Kennedy one more time. Me would also be, as of 2023, the last studio album from Ray Stevens to feature a co-producer. His 1982 album, Don't Laugh Now, featured Bob Montgomery as a co-producer...but having a co-producer is something of a fluke for Ray Stevens since almost all of his studio albums have never included a co-producer. There were exceptions very early on in his career, obviously, but from 1970 onward he was almost always working on the production of his albums by himself. I have the Me vinyl album in my personal collection. Have you ever heard this ultra rare 1983 album? He deliberately re-recorded some of the songs from the album for a release nearly 30 years later. Here is the track list of the 1983 album...
1. Love Will Beat Your Brains Out
2. Mary Lou Nights
3. Special Anniversary
4. Piedmont Park
5. Me
6. My Dad
7. Yolanda
8. Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee
9. Kings and Queens
10. Game Show Love
Down below are a couple of video clips. The first one, from 1983, features Ray performing "Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee" in March 1983 during the launch night of then-new cable channel, The Nashville Network.
This second video clip isn't from Ray's YouTube channel but I'm including it anyway. It's a performance by Ray of "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out".
Hello all...it's Father's Day! Last year around this time (June 17, 2018) Ray Stevens uploaded a performance he did of the song "My Dad" from his CabaRay Nashville television series. I never created a blog entry title centering around that performance/video clip but I decided to do so today. As mentioned it was uploaded a year ago tomorrow...for Father's Day fell on June 17th last year. I never knew the specifics but it's always the third Sunday in June which marks Father's Day and so this time around it falls of June 16th but last year it was June 17th.
Anyway...there are a couple of websites I came across in the past that mistook the title of Ray's recording and claimed it's a cover of an earlier song by the same title from actor Paul Petersen. A glaring mistake on their part, obviously, because both songs are different even though they share the same title, "My Dad". Isn't it revealing how very little research actually goes into the construction of some websites out there? I'm not posting the early '60s recording simply because this is a Ray Stevens fan created blog page and so his recording of the completely different song, also titled "My Dad", gets total deference.
Ray originally recorded the song in 1983 for his Mercury album, Me. It's from the pen of Dale Gonyea. Ray re-recorded the song for inclusion on his 2011 album, Bozo's Back Again, which is a mix of re-recordings and some obscurities. The song, "Ruby Falls", made it's CD debut on that release but the song itself had been available as an Mp3 single for almost a decade. "Priceless" had never been available while "Just For The Hell of It" had originally appeared in the soundtrack for the 1981 movie, Cannonball Run. In the 2011 recording of the song Ray includes an opening verse not heard in the 1981 soundtrack recording. In the 1981 recording the song begins with the chorus. He retains the same music arrangement for the 2011 re-recording.
"My Dad", as mentioned, was one of the re-recorded songs on that 2011 CD and here's Ray performing it on an episode of CabaRay Nashville...
Hello one and all on this Father's Day 2018! I was going to post about a particular Ray Stevens recording, "My Dad", and I already have a photo collage put together spotlighting the commercial and promotional single as well as the album it originally appeared on in 1983...a vinyl album titled Me. On Father's Days past I've mentioned "My Dad" on this blog page and this time around, as you can tell, it's no different. However, there is something new to add...a performance of the song by Ray Stevens! It's rare indeed to see Ray perform the song...and as far as I know the last time he performed it on television was the mid 1980s on a telecast that I've only read about in vintage country music publications but never seen with my own eyes. That performance (from 1984) was part of a television special featuring other recording acts.
"My Dad" emerged from an album Ray Stevens recorded for Mercury Records in 1983. The album is chock full of romantic ballads and uptempo sing-a-long performances...including a song that critics may consider a novelty song, "Game Show Love", but if critics should label it as such it's only because of the song's title and it's construction of lyrics (name dropping titles of game shows and their catch-phrases) but as far as the vocals are concerned Ray performs it straightforward without a slightest hint of comedy. It's the album's closing track and one of the uptempo songs I was referring to at the start of the paragraph. The album was produced by Ray and Jerry Kennedy. This was sort of a reunion as the two of them worked together in the early to mid 1960s on numerous recording sessions. Jerry was often a session musician on Ray Stevens recordings back then and sometimes he was credited as Orchestra leader. On the single release of "Ahab the Arab" in 1962 it credits Jerry Kennedy as such. Ray's main record producer was Shelby Singleton but both he and Jerry Kennedy are credited as producers on a series of recordings Ray did in the mid '60s while under a unique contract. The language of this contract gave Mercury the right to issue commercial recordings on Ray while he held another job with a competing label, Monument, as strictly a session musician/A&R man. In other words he wasn't allowed to record anything for Monument until his recording contract with Mercury ended in the latter half of 1965. After the contract ended with Mercury then Monument began to issue commercial singles on Ray for the first time.
Ray recorded "My Dad" twice in his career. There is the 1983 original from the Me album and then there's a fairly recent re-recording found on a CD titled Bozo's Back Again released in 2011. It's on that particular 2011 CD where Ray also revives a couple of other songs from the Me album: "Game Show Love", "Kings and Queens", and "Me".
Earlier today a performance of "My Dad" by Ray Stevens was uploaded onto YouTube. The performance is from an episode of his CabaRay Nashville television series. The performance originated from the television studio on Music Row where Ray used to tape the show prior to it's move to the actual CabaRay Showroom in West Nashville. Episodes taking place at the CabaRay began airing this season (starting with Episode Five guest starring Moe Bandy).
But anyway...here's Ray Stevens singing "My Dad"...
Hello to all the fans of Ray Stevens! This is going to be a somewhat busy several days given the grand opening of the CabaRay four days away on January 18th. Those of you fortunate enough to attend the grand opening on the 18th or any of the concerts during opening weekend and beyond no doubt will have memories that'll last forever. Are you all excited?? I imagine the fans in attendance will share their experiences on social media so I'll be looking for commentary to spotlight on this blog. In this particular blog entry I decided to put some spotlight on an album that turns 35 this year...the wonderful album, Me.
The album is packed with an assortment of recordings...ten altogether...and of those ten Ray wrote or co-wrote seven of them. As mentioned the album hit in 1983 on the Mercury Records label and technically the album arrived very late in the year but I wanted to celebrate the 35th anniversary of it's release a bit early...after all it's 2018 so mathematically it's 35 this year...and anyway it's one of my favorite albums from Ray Stevens. The album was produced by Ray and Jerry Kennedy. This marked the second album in a row in which Ray was aided in the production of an album. His previous release, Don't Laugh Now, featured Bob Montgomery as a co-producer. The Me album, however, was kind of a homecoming in that Mercury Records is the label upon which Ray became a nationally recognized recording artist in the early '60s under the guidance of both Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy. If you look at the credits on a lot of Ray's early and mid '60s single releases on Mercury you're going to find Shelby Singleton listed as producer and Jerry Kennedy listed as the orchestra leader of the sessions (specifically The Merry Melodies Singers). By the mid '60s several single releases credited both Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy as producers of Ray's recordings. For example...a mid '60s novelty recording titled "Mr. Baker the Undertaker"...
If you click the image of that single you'll see a close-up or you may be able to see the producer credits, Shelby and Jerry, without having to click the image. That image is the promotional copy of the single. The commercially released image had the standard black color label but during this era the promotional copies of the single releases had a red color label. Even though this blog entry is mainly to spotlight the 35th anniversary of the Me album I decided to step back in time even more just to show that Jerry Kennedy played a role in those early Mercury recordings from Ray Stevens...going from being credited as an orchestra leader to being credited as a co-producer along side Shelby Singleton. You will also note over on the left hand side of the single the publisher credits belong to Lowery Music. Yes, as you may have guessed, it was the publishing company headed up by Bill Lowery...the man responsible for getting Ray onto records in the late '50s on Prep and it's parent company, Capitol...and eventually NRC (a label that Bill co-owned). Even though it's true that the single releases from Ray involving co-production by Jerry Kennedy weren't what you'd consider wildly successful nevertheless the recordings are first rate for their era and there's no denying the infectious fun of both the novelty and ballads being issued by Ray Stevens during those early to mid '60s Mercury Records years.
Fast forward 20 some years to 1983 and Ray finds himself reuniting with Mercury Records for a one album deal featuring Jerry Kennedy as co-producer. At this point in time the biggest recording act for the label and Jerry Kennedy was arguably the country music group, The Statler Brothers, even though he produced almost all of the roster on Mercury's country music division throughout the late '60s and into the early '80s (acts like Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom T. Hall, early recordings by Reba McEntire, Roger Miller...anyone recording country music for Mercury or it's subsidiary labels often featured Jerry Kennedy as producer and sometimes even session musician). Once the CabaRay opens on January 18th you'll be able to see the glorious red leather section of the venue honoring numerous record producers based in Nashville and among those spotlighted is Jerry Kennedy (the other five are Shelby Singleton, Chet Atkins, Fred Foster, Owen Bradley, and Billy Sherrill).
As I pointed out earlier in the blog entry the album officially turns 35 later in the year but I wanted to celebrate it's debut earlier. If you have never heard of Ray's Me album seek it out on eBay. It's been in my Ray Stevens vinyl collection for more than 10 years. I purchased my copy off of eBay and sometimes a cassette copy comes up for sale on eBay, too. Some of the songs from this 1983 album have been re-recorded by Ray for recent projects...so chances are you've heard some of the songs but weren't aware that they originated earlier. Just what are the songs on this album?? Here is a track list...I highlighted in bold the songs that Ray had a hand in writing:
1. Love Will Beat Your Brains Out
2. Mary Lou Nights
3. Special Anniversary
4. Piedmont Park
5. Me
6. My Dad
7. Yolanda
8. Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee
9. Kings and Queens
10. Game Show Love
In case you have the album, too, you can glance over all of the technical aspects of the project such as length of each song and the writers credited on tracks 4, 6, and 7 plus the photographer credits, etc. etc. The entire album is serious, in tone, but some have declared "Game Show Love" as a comedy song and there are those that have never heard "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out" but nevertheless erroneously declare it a comedy song, too, based entirely on the title.
In case you've heard rumors for years let me assure you they're true...Ray did in fact appear as a special guest on an episode of The Fall Guy in 1983 titled The Pirates of Nashville. Ray portrayed a character that just happened to be a country music singer and near the end of the episode he performs "Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee" all decked out in the shirt he's wearing on the 1983 Greatest Hits album that RCA issued. The episode originally aired on November 23, 1983 right around the time Me was considered his most recent album. Mercury issued several single releases from the 1983 album...the one that reached the country music charts happened to be "My Dad", one of the songs Ray didn't write. The single peaked on the country charts in early 1984 but well below the radio heavy Top-40 section. It is not the same song that Paul Petersen had a pop hit with even though several internet sites erroneously make that claim. Ray's recording of "My Dad" is a completely different song.
