Hello once again Ray Stevens fans!! We're on the eve of the annual tradition of setting our clocks ahead one hour at 2am. I don't if the State you live in participates in the clock changes (spring forward/fall back) or not but it's something we've done for decades. One of the main points of this limited blog series was to spotlight some of the songs Ray Stevens has recorded that deal with women. I originally wanted to pinpoint songs that feature a woman's name in the title but then I figured I'd also toss in some notice to songs that are about women, in general, and therefore those would fall into the love song category.
In 1970 one of Ray's albums, Unreal, featured numerous love songs. One of them, in particular, dealt with the sad side of love. "Islands" tells the story of a couple who've drifted off into their own separate worlds. The woman has left the guy and the song is something of a lover's plea for her to return. Sad love songs tend to outnumber positive love songs on that 1970 album. A couple of other sad ones are "Night People", "Imitation of Life", and the war ballad "Loving You on Paper". The album had it's share of positive and inspiring songs, though, such as "Come Around", "Can We Get To That?", and "America, Communicate With Me". In the video clip below you'll hear Ray perform "Loving You On Paper" from a May 1971 episode of the BBC music series, In Concert.
In Ray's 1973 album, Nashville, there are all kinds of love songs on it. First off is the title track. "Nashville" isn't necessarily about a woman but it's a love song directed at the city of Nashville, Tennessee. In several interviews Ray mentioned that he wrote the song while touring Australia and was homesick. He missed being in Nashville and being with his family. Ray's take on "Never Ending Song of Love" is fabulous as is the love ballad "Love Me Longer". The album features the original recording of "You've Got the Music Inside" which he would re-record five years later. In the latter recording from 1978 he gave it a softer music arrangement to mirror his softer vocal performance.
As was the case in 1970 with the release of two albums Ray released two albums in 1973, too: Nashville and Losin' Streak. Some of the love songs on Losin' Streak were a re-recorded version of "Just One of Life's Little Tragedies" (originally recorded by Ray in 1963), "Idaho Wine", a mid-tempo recording of "Easy Loving", and a bluesy rendition of "Bye Bye Love". The Losin' Streak album isn't officially uploaded onto YouTube and neither is Have a Little Talk With Myself but if you manually search for songs from either of those two albums you'll come across the audio tracks. I'll follow up with part three later on this week.
