Ray Stevens: 1977 Australian Release

Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! Several hours ago I come across a product being sold over on eBay that caught my eye. If you're familiar with the cassette tape releases on Ray Stevens from Warner Brothers in the late 1970s, well, this one may intrigue you considering that it's an Australian pressing of Ray's 1977 album, Feel the Music. I had seen the United States cassette copy of Feel the Music on eBay a number of years ago and it's overall cover design is identical to the other Warner Brothers cassette releases from that time period in the United States. However, the Australian copy of Feel the Music is aesthetically different as you can see. 

Yes, that's the Australian copy of Feel the Music. As you can see the album cover which accompanied the vinyl copy is on the cassette cover but then you have his name and the title of the release posted at the top. The thing that caught my eye the most is the title is shown in lower case letters. That particular album cover of a stereo speaker, as you can see, presented something of a challenge to the designers of the cassette tape release. We have Ray's name and the title of the album shown twice. In practically every cassette tape release of a vinyl album what typically happens is only the image of the vinyl album photo is used. However, in this case, since the 1977 album cover is an in illustration of a stereo speaker and not simply a photo of Ray it would've been impossible to to a magnification because Ray's name and album title is printed within the illustrated image of the stereo speaker. If they were to have done a blown up/magnified image of the album cover for the cassette tape release all a consumer would see is a large brown area...and it's hard to tell if consumers would've been able to figure out that what they're looking at is a stereo speaker should they not be familiar with the vinyl copy which contains more detail of the illustrated image. The United States cassette copy looks like this...

Do you own a copy of 1977's Feel the Music? If you have the vinyl album as I do then you know that on the back of the album it features a photo of Ray. Since the album cover is meant to look like a stereo speaker then, as you may have guessed, the back of the album looks like the back of a stereo speaker with illustrations of small screws and to indicate the look of a speaker's back panel. Also, the photo of Ray features small illustrated images of tape on the upper left and lower right hand sides. This is the typical appearance of how strips of tape look on the back of a stereo speaker holding up the plastic pouch containing the manufactures warranty. This 1977 album was almost completely written by Ray Stevens. There are 10 tracks on here and he wrote 9 of the 10 songs. The one song that he didn't write happens to be "Set the Children Free" which came from the pen of Buddy Kalb. Now, if you're a long time fan of Ray Stevens, then it should come as no surprise that the music on this album would've been considered country in 1977. In fact, Ray has always delivered what most of us would call Ray Stevens music. This means that a recording is produced and arranged as if Ray happened to have been the writer. When he's singing a song he didn't write it sounds like it was something he had written. Also, when we refer to it as Ray Stevens music what we're also saying is that the lyrics seem to fit Ray's style. 

Ray has a style? Yes...if you know your Ray Stevens music then you know that he has a style. That style comes across in the lyrics but also in the manner in which he performs the song, vocally, and when on stage, visually. The 1977 album is filled with this sort of thing where Ray demonstrates all kinds of delivery based on the lyrics...and since Ray is his own music arranger he decides how the songs will sound, instrumentally, as well as how the songs will be sung (tempo) even with songs that he didn't write. What are the 10 tracks on this marvelous 1977 album? "Dixie Hummingbird" reached the country charts in 1977. It was the highest charting single release from the album and therefore, in hindsight, it's referred to as the main release from the album. The single reached the Top-50 on the national country music charts but it ranked among the Top-40 and Top-30 lists of specific markets. If you do in-depth research on a lot of Ray's single releases from the bulk of his career you'll find out real quick that he had a lot of presence/impact in specific regions (markets) throughout the Midwest, the South, and the Plains states but you'd perhaps never realize that if you simply looked at the national charts of Billboard or Radio and Records, for example. Sometimes these statistics of regional activity would be presented in sections of the trade magazines and titled 'Regional Breakouts'. What it meant is that you'd see a city listed and it would include that city/radio station's most requested or most played songs. A lot of the time each local radio station's playlist would contain single releases that had yet to make the "national charts". Ray was on these lists hundreds of times. Now, then...here are the 10 tracks on the 1977 Feel the Music album.   

1. Feel the Music

2. Daydream Romance

3. Blues Love Affair

4. Alone With You

5. Junkie For You

6. Get Crazy With Me

7. Save Me From Myself

8. Road Widow

9. Set The Children Free

10. Dixie Hummingbird

In 1995 when Warner Brothers released three compilation albums of Ray's recordings they included most of the songs from this 1977 album. The songs were spread out over the three compilation releases except tracks 5, 6, and 8. The titles of those 1995 releases were Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens.  

Ray Stevens: 1995 'Cornball' CD

Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! I came across a CD copy of the 1995 Warner Brothers CD, Cornball, for sale on eBay. The seller resides on the east coast. When I saw the CD listed on eBay it had me thinking, once again, of Ray's years on Warner Brothers (1976-1979) and how the Cornball CD isn't available for online listening like the other two compilation companion CD's happen to be. In 1995 the record company issued three compilations on Ray's years at the label: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. The latter two CD's can be found either as digital downloads or are able to be heard on streaming sites. Cornball, for whatever reason, hasn't been as easily accessible. That particular CD collects ten of Ray's recordings during that mid to late '70s time period. In fact, all of the CD's showcase that time period, but because Cornball features his 1979 recording, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow", it's the one compilation from 1995 to feature each year he was with Warner Brothers: 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979. How come? Well, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" was Ray's only recording in 1979...meaning that the other two CD's focus on 1976, 1977, and 1978. Cornball, as an album title, is misleading. 

The title would have you believe that this CD is filled with humorous recordings and nothing else. The fact is that "Cornball" is the name of a song that Ray wrote...a love ballad...and it was originally released on his 1976 album, Just for the Record. There are three or, possibly, four, humorous songs on this ten track collection depending on what you might consider funny or comical. There's his two chicken clucking recordings as The Henhouse Five Plus Too titled "In the Mood" and "Classical Cluck". There's also the parody, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". Those are the three, without a doubt, comical recordings. I've read vintage music essays of the 1950s and most of those consider "One Mint Julep" a comical/novelty song. That particular recording, track 7, comes from his 1978 album, There Is Something On Your Mind. It had been a hit in 1952 for the rhythm and blues group, The Clovers. That particular 1978 album is Ray's salute/tribute to the music of the 1950s. "Money Honey" and "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash", tracks 4 and 8 on the 1995 CD, also come from that 1978 album. 

When I heard "One Mint Julep" for the first time on the 1995 compilation CD I didn't hear it as a humorous song...but apparently those who find it comical are those who know more about drinking alcohol than I do. 

The song is about a guy who has drank numerous mint juleps and has learned that, while under the influence, he's gotten himself into a relationship he didn't want. Music essayists and historians say the humor comes from a guy getting himself drunk by way of what's mostly a drink observed for special events (like the Kentucky Derby) and isn't what most would commonly want to get drunk on. 

Here is the Cornball track list:

1. In the Mood; 1976

2. I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow; 1979

3. You Are So Beautiful; 1976

4. Money Honey; 1978

5. Cornball; 1976

6. Dixie Hummingbird; 1977

7. One Mint Julep; 1978

8. Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash; 1978

9. Save Me From Myself; 1977

10. Classical Cluck; 1976

Ray Stevens: The Warner Brothers cassettes Have Arrived..

Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! Lately I've been reacquainting myself with eBay purchasing. It had been more than a decade, it seems, since I last bought anything from there. The reason I'd stopped is, if I recall correctly, there was a time period where the only way to make purchases was through the PayPal system and I didn't want to do that. Anyway...about a month ago I began to not only browse eBay but have started to make purchases again. The first item I purchased, since it was at the right price and it was a Ray Stevens item, was a cassette copy of One More Last Chance. That cassette was released in 1981 on RCA Records. I have had the vinyl album for years but had never come across a cassette copy. When I seen it for sale on eBay, and knowing the obscure nature of a cassette copy, I bought it. The purchase/transaction went well and so I purchased an even more obscurity...a cassette copy of Ray's 1978 album on Warner Brothers, There Is Something On Your Mind. The vinyl album, which often comes up for sale and something I have in my collection, is rare enough but a cassette copy?? When I seen it listed I bought it!!

This is just one of three photos I took with my web-camera. The album is Ray's salute to vintage rhythm and blues songs that he says were an inspiration to him. The vinyl album features extensive commentary from Ray on both the front and back of the album cover but the cassette copy lacks this. There's a track list provided on the reverse side of the cassette cover as well as on the back of the cassette. I know of another fan of Ray Stevens that says that There Is Something On Your Mind was an album released only in Canada. The only thing I know is that there was absolutely no publicity for this album when it was released. I've searched archives of various music publications (Billboard, Record World, Cashbox) from around the time this album would've been originally released and I came across no publicity or even an album review. The album/cassette features 8 songs...maybe that's the reason it didn't get an album review back in 1978? However, don't let that fool you into thinking the album is less than half an hour because it isn't. The songs are lengthy...and by the time the album is finished you'd have thought you'd listened to an album of 11 or 12 songs. Why? Well, it's because there are four medley performances among the track list. There's the opening medley called "Dance Trilogy" which contains brief performances of "Do You Wanna Dance?", "When You Dance", and "Save the Last Dance For Me". This is followed by full performances of "Talk to Me" and "One Mint Julep". The fourth track on the cassette is the "Old Faithful Trilogy". That trilogy features brief performances of "Shake a Hand", "Since I Met You Baby", and "Always". The remaining four tracks are: "Money Honey", the "Banned in Boston Trilogy" which features "Sixty Minute Man", "Work With Me Annie", and "Annie Had a Baby"; the final two tracks are "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash" and "There is Something On Your Mind". I know, in the photo below, I should have my other hand resting on the side of my chin if I wanted to make an exact copy. I ordinarily don't use the camera's timer but in this instance I did...

 

The other Warner Brothers cassette can be seen here. The Feeling's Not Right Again was released in 1979. I have the vinyl album and if you do, too, you'll know that the back of the album also features a photo of Ray. The thing about cassette tape and 8-track releases is they lack imagery or commentary that might be featured on the back of a vinyl album. However, given the obscurity of cassette copies of Ray's albums from the '70s and early '80s I've decided, if they're at the right price, to purchase them on eBay just so I can have them in my personal collection. This is actually a compilation album and not a studio album. The album's cover art (both front and back) intentionally parodied the art work found on Barry Manilow's 1975 album, Trying To Get The Feeling. Ray's vinyl album copy went a step further with matching font style of Ray's name and album title but as you can see the cassette copy lack this. The only new song on the 1979 album is "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". Warner Brothers apparently didn't want to release an album on Ray titled Greatest Hits or The Best of Ray Stevens and so they put out The Feeling's Not Right Again and filled it with previously released songs from 1976, 1977, and 1978. The songs weren't randomly chosen, either. They were intentionally chosen for their MOR (Middle-of-the-Road) sound due to the inclusion of the new song, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". The album's title track, in case you're wondering, had been previously released on Ray's 1978 album, Be Your Own Best Friend. That album was released in the fall of 1978...and "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" began making it's impact in the spring of 1979. So, in an effort to build an album around that 1979 single release, The Feeling's Not Right Again emerged in the summer of 1979. 

Ray Stevens sings some of those soothing, mellow ballads...

Earlier in the year I wrote a blog entry about a 1976 Ray Stevens album reaching 45 this year. That album, Just for the Record, is a wonderful collection of songs and it was the first of several studio albums Ray recorded for Warner Brothers. I periodically return to the Ray Stevens recordings of the late 1970s...I just have this attachment to them...it can't be explained beyond my saying that I love those recordings! Maybe I love them because they're over-looked and under-appreciated? Maybe I love the sound of those recordings and perhaps because those records sound so different than what he was doing at Barnaby Records during the first half of the decade and what he would eventually do at RCA Records at the start of the 1980s...because the Warner Brothers sound is so different from what came before and after his years spent there maybe that's why I have this intense love for those songs. See, I told you it's hard to explain my attachment to those songs!!

"You Are So Beautiful" was Ray's debut single for Warner Brothers in 1976...and as you can see from that 1979 television appearance on Pop! Goes the Country he enjoyed performing it for the fans. Ray followed it up with "Honky Tonk Waltz"...a clever song blending country music within the framework of a waltz. The song takes place inside a bar room. There's a video performance of Ray from 1977 singing the song on an episode of  Pop! Goes the Country...but I'm going to embed the audio track...

A lot of the recordings Ray Stevens did for Warner Brothers were spotlighted in 1995 on a set of three CD's: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. YouTube has the audio tracks from the second two compilation albums but for whatever reason there weren't any official uploads of the songs featured on the Cornball release. Some wonderful recordings from Ray of "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' but Trash", "One Mint Julep", "Cornball", "Once in Awhile", and "Money Honey" are on that compilation. I came across an audio of "Money Honey" just recently but I've not posted it in any blog entry yet. I've been waiting to see if it'll stay online...and so far it's remained on YouTube. Instead of posting a YouTube embed of the audio track I'll post this "Money Honey" LINK. 

If anyone comes across this blog entry at some future date and they click the link and it takes you to a blank screen then you'll know why I decided not to embed the YouTube screen.  

I thought the title of this blog entry was to focus on Ray Stevens songs that are mellow, smooth, and calm...the songs I've opened the blog entry with are anything but mellow, soothing, or calm...especially the heavy drum beats and all out showmanship heard on "Money Honey". That recording featured only five musicians...in fact, the entire 1978 There is Something On Your Mind album from which "Money Honey" originates, it only featured five musicians total! The musicians heard on "Money Honey" were Ray Stevens (keyboard, synthesizer, percussion), Mark Casstevens (acoustic guitar), Reggie Young (electric guitar), Jack Williams (bass), and pounding away on the drums on that recording was Jerry Kroon. This line-up of musicians was also heard in the recording of "Old Faithful Trilogy". The 1978 album has 8 songs...on 6 of those recordings Johnny Christopher played acoustic guitar while Jerry Carrigan played drums. I'm sure the two of them were unavailable the day "Money Honey" and "Old Faithful Trilogy" were recorded.  

Yes, after getting things started with some up-tempo songs we're heading into mellow lane now...take a listen to this soothing ballad from Ray Stevens titled "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right"...you're gonna love the sound and the way in which Ray sings the lyrics...

Staying with that same 1995 compilation album we have the 1976 inspirational ballad, "One and Only You", from the pen of Buddy Kalb. This is significant...it marked the first time Ray recorded a song written by Buddy Kalb...a writer who would go on to dominate a lot of Ray's albums beginning in the mid to late '80s. 

Ray's Warner Brothers era also contains these ballads: "L'amour", "Blues Love Affair", "Road Widow", "You're Magic", "With a Smile", and "Daydream Romance". Here's a bluesy, mid-tempo offering from Ray titled "Blues Love Affair"...from his 1977 Feel the Music album...

Although I love the recordings Ray Stevens did in the late 1970s and I've shared several in this blog entry...historians/critics only focus on novelty songs when it comes to Ray Stevens...and because of that his Warner Brothers time period is often referenced with two novelty recordings: 1976's chicken clucked "In the Mood", released as The Henhouse Five Plus Too, and 1979's "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow"...and all of the serious recordings he did for the company get ignored time and time again...but yet that's one of the reasons why this blog exists...to spotlight what historians and essayists, alike, choose to ignore. "Daydream Romance"...that one is so mellow you'll feel as if you're off in a dream world...take in the relaxed, tranquil music...this is the perfect audio track to conclude this blog entry with!

Ray Stevens: September 1978 concert review...

Oh hello...I'm writing a second blog entry of the day and in this one I'm focusing on a September 1978 concert review that appeared in a publication called The Chattahoochee Magazine. The article/review, specifically, appeared on September 3, 1978 and it was written by an author named Whit Perry. The magazine, I assume, was sold as an extra feature within the newspaper being sold in Columbus, Georgia at the time. Regional TV Guides used to accompany the newspaper in this area and so I'm thinking The Chattahoochee Magazine was one of those kinds of publications. In case you're wondering I hadn't found out any information about the publication on-line so it must've been the kind of publication that I'm assuming it to be. I wouldn't have known of this publication's existence had it not been for a 1978 Ray Stevens concert review being shared on-line today through his social media sites. The review singles out a lot of things that took place during Ray's concert and the author shares some quotes from the stand-up comedy Ray interspersed into the concert. He notes how some of the lyrics are changed in the "Misty" performance. The author also provides a backstory of Ray's rise to fame and how "Ahab the Arab" made him a nationally known performer. The author writes of Ray's parents and brother greeting Ray once he walks off-stage and into the media area. The article, as mentioned, comes from a September 1978 publication and the thing that caught my eye is the caricatured illustration of Ray has him clean shaven. One would think the bearded look of Ray, as you see on the 1978 album Be Your Own Best Friend, would've been the most familiar Ray Stevens image when this article was published...but the artist chose a clean shaven depiction of Ray Stevens to accompany the article... 

The signature of the caricaturist is scribbled underneath the image and I can't figure out the artist's name...but the caricature of Ray Stevens sitting on Clyde the camel accompanies the concert review from September 1978. You can read the 1978 article/review when you visit Ray's Facebook PAGE. If you're reading this blog entry after January 14th then, of course, once you open Ray's Facebook page search for his January 14th posts and you'll come across The Chattahoochee Magazine images. When you click on the Facebook image, right click, and then select 'open image in new tab'. Once you do that you can magnify/enlarge the article and you can read what Whit Perry wrote. He dissects the entire concert and mentions that during a gospel music segment of the concert Ray makes mention of church groups he used to listen to and he spoke of people named Thurman and Virgil. This review coming in September 1978 that means it's several years before Ray recorded "The Dooright Family", in 1980, a satiric spoof of southern gospel performers. Yes, in that song, for those that haven't heard it, two of the characters are named Brother Thurman and Brother Virgil. So, for me, reading the concert review was a revelation. Also, the author mentions several songs Ray performed...including the elaborate performances of "Ahab the Arab" and "The Streak". The author mentions that Ray got the audience into fits of laughter at one point in the concert before turning abruptly serious with a performance of "Mr. Businessman". Interestingly the author never made mention of "Everything is Beautiful" being performed. He writes that Ray opened the show with "Can't Stop Dancin'" and closed the show with "Goodnight, Sweetheart" as an encore but didn't mention whether or not Ray sang "Everything is Beautiful". I'm sure Ray included it in his concerts at that time...but to not see it mentioned in a concert review is odd. Something else that caught my attention is there isn't any reference to Ray's 1976 Top-20 hit, "You Are So Beautiful", which I thought would've been part of the concert set-list during that period of Ray's career.

Ray was signed to Warner Brothers at the time of this concert...and within the concert review it was mentioned that Ray spoke of Flav-O-Rich, a dairy company that he was a spokesman for from the mid 1970s into the mid 1980s. Meanwhile, the caricature of Ray is very good in case I hadn't mentioned so already. It's difficult to find concert reviews of Ray from this period of his career. I've done all kinds of on-line searches during the last 10 plus years and occasionally I'll come across a stray concert review in the on-line archives of newspapers from the early or mid '70s or the mid '80s but that's about it. I rarely find a thorough concert review like the one Whit Perry authored in September 1978. 

Ray Stevens performs "Honky Tonk Waltz"...

The video quality is so-so in this upload but earlier today "Honky Tonk Waltz" was uploaded onto the social media sites of Ray Stevens. The performance, from a 1977 episode of Pop! Goes the Country, had been uploaded onto YouTube by other people going back at least 10 years but since this is an upload from Ray's official YouTube channel I'm going to embed it. I'm sure I embedded earlier uploads of the performance and if I have then this will be another upload to enjoy!!

Me and Ray Stevens LP

The image off to the right is me and my vinyl copy of the 1976 Ray Stevens album, Just For the Record. I took this photo earlier this morning...the photo is actually larger than what it appears but I made it smaller for this blog entry so that the image wouldn't take up most of the text space. The album's title is in smaller print over top of Ray's name. The back of the album features the same photo of Ray. It's a photo that was apparently taken in the winter months...Ray's bundled up with a heavy scarf and a fisherman's hat. Publicity photo's from around the time of this album's release shown him wearing gloves, too. I don't know the story behind the photo session or how the name of the album came to be. It was his debut album for Warner Brothers...following a lengthy run with Barnaby Records (dating back to early 1970). Ray's debut single for Warner Brothers happened to be a newly arranged version of "You Are So Beautiful"...traditionally performed as a slow ballad but in Ray's rendition it's presented as an up-tempo sing-a-long in the vein of "Misty" but with an even more deliberate Bluegrass feel. It was a Top-20 hit on the country charts and it was followed by "Honky Tonk Waltz".



"Honky Tonk Waltz" deliberately combined two music/dance styles together...the main instrument being the mandolin. In the video Ray plays a guitar and the piano. In this era of his career he often appeared with a guitar on his back while seated at his piano. He has often remarked that he knows a few chords on the guitar but is in no way a guitar wizard...preferring to stick with his main instruments within the piano family. "Honky Tonk Waltz" hit the Country Top-30 midway through 1976. There were only two singles released from his 1976 album. It wouldn't be until 1995 that Warner Brothers began re-issuing Ray's recordings for their label...and they did so with three compilations: Cornball, The Serious Side of Ray Stevens, and Do You Wanna Dance?. This means that it wasn't until those three releases came along that a good dose of his Warner Brothers recordings were on the market. The label never issued any best-of collections on Ray until 1995 and they hadn't issued any since. It would be nice to have his studio albums for Warner Brothers become available in CD or have them become digitally available as Mp3's. It makes little sense to keep them unavailable. I have them on vinyl and I have those 1995 CD's but not everyone does...the late '70s Ray Stevens recordings need to become readily available again.

Ray Stevens audio clip: "Dixie Hummingbird"...

Hello all!! Ray's social media sites have seen continued activity in this protracted pandemic. In this blog entry I'm sharing an audio clip of "Dixie Hummingbird". Now, this is a fabulous Ray Stevens recording from 1977 and it's from his album, Feel the Music. The single charted in the Top-50 on the country singles chart...falling several positions short of breaking into the country Top-40. It's always mystified me how the rise and fall of single releases go. A single comes onto the charts like gangbusters only to peak outside the Top-40...what could've halted the momentum!? There have been a number of single releases by Ray Stevens to do just that kind of thing: debut with a bang but for whatever reason peak outside the Top-40. In my mind, at least, it makes me think the sales and demand for a song was there but there was resistance along the way from radio. How else do you explain a single stopping in the mid 40's on the chart?

Me and Feel the Music LP

Regardless of whatever industry politics were at play "Dixie Hummingbird" and the album it's from, Feel the Music, are nevertheless another outstanding display of Ray's talents. The album has 10 songs on it...9 of the songs were written by Ray Stevens. Buddy Kalb contributed "Set The Children Free". I have never seen any video footage of Ray singing "Dixie Hummingbird" but if you search YouTube you'll find video footage of him singing "Feel the Music". In fact, I've written some blog entries and embedded the video of "Feel the Music" in them and so you can also search this blog for "Feel the Music" and you'll be able to find the video clip...but if you don't have the time to do in-depth searching then simply visit Ray's YouTube channel and look for "Feel the Music". In the meantime, "Dixie Hummingbird" tells the story of a man who's obviously in love and he tells about how he feels about her and that she's the silent type who doesn't say too many words but reassures him in her own way that she's loves him. He calls her his "Dixie Hummingbird".

I created the collage you see above several years ago. It's from a blog entry I wrote on July 8, 2018. It's what I call the Ray Stevens Warner Brothers Collage. It visually tells the story of Ray's Warner Brothers years...an era in his career that I love the most although I love his entire career. Here is the audio clip of "Dixie Hummingbird"...

Ray Stevens audio clip: "Get Crazy With Me"...

Hello all!! Earlier today Ray Stevens uploaded an audio clip of his fantastic song, "Get Crazy With Me". The song is from his 1977 album, Feel the Music. If you know much about Ray's tenure with Warner Brothers then you'll know that it was a very busy period in his career...but he continues to remain active and busy...but in 1977 the record label he recorded for must have had fallen under new management because in hindsight the label issued his singles in a sort of haphazard fashion that year. The label was promoting two Ray Stevens singles concurrently as 1977 kicked off. A release by Ray in December 1976 under the alias of Henhouse Five Plus Too, "In the Mood", had become popular and therefore was hitting the charts as we entered 1977.

In the meantime Warner Brothers, the same month the chicken clucking "In the Mood" was hitting, they issued a new single from Ray, "Get Crazy With Me". As you'll hear in the video clip below Ray is singing as a human instead of clucking like a chicken. The B-side of the January 1977 single is "Dixie Hummingbird".



Some time later in 1977 Warner Brothers issued "Dixie Hummingbird" as the B-side of "Feel the Music". The label also issued "Dixie Hummingbird" as a promo...which means a single with the same song on both the A and B sides. "Dixie Hummingbird" got more notice than "Feel the Music" and received what's known as unsolicited airplay...significant enough to enable "Dixie Hummingbird" to reach the country chart and get inside the Top-50. In June 1979 Warner Brothers re-issued "Get Crazy With Me" and backed it with "Dixie Hummingbird"...perhaps adding even more confusion for the fans that collect Ray Stevens records.

Ray Stevens sings "You Are So Beautiful"...

It's me once more!! The late '70s time period in the career of Ray Stevens, for me, is truly fascinating but yet I think the same way about any period of his career. However, that late '70s period takes a lot of priority for me because of how scarce and limited his music from that time period has become. It's a period of time where he was on Warner Brothers.



"You Are So Beautiful" was Ray's debut single for Warner Brothers in 1976. He joined the label after a five year stay at Barnaby Records. This is the label upon which he began publishing his songs under the name, Ray Stevens Music, rather than Ahab Music Productions. This is also a period of time where Ray decided to remain bearded rather than clean shaven. He's not appeared without a beard since the early part of 1978. The last studio album featuring clean shaven Ray Stevens on the cover is 1978's There is Something On Your Mind. "You Are So Beautiful" is performed in a country/bluegrass style...a concept used a year earlier for "Misty" which won Ray a Grammy at the 1976 Grammy Awards for 'Best Arrangement'. The performance above is from an early 1980 appearance on Pop! Goes the Country. Ralph Emery would retire as host of this syndicated television show following the 1979-1980 season...bringing to close a 6 and a half year hosting tenure that began in 1974. Tom T. Hall would become the new host at the start of the 1980-1981 season. Ray appeared on several episodes that Tom T. hosted. The show went out of production at the end of the 1982-1983 season.

Ray Stevens: Three Volume Collection Turns 25...

Me and the 1995 cassettes; circa mid 2000s.

Longtime Ray Stevens fans should be aware of these 1995 releases from Warner Brothers. I've written about them plenty of times over the last 10+ years that I've been writing this fan created blog. Well, 2020 marks the Silver Anniversary of their release. I still have my cassette tapes and but I only have one of those in CD format. I have them in Mp3 format now but I won't toss out my cassettes...or CDs...or my vinyl. I have all of those songs, now, on vinyl on the original studio albums they appeared on. Anyway, in the years prior to these three releases coming along you couldn't find hardly anything in retail stores featuring Ray Stevens from his Warner Brothers years (1976-1979). You would come across compilation albums that featured one or two selections from that time period and that was it. Can you guess the songs from this era in Ray's career that got the most repeated exposure on compilation albums throughout the 1980s and into the mid 1990s? The novelty "In the Mood" late in 1976...released under a pseudonym, Henhouse Five Plus Too. The other song from this time period that's gotten a lot of reissue is 1979's "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". These 1995 releases went a long way at showcasing the obscurities that weren't kept in print on countless compilation albums. The irony is that these 1995 cassette releases, once they were re-released in CD format, went out print just as quickly as they arrived. A number of years later the releases were digitally uploaded for on-line sale...however, one of those 1995 releases is currently unavailable for digital/Mp3 purchase, but the other two are still available.

The titles of those releases are Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. The material compiled for those releases come from his studio albums for Warner Brothers in the late '70s. Cornball is a misleading album title...there are only three recordings that qualify as comical/novelty but there is a love ballad on there titled "Cornball" from 1976. The CD opens and closes with the chickens: "In the Mood" kicks off the CD and "Classical Cluck" closes out the CD. In between we have track two, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" and beyond that the rest of the recordings are serious love ballads and inspirational easy-listening music. I'm aware that there is a segment of music listeners that can't distinguish between Ray's humorous and serious recordings. I say this because there are many that feel his 1975 recording of "Misty" is a comedy song (believe it or not) but it's actually a straight ahead country performance of a jazz/pop standard...to them it's funny when they hear it performed the way that Ray does it. Cornball is not available for digital download at Amazon but the other two collections are. I'm going to list the songs found on each release.

Do You Wanna Dance?:
1. Feel the Music; 1977
2. Dance Trilogy- Do You Wanna Dance/When You Dance/Save the Last Dance for Me; 1978
3. Blues Love Affair; 1977
4. Country Licks; 1976
5. Honky Tonk Waltz; 1976
6. One Man Band; 1976
7. Can't Stop Dancin'; 1976
8. Old Faithful Trilogy- Shake a Hand/Since I Met You Baby/Always; 1978
9. You've Got the Music Inside; 1978

Cornball:
1. In the Mood; 1976
2. I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow; 1979
3. You Are So Beautiful; 1976
4. Money Honey; 1978
5. Cornball; 1976
6. Dixie Hummingbird; 1977
7. One Mint Julep; 1978
8. Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash; 1978
9. Save Me From Myself; 1977
10. Classical Cluck; 1976

The Serious Side of Ray Stevens:
1. One and Only You; 1976
2. Talk to Me; 1978
3. Alone With You; 1977
4. Daydream Romance; 1977
5. Once in Awhile; 1976
6. Set The Children Free; 1977
7. The Feeling's Not Right Again; 1978
8. Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right; 1978
9. L'amour; 1978
10. Be Your Own Best Friend; 1978

Ray issued two studio albums in 1978. In the first half of the year he released a covers project called There Is Something On Your Mind. This eight song album features Ray's renditions of rhythm and blues classics...and some obscurities that weren't heard on mainstream Top-40 pop radio. That album features commentary on both the front and back of the album by Ray where he discusses his desire to record this kind of an album and how that music was a big influence in his youth. If you have those 1995 releases the person that compiled the songs lists the material from that 1978 album as previously unreleased. I have no idea why those songs are noted as being previously unreleased when they appeared on that 1978 album. I've gotten some replies over the years that perhaps the reason they're noted as previously unreleased is because the 1978 album may have only been released in Canada and other predominantly English-speaking countries. It's possible...but it makes no sense, to me, why it wouldn't get issued in the United States as well.

Ray Stevens; 1978

The songs on these 1995 releases that come from that 1978 covers album are: "Talk to Me", "Money Honey", "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash", "One Mint Julep", "Old Faithful Trilogy", and "Dance Trilogy". The two recordings from that 1978 album that didn't get spotlighted in those 1995 releases were "Banned in Boston Trilogy" and the title track, "There is Something On Your Mind". The second studio album from Ray in 1978 was Be Your Own Best Friend. An abundance of songs from that album feature heavily on the 1995 CD titled The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. I don't think it will ever happen but nevertheless I still wish that Ray's studio albums for the label would get issued digitally.

In a 1977 video clip from an episode of Marty Robbins Spotlight here's Ray performing "Feel the Music". It's an even more soulful performance than the studio recording if that's even possible. You'll hear Ralph Emery provide the introduction...

Ray Stevens: In the Mood for Chicken...

As I write this fan created blog entry the clock sits at 11:59pm on a Wednesday night. As I glance down I see that we're now into Thursday morning, January 30th. On the social media posts of Ray Stevens yesterday there happened to be a YouTube video upload of the audio track of "In the Mood". This recording goes back to 1976 in the career of Ray Stevens. It was his third single release for Warner Brothers. The novelty was released as the Henhouse Five Plus Too and it became a Top-40 single early in 1977. In the liner notes of a CD released by Rhino Records in 1997 titled The Very Best of Ray Stevens the notes author, Dr. Demento, quotes Ray on the inspiration for "In the Mood" performed as a choir of chickens. I'll paraphrase the quote by saying that Ray had the idea to cluck the song, which also includes vocal accompaniment from a vocally mimicked cow and a goat, just to see how it would come off. The instrumentation is sparse. Ray insists that he didn't want to issue it as a single but Warner Brothers loved the concept and it was issued as the Henhouse Five Plus Too in December 1976.

The single hit the Hot 100 pop chart on January 8, 1977 and by it's 4th week on, January 29, 1977, it was knocking on the door of the Top-40 half of the Hot 100. On the country chart it had a similar brisk climb up the chart and was actually in the country Top-40 on January 29th. It spent several weeks at number 39 on the country chart. On the Easy-Listening chart, believe it or not, it reached the Top-40 in that format as well. In it's fifth week on the Hot 100 it pushed it's way into the Top-40, anchoring the chart for one week...for the week ending February 5, 1977. In it's sixth week on the country singles chart, February 12th, it fell ten notches. The same week, on the Hot 100, "In the Mood" fell out of the Top-40 by a single position and into pop music history as the very next week it was outside the Top-50 and on it's way off the Hot 100. Ray's pseudonym, Henhouse Five Plus Too, is officially credited as the performers of "In the Mood" and they're often cited as One Hit Wonders. Last year I wrote a blog entry titled Symphonic Chickens which goes into detail about Ray's various novelty songs featuring the chicken as the subject matter. This blog entry, as one could tell, was put together as a response to the YouTube audio track upload of "In the Mood"... 

Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Eighteen...

As we left off in Part Seventeen I was mentioning the happenings in Ray's career during the month of December in 1994. The final issue of Country Weekly magazine for the year featured a major news article on Ray and within it's pages officially released the news surrounding a movie he'd been working on during the latter half of 1994. The magazine, for those interested in seeking it out on-line, is the December 27, 1994 issue with Tanya Tucker on the cover. There's a small notation in the lower right hand side promoting the news article on Ray.

The filming had began in November of 1994 and so the information within the news article, which came complete with photo's of Ray from the set and in various costumes, was subject to change. The information provided turned out to be almost accurate. There is a section of the article which makes mention of the various cameo appearances by Ray's music industry friends and it states that both Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase would be making cameo appearances. However, an unforeseen illness prevented Lorianne from participating but Charlie was seen briefly as a reporter that popped up on a television screen relaying information about political correctness running rampant in America. Ironically several months prior to this issue of Country Weekly being released Ray was a special guest on Ralph Emery's syndicated radio series, Take Five for Country Music, in which Ralph asked Ray if the rumors were true that he was working on a movie of some kind. This interview took place months before filming began in November of 1994 and so Ray said there was no truth to those rumors...but obviously Ray wasn't going to reveal whatever was going on behind the scenes or whatever might be happening in the coming weeks or months in his career due to it potentially spoiling the public impact of whatever it was he may be working on. I was a member of Ray's fan club beginning in 1994 and in the newsletters that we received throughout the first half of 1995 the movie was referred to by the acronym: LFSDMCV. The letters stood for Long-Form Story-Driven Music Comedy Video which is how the project was referred to within the fan club newsletters due to it not officially having a title yet.

In the VHS world there's Short Form and Long Form video content. If I recall correctly a Short Form video is any VHS that has a running time of roughly 20 minutes or less while Long Form is obviously a VHS that has a running time of well over half an hour.

In the spring of 1995 one of the former record labels that Ray was signed to, Warner Brothers, at long last re-released a good dose of his recordings from the late 1970s. The material had been out of print since the early 1980s and so having this material in print again went a long way at introducing all of the newer fans that Ray picked up in the 1990s as a result of Branson and the music videos to his obscure Warner Brothers material from nearly 20 years earlier. Ray's first release for that label arrived in 1976 and so it was 19 years, technically. The label issued three separate compilation albums on Ray beginning in April of 1995: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. The titles of two of those compilations are somewhat misleading, though. The Cornball release featured three recordings you could consider novelty/comedy among the 10 songs featured. The one called The Serious Side of Ray Stevens would lead some to believe that the other two collections contain only novelty/comedy songs. It was only a minor annoyance because the bottom line, for me, was finally being able to hear a good sampling of his Warner Brothers recordings. I, at the time, had no record player and no vinyl albums or singles at all...and so those 1995 projects were a goldmine for me.

Why am I including this kind of commentary in a blog series meant to showcase the talents of Ray Stevens and his lengthy career path to the Country Music Hall of Fame? In case you're asking yourselves that question the answer is simple. I want this mini-blog series I've been working on to have a personal touch...instead of it coming off strictly as a stat by stat detailing of his career...and so at various moments in the first seventeen chapters of this I've attempted to personalize the overview by adding in remarks and highlighting things that may get overlooked or omitted from professional writers as well as historians. 

In June of 1995 Ray was once again nominated as Comedian of the Year at the Music City News awards. Unfortunately Ray lost to stand-up comedian Jeff Foxworthy who had taken country music outlets by storm with his redneck routine, which wasn't new, but it had never been marketed directly to the country music audiences. It would have been Ray's 10th consecutive win and based on the staying power of his 1992 and 1993 VHS releases he should have taken home the trophy for a 10th straight year but it wasn't to be. Country Weekly readers, however, named Ray their Favorite Comedian in that publication's awards ceremony in 1995. Their ceremony was called the Golden Pick Awards.

The movie that Ray had been filming since November of 1994 finally made it's way onto VHS in the late summer/early fall of 1995 as Get Serious!. The video was sold through direct marketing just as his previous VHS releases and it became another major hit with television viewers. The commercials ran on fewer cable television channels than the previous two releases in 1992 and 1993 but it nevertheless became a successful VHS...with commercials receiving the most air-time on The Nashville Network...selling hundreds of thousands of VHS tapes to a built-in audience more or less. The movie has a running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes and it combines a conventional motion picture with music video insertions which is why the film was referred to with that kind of descriptive acronym of Long-Form Story-Driven Music Comedy Video.

There are ten brand new music videos featured within the movie...some of them are "Gitarzan", "The Woogie Boogie", "Dudley Dorite", "I Used to Be Crazy", "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?", and "Ahab the Arab". Ray's co-star, Connie Freeman, portrayed Charlene MacKenzie in the film. The character, for those that are devoted fans of Ray, should be familiar. The character originated in a 1988 recording from Ray telling the story of attempting to teach a deaf woman how to drive. Charlene, throughout the movie at the most inopportune times, has trouble hearing. The two of them perform a song and dance routine in chicken costumes...the song performed being "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens", a Ray Stevens original...not to be confused with the pop song of the same name from the 1940s.

The plot of the movie centers around political correctness and the music videos aid in the telling of the story of Ray being on the run from protesters and local police...even the fictional record label Ray is signed to in the movie is after him for breach of contract. The record label executive, played by Paul Lynde impressionist Michael Airington, wants Ray to get serious with his recordings and come off more like an operatic Pavarotti rather than coming off like a clown but Ray adamantly refuses and the battle is on. I should point out that music industry conglomeration is also touched upon in the movie. Ray is signed to a label called Integrity Records which, at the movie's beginning, is shown being taken over by a company operating out of Japan called Sosumi Records (pronounced So-Sue-Me). The Integrity Records company sign in the front lawn is literally chainsawed from view to make way for the sleeker looking Sosumi Records sign descending down from a crane. Ray is given the bad news about the takeover from his manager, The Colonel, portrayed by legendary comic storyteller Jerry Clower who makes his first of several appearances at the conclusion of the "Gitarzan" music video. The executive hired to oversee Sosumi, as mentioned, is committed in his quest to transform Ray into the Pavarotti of Country Music. Chet Atkins has a cameo attempting to play the accordion at the insistence of the new label executive. Meanwhile characters from his songs are portrayed as real people and they bring a lawsuit against Ray for defamation. George Lindsey appears as a Shriner prior to the beginning of the "Shriner's Convention" video and reveals the custom made dune buggy, The Mone Mobile, which Ray drives throughout the film. The lawyer in the courtroom scene is portrayed by fellow country comedian, James Gregory. As we get deeper into the movie there are cameo appearances by Johnny Russell and the comedy duo, Williams and Ree. The movie is completely entertaining and in my opinion was a ground-breaking concept...a new twist on the movie musical.

This is one of the various commercials for the VHS...it features Charlie Chase providing the voice-over. There were other commercials for the VHS airing concurrently which featured other voice over talent. Charlie's voice-over, though, includes the naming of some of the music videos found in the movie. The person that uploaded this commercial left a little bit of time at the end and we see an NFL promo appear on-screen as a football game was coming out of a commercial break. I did some research and found that the Cowboys and the Vikings played a football game on cable channel, TNT, on September 17, 1995...and if you were watching that game you would have seen this commercial...



A Get Serious! soundtrack was released in cassette format, made mention of in the commercial, and on this soundtrack is a full-length recording of "We Don't Take Nothin' off Nobody" which, in the movie, is only partially performed. In addition there was a VHS released documenting the behind the scenes making of the movie. That VHS is titled Ray Stevens Made a Movie?? Get Serious!!!. Now, in Part Nineteen, I'll be exploring in some detail Ray's career as it pertains to record labels and releases in 1996 and 1997...which included a return to a previous record label.

Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Eleven...

Here we are in Part Eleven and we're in the latter half of 1979 in the career of Ray Stevens. If you do the math that's 22 years into his professional recording career...and if you do even more math 1979 was 40 years ago...so we've got a lengthy road left to travel as we make our way to 2019.

Warner Brothers issued a follow-up single from Ray in the summer of 1979 on the heels of "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". It was more of a re-release...they brought back Ray's 1977 single, "Get Crazy With Me", and issued it with "The Feeling's Not Right Again" as the B-side. Those two recordings happened to be part of the 1979 compilation album, The Feeling's Not Right Again, that Warner Brothers issued on Ray in the aftermath of "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" becoming a hit single. "Get Crazy With Me", originally backed with "Dixie Hummingbird" in 1977, has a catalog number of WBS-8318. The re-release in 1979 has a catalog number of WBS-8849.

The 1977 and 1979 issue

Technically some may not consider the 1979 copy being a re-release because of it having a different B-side, different art work, and a different catalog number but yet it's the same recording on both single releases. Anyway, upon the release of this single, not too long afterward Ray signed a recording contract with RCA Records. This was another high profile record label, like Warner Brothers, when compared to Barnaby Records and in some cases Monument Records. One of Ray's long time friends in the music industry, Chet Atkins, was not only a legendary guitar player but was also one of the top producers at RCA and was eventually given the title of Vice President of the record label...and during Ray's early years in Nashville it was usually Chet that hired him for numerous recording sessions...so their friendship went way back to the early '60s. In addition to Chet's presence at RCA one of Ray's other long time friends, Jerry Reed, had been on the RCA roster for a number of years and so the two of them became label mates. I don't know who officially signed Ray to the RCA label but by the fall of 1979 he was performing an unrecorded song in his concerts and he performed it on television a couple of times as well. In a television movie that aired in October of 1979, Concrete Cowboys, there's a brief clip of him performing this song and in an episode of Pop! Goes the Country from 1979 he performed the song in it's entirety and spoke of it's origins.

The song was comical...not necessarily a song...it was a narration almost. The title being "Shriner's Convention" Ray told the tale of an unorthodox Shriner named Noble Lumkin being scolded during a telephone conversation by head Shriner, the Illustrious Potentate. It's a one-sided conversation and all we hear is the head Shriner giving orders and then reacting to what he hears on the other side of the phone. There are three separate phone conversations between the two Shriner's...in the first conversation the Illustrious Potentate calls Noble Lumkin but the Noble has no idea who this 'Illustrious Potentate' happens to be. Potentate rather quickly grows frustrated within the first several seconds and drops the formalities and angrily replies "Coy!!! This is Bubba!!!". The satirical lyrics and the kind of humor presented throughout the recording was risky...meaning that it's a type of song that perhaps is only appealing to those within one of those fraternity organizations and therefore will get the humor and understand the nuances of the lyrics more so than a general audience might. Fortunately, though, a general audience loved "Shriner's Convention" when RCA released it as a single in February of 1980. The antics of Coy and the annoyance of Bubba tickled the funny bone of those that heard the recording and those two fictional characters became just as synonymous with Ray as Ahab, Fatima, Clyde, Gitarzan, and Ethel had become in the past. Coy loved motorcycles, for example, and in one phone conversation Bubba memorably asks how Coy was able to get the Harley on the high dive of the motel's swimming pool. The song was inspired by an actual Shriner's convention that was taking place and while Ray was on the road in the middle of a tour one of the hotels he was staying at included rooms being occupied by several boisterous Shriner's that, according to Ray's recollections, "were having way too much fun...carrying on all night long..." and so he created a story of a boisterous Shriner and how his behavior is frowned upon by the more senior members of the fraternity.

"Shriner's Convention" became a big hit for Ray early in 1980. It made it into the Country Top-10...and while all of this was going on he was working on a Shriner's Convention album. RCA issued two versions of the single. There is an edited version for radio that has a running time of 4 minutes and 10 seconds. There is also an unedited version with a running time of 5 minutes and 33 seconds. RCA issued a promotional single featuring the Edited copy on one side and the Unedited copy on the other side. The commercial release featured "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me" on the B-side. Ironically, in the United Kingdom, RCA released a different single on Ray...his comical approach to the pop love ballad, "Hey There". The B-side remained "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me". I'm assuming RCA felt the humor of "Shriner's Convention" wouldn't play that well to an international audience. In Canada "Shriner's Convention" hit the runner-up position on their Country chart. The album's cover, as you can see, depicts Coy on his motorcycle with the waitress he picked up when he visited the motel's swimming pool. In the background are angry Shriner's and on the back of the album there's a couple of comic strip panels focusing on the plot of the song with Bubba growing annoyed, panel by panel, over Coy's antics. The album reached the Top-10 on the Country Album chart in the spring of 1980. The entire first half of 1980 for Ray Stevens was all things Shriner, Coy, and Bubba. The album features nine novelty songs...some of them are "Coin Machine", "The Last Laugh", "The Watch Song", and a song that's become popular among his fans, "The Dooright Family". Ray performed "Shriner's Convention" and "Love Me Longer" on an episode of Hee Haw...the episode originally aired on February 16, 1980...which was right around the time the "Shriner's Convention" single was just starting to take off. By the middle of 1980 Ray was distancing himself once again from the comedy and along came a bouncy bar room ballad titled "Night Games" from the pen of Buddy Kalb. This single was backed with another Buddy Kalb composition, "Let's Do It Right This Time". An article in Country Song Roundup featuring Ray on the cover hit the market in September 1980. The name of this article is More Than Meets the Ear and it's an article that puts a spotlight on his serious side and how the comedy records overshadow the serious material.

"Night Games" reached the Top-20 on the Country chart in the fall of 1980...fitting right in with the national trend taking place in the wake of the Urban Cowboy movie...where all walks of life were dressing up in Western attire and acting as if they were real cowboys and cowgirls. Not only that but radio stations were flipping their formats from Adult-Contemporary and pop music to country music. The trend took over the Country Music industry for a solid three years...at least. The film made it's debut in June of 1980 and it catapulted Mickey Gilley, already a successful Country music singer, into a superstar and his night-club, Gilley's, became an international tourist attraction (the bulk of the movie took place inside Mickey's famous, former night-club). A second 1980 appearance on Hee Haw which aired on October 11, 1980 featured Ray performing "Night Games" as well as "You've Got the Music Inside". RCA didn't issue any further singles from Ray in 1980 following "Night Games". The year featured a couple of recognition's for his career in the form of induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame as well as the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. RCA released a follow-up to "Night Games" early in 1981...as it turned out "Night Games" was the first single release from a forthcoming studio album from Ray. The title track of this forthcoming album turned up in single form early in 1981. The lover's plea "One More Last Chance" is a ballad overflowing with all kinds of energy...not necessarily a power ballad...but the song kicks off with an electric guitar and the music swells up during a brief intro prior to Ray delivering the first words of the song. The song hit the Country Top-40 and it was followed by the album, One More Last Chance. It's such a wonderful collection of mostly love ballads...with heavy use of steel guitar on several songs...and on the album's cover there's Ray dressed up in his Western/casual attire...showcasing the trend of Urban Cowboy for one and all to see...

One of the unfortunate things surrounding this album is that RCA nor Ray explored anything else from the album. "Night Games" is on this album but it's more of a 1980 hit single while the title track hit early in 1981...and was climbing the Country chart at the time of the album's release. Upon the peak of the "One More Last Chance" single there would be the entire calendar year of 1981 remaining but as it turned out RCA never released any further singles from this album. Ray, in the meantime, was still touring heavily and his television appearances were just as steady. He guest starred for several episodes on the soap opera, Texas, and performed several songs...including "One More Last Chance". The film, The Cannonball Run, starring Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, became a gigantic movie in the summer of 1981 and beyond. Ray wrote and performed the movie's theme song, "Cannonball". Ray was also heard singing a love ballad he wrote, "Just For the Hell Of It", in the 1981 movie. Some of the songs on One More Last Chance include "I Believe You Love Me", "Melissa", his uptempo arrangement of "Pretend", "It's Not All Over", and the beautiful "Just About Love". Don't quote me on this but I think this is one of the first studio albums or possibly the only studio album in his career in which he didn't write or co-write any of the songs. He was still the producer and arranger and he played piano/keyboard/synthesizer as well as the horns heard on "Pretend" but as a songwriter he didn't contribute any of the songs. Regardless of this all of the songs on the album feature his personal stamp given that he musically arranged every song...and music arranging is something he'd been doing on all of his albums and singles going back to the early '60s. In part Twelve we'll be heading into 1982 and 1983 and during those particular years Ray was coming to something of a crossroads in his career.

My largest Ray Stevens Collage...

Hello all once again!! A very early Sunday morning here as I write another fan created Ray Stevens blog entry. There hasn't been any updates over on WSM's website in their Opry archive section and so, as of this writing, I don't have any audio link to provide of Ray's July 3rd guest appearance. In my previous blog post I made mention that I already had the idea of what this blog entry would be about and so I'm unveiling what could possibly be my largest Ray Stevens collage. I make collage's for pure enjoyment and to spotlight albums, single releases, or photo's of Ray over the years...often I add photo's of myself showing off whatever I might be writing about.

After I finished writing a recent blog entry about some of the compilation albums that have been issued on Ray Stevens I got the idea to try and put together a collage of nothing but Ray Stevens on Warner Brothers Records. This would cover the years 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979 in his career timeline. What I did was I gathered up images of his vinyl studio albums from those years and I gathered up images of his single releases from those years on the label and I put them all together in a collage. I didn't concern myself with whether or not the single release I chose to place on the collage was from the U.S. or the international market but I did attempt to arrange everything in chronological order.

If you're long time readers of this fan created blog page then you should be very aware of how much I champion Ray's music and career, in general, but then I often give heightened coverage to his Warner Brothers recordings. A lot of it has to do with my personal feelings given my enjoyment of the songs he recorded but also what drives my focus is how under-rated that era of his career generally is and so after I began this fan created blog nearly 10 years ago I took it upon myself to spotlight his late '70s material at any opportunity. In a lot of the compilation albums that were issued on Ray Stevens over the decades (from the mid '80s onward) and then in the ones that appeared later in the 1980s and especially the 1990s there tended to be a pattern of covering an abundance of his Monument and Barnaby recordings (specifically the years 1968 through 1975) while more or less skipping over Warner Brothers (1976-1979) and RCA (1980-1982) except for a couple of novelty recordings for each of the two labels. I may do one of these collage projects spotlighting his RCA recordings but for now here's the one I did spotlighting his Warner Brothers era:

Now, I know this is way too small for anyone to actually see the writing on the albums and the single releases but you can click the image for a somewhat larger view. Anyway...this is probably...well, actually, it is the largest Ray Stevens collage I've created. In his three years with Warner Brothers he recorded four studio albums and one compilation album. The compilation album arrived in 1979 to cover the years 1976, 1977, and 1978 but it also featured his hit, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow", from earlier in the year which up to that point was only available as a vinyl single. The 1979 album is the fifth one in the collage off to the left (the first panel in row two). If you are familiar with Barry Manilow then you should see the comical connection in art work. Barry's 1975 album had a similar cover design and letter font and the name of his album that year was Trying to Get the Feeling whereas Ray's album in 1979 is titled The Feeling's Not Right Again (named after a song on Ray's previous studio album in 1978). I also added a comparison image of the single release of Ray's recording next to the cover design of Barry Manilow's second studio album. I have almost all of Ray's studio albums on vinyl and I have a vinyl copy of the "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" single but my copy doesn't feature the picture sleeve. My copy, which I bought on-line, arrived in a plain paper sleeve. I've seen auctions on eBay for the single and it's picture sleeve but those, obviously, were always out of my price range and so I opted for the cheaper alternative. I wanted the vinyl single anyway...not having the picture sleeve didn't change my feelings concerning the actual song. As you see in the collage there are five images of vinyl albums, 2 comparable cover art depictions, and eight single recordings. Here is the breakdown of everything you see...starting with the vinyl albums:

Just for the Record (1976); Feel the Music (1977); There is Something on Your Mind (1978); Be Your Own Best Friend (1978); and The Feeling's Not Right Again (1979).

The single releases, the month and year of release, and their catalog numbers:

"You Are So Beautiful" (April 1976; WBS 8198)
"Honky Tonk Waltz" (August 1976; WBS 8237)
"In the Mood" (December 1976; WBS 8301)
"Get Crazy With Me" (January 1977; WBS 8318)
"Dixie Hummingbird" (May 1977; WBS 8393)
"Be Your Own Best Friend" (July 1978; WBS 8603)
"I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" (March 1979; WBS 8785)
"Get Crazy With Me" (June 1979; WBS 8849)

The comparable cover art depiction is of the picture sleeve of "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" and Barry's second studio album, Barry Manilow II. If you look at the chronological listing of single releases you'll notice a couple of things...at least I took notice right away. The first is the lapse of time between the release of "Dixie Hummingbird" and "Be Your Own Best Friend". There's more than a year separating the two. Then there is no further single releases throughout the rest of 1978 even though the Be Your Own Best Friend album had plenty of single worthy recordings such as "Comeback", "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right", or the re-recorded "You've Got the Music Inside" which had originally been recorded in 1973 by Ray. Another thing you should notice is the re-issue of "Get Crazy With Me".

Warner Brothers originally issued the single in January 1977...right on the heels of Ray's surprise novelty hit with his chicken clucking rendition of "In the Mood". In the original release of "Get Crazy with Me" in January 1977 the B-side happened to be "Dixie Hummingbird". Ray's "Get Crazy with Me" isn't a novelty song but it's title would suggest otherwise and it's my guess Warner Brothers felt the title could serve as a follow-up and therefore become an immediate hit. Later on Warner Brothers re-issued it upon the strength of Ray's novelty hit, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow".

The re-issue of "Get Crazy With Me" in 1979 featured "The Feeling's Not Right Again" as it's B-side. Let's add more to this vinyl sea of confusion by pointing out "Dixie Hummingbird", the original B-side of "Get Crazy with Me" from January of 1977, when it was issued as an A-side single in May of 1977, it's B-side happened to be "Feel the Music". The funny thing is Ray performed "Feel the Music" on television several times in the mid '70s and once in the early '90s but I don't think he ever performed "Dixie Hummingbird", the actual A-side, on television...ever!

In the last couple of paragraphs I had some fun relating the single release pattern of Ray's Warner Brothers recordings but let that not scare you from seeking out those recordings. You are likely to find Mp3 copies of select recordings at Amazon. If you look up the 1995 compilation albums: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens then you'll find a lot of his Warner Brothers recordings. They're, to date, the only definitive look at his late '70s recordings. The only thing that could top those releases were to be if Warner Brothers were to re-issue Ray's actual studio albums in a series of CD's or Mp3's but there's been no indication such a thing will ever happen so those 1995 releases are your only hope in hearing those obscure recordings.

Ray Stevens: Late 1970s obscurities...

In this brief (?) blog entry I've decided to post an experimental collage I finished about 10 minutes ago. I've been consistently scouring the internet over the last couple of weeks in search of a free website that offers collage making opportunities. A site that I used to rely heavily upon has been off-line for the last several weeks with no signs of returning under a different name and so I've kind of been in a mini-state of upset given the fun I'd been having creating collages on a site that made the creating so easy and less technical. I came across another site and experimented a couple of times. One of those experiments focuses on the 3-CD collection of recordings issued on Ray Stevens back in 1995. The recordings found on those 3 CD's originated in the mid to late '70s during his all too brief stay at Warner Brothers Records (1976-1979).

The reason I've written at length about those recordings over the last 8 years is because of their lack of familiarity...even among fans of Ray (!)...and given the fact that the songs have never been properly respected, appreciated, or presented in any prestigious kind of fashion (aside from those 3 CD's in 1995) I feel it's my unofficial duty to every so often keep those recordings from remaining obscure. So, after that bit of information to set up the focus of this particular blog entry, it's that time again to celebrate the late 1970s obscurities from the highly entertaining Ray Stevens...

1995 3-CD Collection

The 3-CD set first emerged in cassette form in 1995 and for this devoted fan of Ray it was something like the discovery of buried treasure. Some of the readers/visitors of this fan-created blog page probably won't be able to truly understand the sense of shock, amazement, happiness and total feeling of euphoria on the day I came across these cassettes sitting there among some other Ray Stevens cassettes in the music section of the local Wal-Mart just asking for me to purchase them. CD counterparts of the cassettes had also become available but at that particular time in my life (1995) I hadn't yet graduated to a CD player from the cassette player (even though CD's had been available for purchase for nearly 10 years by then). I never purchased a CD player until some point in 1996 or 1997 (!!) and even then I continued to purchase cassette tapes rather than the more expensive CD's (unless something released on Ray happened to be available on CD-only). I didn't start to purchase CD's exclusively until, you guessed it, the point in which cassette tapes began disappearing from retail stores. The names of the cassettes are: Cornball, The Serious Side of Ray Stevens, and Do You Wanna Dance?. The collection goes a long way at spotlighting the various music styles and moods that Ray delivered on a series of studio albums in the late '70s in which each album is dramatically different from the other. Pop, Country, Rhythm and Blues, Comedy, and MOR Adult-Contemporary are all on display. At the time of those releases in 1995 only 2 recordings by Ray from his entire Warner Brothers era had continually appeared on dozens of compilation albums: 1976's "In the Mood" and 1979's "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow".

I remember being frustrated in the mid/late '90s as to the reason 2 songs from that time period continually appeared on compilation albums and yet he had several more hit songs for the label that routinely got overlooked and therefore continued to become unfamiliar to a latter-day fan base that had probably discovered Ray's music in the mid 1980s during his country comedy resurgence. Later on in the early 2000's I had began to wonder why the studio albums he recorded for Warner Brothers had never been fully restored onto CD, either. It's a mystery I'll probably never solve.

Some of the fans of Ray that I often socialize with on-line via social media pretty much share my conclusion that the label doesn't see any sort of profit or demand for the re-release in CD format of those late '70s studio albums and so why bother? I realize this is a minority opinion but I don't necessarily think you need a demand for something to get a re-issue. There are scores of CD/Mp3 projects available in which record companies (major, independent, domestic, and foreign) offer 2 albums on 1 CD of almost any vinyl album from any number of legendary performers...whether the vinyl album featured any hit songs or not doesn't come into the decision making because I've seen CD's of 2 albums on 1 collection featuring albums I'd never heard of even though I'd heard of the singer's. The goal, I thought, was to introduce recordings to music consumers that were born long after vinyl stopped being the dominant form of music distribution and to bring back recordings that in some cases hadn't been in print and had only been available on vinyl for decades.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I wish any record company that specializes in re-issuing vinyl albums onto CD would take a look at the studio albums Ray Stevens recorded in the late '70s and get those songs in circulation again and introduce this music to his diverse fan base. I have all of these vinyl albums but I'd purchase CD copies in the blink of an eye if they became officially available...

1976: Just for the Record (features 10 songs; chart hits include "You Are So Beautiful" and "Honky Tonk Waltz"; Ray's debut album for the label and it's deliberately more country music sounding; although it being primarily a West Coast pop oriented label and not too heavily entrenched in country music it nevertheless took on country music artists in the late '70s with various degrees of success; this album features one of my all-time favorite Ray Stevens recordings, "Gimme a Smile" and then there's the otherworldly "OM" and the sing-a-long toe tapping "Country Licks"; although "In the Mood" is a 1976 release it happened to be a single-only release in December and reached it's peak in February 1977 and therefore it isn't part of this album).

1977: Feel the Music (features 10 songs; chart hits include "Dixie Hummingbird" and "Get Crazy with Me"; not heavily publicized/promoted by the label; his image doesn't even appear on the front of the album cover as it's title called for the illustration of a stereo speaker to demonstrate the literal meaning of feeling the music. Ray performed a couple of the songs found on this album on an episode of television's Pop! Goes the Country and then much later in the early '90s performed "Feel the Music" during a televised award's ceremony; Yes, at that point in time, I thought it happened to be a new song! That's how little I knew of Ray's catalog of music back then as at the time I only had a little less than half a dozen cassette tapes of his).

1978: There Is Something On Your Mind (features 8 songs; 3 of those 8 are medleys which combine brief performances of 3 songs a piece; no chart hits; it's a lovingly put together tribute to early rock music and his beloved Rhythm and Blues influences; Ray records his versions of "One Mint Julep", "Money Honey", "Talk to Me", the comical title track; and in the form of medleys he performs abbreviated versions of songs like "Shake a Hand", "Do You Wanna Dance?", "Since I Met You Baby", and "Sixty Minute Man"; On both the front and back of the album there are liner notes provided by Ray Stevens himself and he offers his feelings and opinions regarding the choices in songs that he selected to cover for the project; It's possibly the most obscure and rarest of his vinyl albums and there's long been information suggesting that the album had never even been released in America and that it only seen commercial release in Canada).

1978: Be Your Own Best Friend (features 9 songs; the title track is the only chart hit from the album; the album's songs feature an overall soothing, mellow feel; the album's photo with a tanned Ray Stevens in white tuxedo and black shirt, seated at a white table, with the stark white background could have some thinking he's relaxing inside the padded cell of a sanitarium given his reputation for nutty, comedy songs but this happened to be his fifth non-comedy album in a row going back to the release of 1975's Misty album; the choice of colors could also be a reflection of the reflective nature of the inspirational title track in which Ray encourages people to believe in themselves rather than striving for acceptance from others; the album features another self-help ode in the form of "With a Smile"...featuring a very soothing delivery, almost a lullaby whisper, to convey the message in the song; In the same soothing vein is "You're Magic" and he transforms the previously recorded "You've Got the Music Inside" of 1973, featuring a more harder vocalization the first time around, into a much more softer presentation to compliment the overall feel of this particular album; the album has it's share of uptempo songs: "Comeback" and "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right", in particular, and the glorious, grandiose opening track, "L'amour", is amazing; this album also features the ballad, "The Feeling's Not Right Again", which became the title of his next release).

1979: The Feeling's Not Right Again (this is largely a compilation album, not a traditional studio album, and it features 10 songs; it features one previously unreleased song and the success of that song happened to be the reason for this album's release in the first place; Ray's surprise hit in the early part of 1979, "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow", inspired the concept of this compilation album; the single-only release featured cover art on it's picture sleeve parodying Barry Manilow cover art from 1974 and so, for the 1979 compilation album, a song Ray recorded the previous year, "The Feeling's Not Right Again", became the title track of this 1979 project; the song's coincidental similarity in title of an earlier song recorded by Manilow called "Tryin' to Get the Feelin' Again" pretty much meant that the cover art for Ray's 1979 album should parody the cover art of Manilow's 1975 album, Tryin' to Get The Feeling; the 1979 album became the final project released by Warner Brothers on Ray Stevens until 1995).

Here's that experimental collage I made reference to at the top of this blog entry...I spotlight the back of those 1995 CD's. I have no idea where in the world those photo's of Ray came from that were featured on the back of the CD's...the information credits the photographers but I've never thought to look them up on the internet to see if they have any of their photo's on-line...