December 19, 2009

Ray Stevens: The Great Escape...And Then Some...

Photobucket This image of Ray is super-big so if you want to see it in all of it's glory, click the thumbnail. I was tempted to use the bigger image but I thought better of it. I prefer to use my blog entry space with thoughts and commentary first and foremost. What is this you all may be asking yourselves? Well, it's a publicity advertisement for a song called "The Great Escape" from Ray's 1968 album, Even Stevens. This song happened to be one of the follow-up releases to "Mr. Businessman" but it didn't make it to the Hot 100, sad to say.

The song features a high-octane arrangement and when you hear the song you may start to think of those high-speed car chase movies. The melody and the vocal delivery compliment the arrangement. For those who are nuts for catalog numbers and that kind of thing, "The Great Escape" was issued on Monument single 1099. The b-side was the somber and tragic love ballad, "Isn't It Lonely Together", which hit the R&B charts. In hindsight, Monument and or Ray should have been pushing "Isn't It Lonely Together" as the A-side. The Even Stevens album was produced by Fred Foster...but I am sure Ray was the arranger and the one who dreamed up the musical accompaniment for almost every song since he wrote 9 of the 10 songs found on the album.

"Face the Music" received some publicity as being the B-side of "Mr. Businessman". The topical "The Minority", the album's opening song, became a B-side the following year when Ray issued "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down".

The 1968 album was lovingly re-released in 1996 on the Varese Sarabande label. Several of Ray's vintage recordings that had not received their proper introduction into the CD age began to show up via Varese Sarabande. As an added plus, buyers of the CD re-issue of Even Stevens were treated to four extremely obscure songs that up until that point in time had only been available on the original Monument 45's. The songs in question are the mid-tempo, driving ballad "Party People" from the pen of Joe South, the crooning love ballad "Answer Me, My Love", and the up-tempo straight-forward pop song "Devil May Care" which featured a few melody similarities to "Down In the Boondocks", both compositions being written by Joe South explains why the similarity.

I made this blend several years ago with the aid of a program in an on-line photo album. I can't even remember how I did it...had I remembered I would've made some more!! Technically it isn't a "blend" in that it doesn't incorporate multiple pictures into one frame but I'll call it a blend if I want to. I made this at a time when I was excited about finally being able to hear songs from Ray's 1969 album, Have a Little Talk With Myself, on my computer. I had the album's songs transferred onto a personal CD and I uploaded the music onto my computer. It was nice being able to hear the songs on my computer instead of making a trip to my relative's house where I keep my vinyl albums. I don't know where the image of Ray came from. I found it on-line and saved it. The tie-dye almost psychedelic look is intentional because in my mind 1969 was the year of Woodstock and I picked that design on purpose.


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This thumbnail image is the comic strip panel that appears on the back of Ray's 1980 Shriner's Convention album. The image was too long and so I decided to post a smaller scale picture with clickable thumbnail accessory. The comic strip as you'll be able to see is an illustration of the song's basic premise of a Shriner who finds himself constantly berated over the telephone by the hierarchy within the Shrine. Coy is never heard throughout the story song. Instead we hear a one-sided conversation where Bubba talks and reacts to Coy's verbal antics on the phone. It is a very funny song in my opinion and one that has some fun with the Shriners in a light-hearted way. There's nothing heavy handed or anything remotely disrespectful toward Shriners, as some modern-day listeners have accused the song of being.

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