January 13, 2010

Ray Stevens: 45 at 45

Yes...those who have read some of my blog entries will know that I do a "45 at..." series. For kicks I thought I'd do a 45 at 45 entry and open the blog writing about a 1965 single by Ray Stevens on the Mercury label called "Rockin' Teenage Mummies". I personally think the song is funny and cute but it's hard to tell what the public would have thought of it had the song been given a chance at radio nationwide. The single started to make an entrance onto radio around the first month of 1965. The big songs on pop radio when Ray's novelty single was released were "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers; "Love Potion #9" by the Searchers; "Downtown" by Petula Clark; "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis...

Ray's single tells the story of a group of mummies who play in a band...the group becomes popular and they're all bandaged up with flesh colored band-aids. You could probably guess what the groupies and screaming girls do when they get near the mummies. Yes...you guessed it!! It's one of his novelty songs during this era to poke fun at pop music in general by pointing at fads or trends and commenting on the music business with a cynical "just about anyone can be famous these days" message. Ironically those same sentiments exist today...with the American Idol program thrusting hopeful singers from out of nowhere onto the national spotlight and having a biased audience vote for the ones they like each week. The end result is, if a singer with a terrible voice is declared the winner, the message is that "anyone can be famous these days". Ray does some nice scat-singing, as I call it, on "Rockin' Teenage Mummies" and then does an impression of Ed Sullivan near the end of the recording. The single became a Top-40 hit, based on requests more than likely, on various local radio station surveys but it never broke into the national Top-40. I believe during that point in time singles needed to spread from one locale to another until it attracted a majority of radio stations nationwide.

Today a single is usually a predetermined hit if a radio programmer or a focus group gives it the okay sign for airplay. Radio stations today, more now than ever, are so afraid of losing listeners that they don't take chances or risks and they'll only play what a researched study of demographics, usually 18-34, want to hear. So there isn't very much room for an artist to luck out anymore. Everything is planned to the very tee when it comes to breaking in an artist onto any radio format now. Radio simply won't play an artist that's not been tested to the fullest. So, "Rockin' Teenage Mummies" in today's jargon is said to have tested well in some AM radio markets but not enough to break out nationally. The catalog number for the single is #72382 for those who collect 45 singles.

This picture of Ray Stevens comes from 1977. It's a duplicate of the image of Ray that appears on the back of his album that year, Feel The Music. In one of the few times in any artist's career, Ray's image doesn't appear on the front of the album. What we have is a brown design of some kind...maybe it's braille illustration? Whatever it is, the front of the album only shows the name of the album and the artist and the front of the album is nothing but brown colorization. On the back of the album we see the larger snap shot of Ray seated upon a stool. This image as far as I know was used as a publicity picture during 1977 and into 1978 prior to Ray growing and keeping his beard.

This image of Ray has appeared on a couple of compilation albums that were released internationally. There was one collection, The Remarkable Ray Stevens, which featured an illustrated image of this picture. That album was issued on the Warwick label. During 1977 Ray was enjoying success with his publishing company...two songs in particular became hits that were associated with Ray. "Can't Stop Dancing" became a hit for the Captain and Tennille. Ray co-wrote that song and recorded it himself for his 1976 album, Just For the Record. Ray also became involved in the last hit single on the charts during Elvis Presley's life...a song called "Way Down". Ray was the publisher of that single and it became a country music hit. 1977 was also the year that Ray appeared on the syndicated country music program, Pop Goes the Country as well as other country music oriented programs. This foray into country music had begun in 1975 but when you listen to his albums there's nothing on them that sounds 'country' except for when he intentionally adds country instrumentation to his songs. When asked about this he usually responds that he was never interested in being labeled country or pop and that all he wanted was to make the best sounding music that he could. The emphasis would be on the word 'sounding'. This is an indication that he was much more interested in the production end of a song and making it sound as good as possible regardless of which music format it may appeal to. He also once said that he left it up to whatever record label he was with to deal with marketing the song.

The front of the album as I mentioned above shows a large brown design that I assume is suppose to resemble braille and the concept is for people to feel the music literally. I've got the album and the surface is flat...so it isn't real braille, obviously. The album, though, is middle-of-the-road. This album in my mind anyway was designed to appeal to that audience which had been a key factor in his successes that decade. The Adult-Contemporary audience is really who embraced quite a few singles of Ray's when Top-40 radio didn't have any idea of what to do with them. "Sunset Strip", for example, did well with adults in 1970...reaching the Top-20 on the Adult-Contemporary chart...but yet among the pop audience which consisted of mostly teenagers and younger adults the single peaked in the Top-85. Ray wrote all but one of the songs on the 1977 album. Here is the track-list...

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

C.W. "Buddy" Kalb, Jr. wrote "Set The Children Free" and Ray wrote the rest of the songs. The biggest hit from the album was the album closer, "Dixie Hummingbird", which came ever so close to reaching the country Top-40. "Get Crazy With Me" charted a bit more modestly on the country charts while the title track, "Feel the Music", didn't reach the charts.

This 2 album collection was released in the United Kingdom and it features random recordings, some hits and some album tracks, that Ray recorded between 1968 and 1975. 13 songs make up album one and 11 songs make up album two. The picture of Ray on the album cover was a publicity picture that was used for years during the '70s mostly overseas. This album features album tracks that usually do not appear on compilation albums. Songs like "Sunshine", "Just So Proud To Be Here", "Little Egypt", "Sir Thanks-a-Lot" get a chance to shine...and the obvious hit songs are located on here, too. I don't own this particular collection but I'd like to at some point. The only double album of Ray's that I own on vinyl is Get The Best of Ray Stevens, a collection released in 1987 on MCA Records.

2 comments:

  1. The "brown pattern/design" on Feel The Music is in fact an illustration of a speaker front. Cabinet speakers used to have this type of weave in the grill. That is woodgrain look around the edge of the LP to reflect a cabinet. So, the LP name was a bit of a pun, i.e. Feel the Music coming out of the speakers! Remember Quiet Riots' C'Mon Feel The Noise? - same idea. The song itself is one of my top 5 Ray songs.

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  2. Thanks for the explanation!!! As you can see I never would have thought it was a speaker of all things.

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