April 3, 2011

Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of Ray Stevens...

Released in 1962, "Furthermore" is a love ballad from Ray Stevens about a break-up and it deals with denial from the man's perspective. The topic can be found on any number of pop and country songs from that era...even today many country and soft-rock songs are built around relationships of some kind or another. The trick, or the object of the game, is to come up with new or clever ways of saying the kinds of feelings that have been expressed in countless love songs for more than 70 years. This particular recording features some vocal effects from Ray as he starts the song off in a falsetto voice which evolves into full-blown scat singing. It's a bit of a tongue twister at the same time...Ray's hyper vocals of running a lot of words together within musical beats was something of a trademark of his during this era of his career. This song is not a comedy song...and it isn't a novelty song, neither. It's a genuine love ballad with a unique twist in delivery. The song appeared on Ray's debut album for Mercury Records in 1962, 1837 Seconds of Humor. The album's biggest draw for those familiar with Ray was, of course, "Ahab the Arab" and a full-length depiction of Ahab on his camel, Clyde, was illustrated on the front of the album. Due to the album rightfully showing awareness of that particular single I decided to post an image of the actual "Furthermore" single from 1962. The single reached the Hot 100 but it didn't reach the radio-oriented Top-40. It's B-side is a comical song titled "Saturday Night at the Movies".

"Furthermore" got an update with a new arrangement and some additional lyrics in 1984 (with some of the original lyrics taken out). This updated version debuted on He Thinks He's Ray Stevens, the 1984 comedy album Ray Stevens released on MCA Records. The album would eventually be certified Gold and Platinum. In this re-recording Ray removes the hyper-speech and replaces the early '60s pop/teen-idol sound with a more matured vocal delivery with heavy emphasis on blues...complete with a lonesome sounding harmonica in the background. Given that this bluesy, serious song closes out one of Ray's most popular comedy albums it's hard to tell if some people out there mistake the song as something that's meant to be funny. I remember when I was around the age of 10 or 11 in the mid 1980's and was just getting familiar with the songs of Ray Stevens (by way of my grandparents) and they'd play the cassette tape of He Thinks He's Ray Stevens a lot...whenever it got to the last song and that harmonica would start playing I'd get upset because it meant that it was the last song on the tape...and I wanted to hear more and more and more of Ray Stevens!!

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