April 10, 2011

Ray Stevens plays the Piano...

Hello Ray Stevens fans!! It's been awhile since I submitted a blog entry but it's not from having nothing to say...I'd been side-tracked by all the news surrounding Ray's latest happenings and the fact of myself being more active on Facebook than I usually am took me away from here for a few days. I came across this video upload several days ago on You Tube and now I'm embedding it here. It's a performance by an unlikely duo: Ray Stevens and Loretta Lynn...and the two of them are performing several Patsy Cline songs. Barbara Mandrell is seen at the start of the video making the introduction. The performance comes from 1983 during the Silver Anniversary of the CMA's 1958 founding.

The songs performed during the clip are "Faded Love", "I Fall To Pieces", and "Back In Baby's Arms". This clip marks a series of firsts for me: first of all it's the first clip I've seen of Ray Stevens performing on a CMA telecast; it's the first time I'd seen Ray and Loretta sing together (probably the only time!); and it's the first time I'd seen Ray perform songs made famous by Patsy Cline. Ray's appeared at the Hall of Fame museum and performed at the Hall of Fame's Ford theater rather recently...and we all know the CMA is associated with the Hall of Fame...but this is the first time I'd seen him perform on a CMA telecast.



For those who hadn't been keeping up to date with Ray's latest happenings the place to find out what's happening is right here at his own web-page. Within the last several days news has become available that Ray signed contracts with a couple of companies that'll certainly help 2011 become just as successful as 2010 was. It was announced on April 5th, as the article in the link goes into more detail about, that the Bobby Roberts Company has become Ray's representative for concerts/personal appearances and that a company called Absolute Publicity is now in charge of PR (public relations).

On April 7th the web-page added a story commemorating the collective 15,000,000+ unique views that all of his You Tube music videos have obtained over the last year and a half. The total number of combined views of his videos is now approaching 16,000,000. A quick look at his You Tube channel shows 15,998,966. Also, he has more than 11,000 subscribers to his channel.

The April 7th article also announces the upcoming May release of a brand new music video. This music video, in my opinion, more than likely will coincide with the physical CD release of The Spirit of '76. It isn't everyday we get advance warning (a full month ahead of time) of an upcoming music video...usually the video's are mentioned a few days prior to their You Tube release...but given that this upcoming video was mentioned weeks before it's arrival indicates, to me at least, that Ray and his people are planning a big opening week for the physical CD and they want a brand new music video to be hitting the internet at the same time. His current single, "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", is on The Spirit of '76 and technically that TSA song is his first release from the collection.

On May 7th Ray will appear on Huckabee's program on the Fox News Channel and on May 11th Ray will take part in a Conservative function titled Conservatives on the Move which will take place in Franklin, Tennessee. A write-up of Ray and how much the organization is looking forward to Ray's appearance can be found here at their web-site. I believe I posted a link to this in one of my March blogs due to the fact the article was written on March 16th but it never hurts to bring back articles and news reports in an effort to keep the news on the front burner.

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. well iam a big fan of Ray Stevens please post more about him

    cheers!!

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  3. I've had this fan-created blog page open since 2008 and have written 393 blog entries about Ray so far.

    The archived blog posts are located in the blog archive section on the right side of the page just below the traffic feed box.

    I also have a Ray Stevens pictorial career time line that runs along the right side of the page highlighting every single year from 1957 through 2011.

    It took be by surprise that you'd ask if I'd "post more about him" so I take it you didn't notice the archive section prior to your comment.

    When I began this blog I also made it a point to steer people to Ray's official web-site any chance I can and that's where a lot of his music is sold at. In an area known as the Web Store, of course!

    Amazon, CD Now, and Itunes are other on-line shopping stores that are reputable.

    I stay clear of what I call home-grown web-sites that sell Mp3's because Ray doesn't financially benefit from those kinds of sites. Ray's web-store, along with the three on-line stores mentioned in the previous paragraph, are all people need when wanting to find digital downloads.

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