June 25, 2011

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 31...



A comical twist on Apollo-13 plays out in "Virgil and the Moonshot". The music video was put together in 1997 as one of two videos taken from Hum It, the comedy album Ray Stevens issued that year. Long time fans of Ray Stevens are familiar with the music video but for those who've discovered Ray by way of You Tube you'll no doubt get a kick out of the video. Ray plays himself, of course, in addition to Virgil. Ray uploaded the music video to You Tube exactly a month ago on May 25th. The second music video from the Hum It CD is "Too Drunk To Fish" which is available on-line, too. Buddy Kalb, longtime friend of Ray's and a songwriter, portrays the head of Mission Control in the Moonshot video. In "Too Drunk To Fish" Kalb is seen as Ray's fishing buddy at the start of the video.

On the same day, May 25, "Gitarzan" was officially uploaded onto You Tube. The video's been uploaded before by other people...but now Ray's company has uploaded the video and therefore this upload has become the official You Tube release. It was made in 1995 and was the opening music video on Ray's movie, Get Serious!, a movie that I've written about before (plenty of times!!).



For those curious here is the track list for the 1997 Hum It CD:

1. R.V.
2. I'll Be In Atlanta
3. Virgil and the Moonshot
4. She Loves Elvis Better Than Me
5. Sunday Morning
6. Too Drunk To Fish
7. Mama Sang Bass (featuring J.D. Sumner as "Mama")
8. My Neighbor
9. It Ain't Over Till It's Over
10. How Much Does It Cost To Fly To Albuquerque?

Ray's Get Serious! movie from 1995 features the following music videos:

1. Gitarzan
2. The Woogie Boogie
3. Shriner's Convention
4. Dudley Dorite of the Highway Patrol
5. We Don't Take Nuthin' Off Nobody**
6. The Dooright Family
7. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens (duet with Connie Freeman as "Charlene")
8. Can He Love You Half as Much as I?
9. I Used To Be Crazy
10. Ahab the Arab

There was only a performance of the first verse and chorus for "We Don't Take Nuthin' Off Nobody". The full performance is available on the Get Serious! soundtrack which is still available for sale at Ray's web-site store. The product can be found here. In the movie there was also a brief music video of "The Day I Tried To Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive" in which only the first verse was performed. It's anyone's guess why the complete recording was never added to the soundtrack, though. The song originated in 1988 on Ray's comedy album, I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like. There's a possibility that the song was simply used to briefly explain Charlene's history and her deafness...which is played out in the song's first verse. The character was played by Connie Freeman.

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