Ray Stevens: Retrospective 42...

This is the image of Ray that appears on the Have a Little Talk With Myself album. Here it's used as a picture sleeve for an overseas release of "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", one of the singles from the 1969 album. The b-side, "The Minority", comes from Ray's 1968 album, Even Stevens. As most of Ray's fans are aware, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" was the first single to reach the country music charts for Ray. Ray was not being marketed as a country singer at that time but starting with this single and moving forward he'd frequently have songs cross over to the country charts. It wouldn't be until the late '70s that there was ever a concentrated effort to market Ray's music to country audiences. The Have a Little Talk With Myself album features Ray's interpretations of contemporary pop songs with a few all-new songs thrown into the mix. It is on the 1969 album where Ray covers songs made popular by The Beatles, for instance, as well as songs associated with Blood, Sweat, and Tears as well as the Hair stage play. The only songs on the album that weren't cover songs are "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", "The Little Woman", and the title track, "Have a Little Talk With Myself". Johnny Cash recorded "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" a year after Ray and that's why it's technically not a cover song for those who may assume that Johnny recorded the song first. The album has never been re-issued on CD or Mp3 but selections from the album often appeared on many low-budget releases and compilations throughout the '70s and much of the '80s.

Ray, 42 years later, continues to make music and tour. As I write this I assume he and his crew are already in Canada or at least on their way. Ray appears tonight and tomorrow in Niagara Falls up in Ontario, Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center. He's appearing there in the Winter Festival of Lights series. The concert today will be at 2pm and then on Tuesday November 29th the concert will start at 7pm. I'll be on the look out for any reaction from those who attended the show. I don't know if he'll perform Christmas songs or his classic songs considering that the political comedy he's currently doing has what I'd consider a largely American identity and therefore an audience in Canada perhaps may not be able to relate to it or appreciate it...but for those up near that venue here's the information:

Venue: Scotia Bank Convention Center

Where: Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada

First show: November 28, 2011 2pm

Second show: November 29, 2011 7pm

Ray Stevens: Mr. President...

Today marks an anniversary, of sorts...it was 2 months ago that Ray Stevens uploaded his current music video onto You Tube. "Mr. President - Mr. President" arrived on September 27, 2011 and since that time it's gotten more than 300,000 on-line views. As of now the actual count is 350,191 views. In the video Ray portrays the part of a news reporter stating all kinds of problems going on in America and he asks the President to tell the public how he's going to deal with the nation's problems. The music video, at various moments, inserts an actual video clip of Obama from a news conference where he looks into the camera rather intently like he's listening to a real reporter. The song is so good, so catchy, but it's so short...clocking in at just over 2 minutes...it makes you want more and more. The song is from his political comedy CD, Spirit of '76. His previous music video called "Obama Budget Plan" is steadily climbing...it's now at 905,670 on-line views. It's steadily approaching the 1,000,000 plateau.

Ray Stevens and the Spirit of '76, Part 10...

Taking a look at Amazon this hour I find that the current Ray Stevens project, Spirit of '76, is ranked on two best seller lists that I have never known existed until today. A third list is the more familiar "Comedy" survey. The CD is ranked in the Top-50 on a list called "Poetry, Spoken Word, and Interviews" and one called "Radio Shows" while it ranks inside the Top-100 on the "Comedy" list. The CD's been available on Amazon since August while the Mp3 counterpart's been available on Amazon since April 1st.

The CD features "God Save Arizona", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and "Mr. President - Mr. President". All of these songs have become hit on-line music videos. The most successful being "Obama Budget Plan" at just over 900,000 views and "God Save Arizona" racking up close to 830,000 on-line views. The current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is nearing 350,000 views.

The conservative comedy videos continue to resonate with people...some, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, despise the videos while those who feel the mainstream media prop up a liberal point of view in their news reports appreciate the videos that Ray Stevens has put together the last two years.

The Spirit of '76 track-list is below. No Tea Party supporter or any conservative Republican should be without this CD, in my opinion:

1. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore {music video available}
2. Mr. President - Mr. President {music video available}
3. God Save Arizona {music video available}
4. Cap'n Trade the Pirate
5. My Uncle Sam
6. November Storm
7. Mi Casa Su Casa
8. Grandpa Voted Democrat
9. Obama Budget Plan {music video available}
10. News Machine
11. New Normal

Spirit of '76 can be found at Amazon or by clicking the link to Ray's web-store.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 5...

Good evening Ray Stevens fans! We're 1 month away from Christmas...being it's November 25th. Also, of course, we're nearing 2012...an election year...and one of the most popular New Year's wishes is to make 2012 the year Obama's reign of socialism and massive Government dictation comes to an end when he's voted out of office in November 2012. These last 3 years have been the groundwork for the President's long-term visions for the country and if he were to get 4 more years it'll have disastrous and long-lasting impact on generations to come. Who in their right mind would want to light their homes with dim lights, plan your own funeral if a medical procedure in the Government's eyes is seen as too costly, or drive around in cars where you have to charge them up every 10 miles!? This, in my opinion, is the vision of Obama and those he surrounds himself with. I've not even began to bring up the debt that he's racked up the last 3 years.

Meanwhile...on a happier note...

There's been another new You Tube upload of vintage Ray Stevens. The latest is a clip featuring Tom Jones performing a song in which the name is unknown. Tom's performance opens up the clip and then at the two minute fifty-three mark Ray Stevens takes over and sings "Gitarzan". The clip, as with the other two I've embedded, come from 1970. The video clips themselves come from a You Tube member named Jonesing4Tom.



Ray's current music video, "Mr President - Mr. President" has 347,526 views. This is a pick up of over 6,000 on-line views during the last couple of days. "Obama Budget Plan" vaulted past the 900,000 mark and now sits with 901,544 views.

Christmas season is officially underway today and so it's appropriate to remind those who hadn't already seen it that Ray put out a comedy Christmas music video last year titled "Nightmare Before Christmas". The song is from his comedy Christmas CD, Christmas Through a Different Window. This CD was recorded and released in 1997 but was later re-released. A non-comical Christmas CD titled Ray Stevens Christmas came along in December 2009. Currently the two Christmas CD's are being sold together in one exclusive order at Ray's web-store.



Click the Ray Stevens Christmas offer and it'll take you to his web-store where there's more information about the items. Obviously this is for those who don't already have these collections. It's an extremely low price, I think, for 3 CD's and a copy of the above music video. Search the store and you'll find the Bozo's Back Again CD, too, plus Spirit of '76 which I assume will get some more publicity as we get closer to November 2012. Oh, and the Internet Video Hits is also on full display in a banner at his web-site.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 4...

A late check-in tonight...Thanksgiving Eve 2011...I'm actually writing this blog in a sort of rushed delivery given that in half an hour I'll be heading off for work but I wanted to showcase a video clip I came across earlier this morning in the meantime.

A couple of months ago a video clip of Ray Stevens and Tom Jones surfaced on You Tube. The clip was well over 5 minutes in length showing the two artists singing various Ray Charles songs. Yesterday a new clip was uploaded and it features Ray, Tom, and Scoey Mitchell singing "Walk a Mile In My Shoes". This particular song was written by Joe South and it appears on Ray's 1970 album, Everything Is Beautiful.



Wasn't that great? Of course it was! I continue to hope more and more vintage clips of Ray Stevens surface on You Tube. As most people may know one of the things that I hope will resurface is Ray's 1970 Summer show for Andy Williams. To this day I have no idea why it's never been offered on DVD when so many music nostalgia programs are consistently on late-night TV. There's even a few channels on my cable line-up that specialize in nothing but infomercials.

Ray's variety program isn't celebrated as other singer-hosted programs from the same time period are but I still hope it'll find it's way onto a DVD or a clip or two or three will end up on-line.

Meanwhile, Ray's current music video "Mr. President - Mr. President" has 345,319 on-line views. His previous video, "Obama Budget Plan", is seeing an increased number of views enabling it to have an on-line view total of 896,791. Yes, as you can see, it's inching toward 900,000 on-line views. Could this video top 1,000,000 by the end of 2011? It's hard to tell. The disaster that was the so-called Super Committee designed to deal with the nation's budget and deficit woes no doubt increased the exposure of the "Obama Budget Plan" music video because it wasn't that long ago that the video had just crossed over the 800,000 total and here it is close to 900,000.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 3...

On this early Sunday morning I come with a link to nearly 170 pictures of Ray Stevens that were posted at the Imperial Palace's Facebook page. One picture in particular, the third picture in row 6, looks as if he's doing an impression of Groucho Marx. Comments are open to the public...even those who weren't able to appear.

Ray's next couple of concerts for 2011 will take place in Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Ray appears at this venue on back to back days: November 28th and November 29th. His appearances are part of what's called the Winter Festival of Lights. Lorrie Morgan, based upon the venue's web-page, is a co-headliner but there's no information regarding whether or not the two will share the same stage or if in one concert Lorrie plays the part of the opening act and in another Ray returns the favor so it's difficult to determine how the concerts are going to be presented. Those who are planning on going to the concert can easily find out information by calling their number: 1-800-563-2557 or sending an e-mail to tickets@WFOL.com

Since the first concert is going to take place 8 days from now it would make more sense to call the venue directly using the number I supplied. You can also visit this link to see the information that I just wrote about. The venue seats 5,000 people so I'd not wait until the last minute to inquire about the concert.

Meanwhile, the following Imperial Palace Facebook link will take you to the pictures showing Ray on stage at various moments in the concert Saturday night.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet, Part 2...

A little over 10,000 people have seen the Ray Stevens music video, "Virgil and the Moonshot". The video was uploaded onto You Tube rather low-key back in May of this year. The music video comes from 1997...one of two music videos he did that year. The other video, "Too Drunk To Fish", is also on You Tube.



"Virgil and the Moonshot" is all about a guy who works at NASA but decides to innocently sit inside a space shuttle...envisioning himself as a first-rate astronaut. Things get intense as Virgil can't resists pushing a brightly lit button...and from there the adventure in outer space begins. Toward the end of the song several talk-show hosts and news programs are mentioned as we're told all of them want Virgil to appear on their programs given how popular he became.

Long-time songwriter associate of Ray's, Buddy Kalb, appears in the video as the head of Mission Control. Ray's brother appears near the end of the video where Virgil is seen being waited on hand and foot. The brother is wearing the suit and holding the contract papers. I do not know who plays the other roles.

Just in case you missed my last blog entry I posted a link to the Examiner web-page where Jeremy Roberts interviews Buddy Kalb regarding Ray's upcoming novelty song encyclopedia box set. Based upon information Ray himself has said in the past and the comments from Buddy in the recent interview the Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music is going to be an amazing product. I can't wait to get the collection...I think I may have said that a million times by now!?!

This 2010 Great Awakening T-shirt is something I don't typically wear because T-shirts are too form fitting which is why I switched several years ago to button shirts.

I have 2 t-shirts that I bought last year from Ray's web-store. I bought them not to wear...just to have for my collection.

Ray Stevens: Comedy Music Magnet...

Well, it's a Saturday morning...November 19th...later tonight is the Ray Stevens Biloxi, Mississippi concert at the Imperial Palace. I wasn't able to see the Lou Dobbs program last night on the Fox Business Network due to some family events taking place and so I was looking forward to seeing a video clip at the web-site I gave a link to in my previous blog entry. Well, I checked the show's web-page and saw that they uploaded just three video clips from last night's episode and neither upload contained Ray Stevens. I have no idea if the segment will be uploaded...so if anyone saw the program you can fill us all in on what happened.

In the meantime a new interview with songwriter Buddy Kalb surfaced moments ago on the Examiner web-site. This is the same site that featured other interviews with Buddy Kalb as well as an interview with Ray Stevens and an interview with the person typing this blog entry.

Click here to read the most recent interview from Buddy Kalb...within the interview there are links to the previous interviews I mentioned and there are slide-shows and a video link to a 1974 Ray Stevens performance on British television. The main focus of the interview deals with Ray's upcoming Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music which is set to be released early next year. The collection will contain 108 recordings and Buddy talks about the inspiration behind the mammoth treasure chest of comedy songs and how everything came about over the last 2 years. This is going to be a comedy/novelty song lover's must-have collection in my opinion.

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 36...

When you click the Sun Herald Promo you'll see a promo for the upcoming Ray Stevens concert in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Imperial Palace. I intentionally hadn't written any new blog entries since November 14th because I wanted my previous blog entry to be at the top of the page for awhile instead of buried in the archives. Tomorrow (November 19th) is the day of Ray's concert which I'm sure will be a success. I'm sure the link I provided will expire at some point in the future but for now it's active.

*** Tonight Ray Stevens is scheduled to appear on Lou Dobbs' television program which airs on the Fox Business Network. ***

Ray's involvement is slated to begin at 7:10pm Eastern time tonight. The show has a web-page and from the looks of it the segments become available for viewing on that site.

Meanwhile, his latest video titled "Mr. President - Mr. President" is continuing it's steady pace...at the moment it's gotten 337,467 on-line views. This is a pick-up of nearly 7,000 views in 4 days...indicative that it'll garner nearly 10,000 views during the course of the week.

Ray Stevens In Biloxi, Mississippi...11/19/2011

Good Monday morning...it's the start of another work week...but for those down in Biloxi, Mississippi you all have a chance to see Ray Stevens in concert at the Imperial Palace this coming Saturday night, November 19th. The information is contained within the link provided. On November 28th and 29th Ray Stevens will be in Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center.

The latest releases from Ray Stevens include a CD of serious songs...re-recordings of some of his obscure songs from the '80s on a CD called Bozo's Back Again. In addition to that CD there's also the DVD release of Internet Video Hits that I wrote about a couple of blogs ago. In the political vein there's Spirit of '76 which was released earlier in the year at his web-store prior to it's nationwide release a couple of months ago. That CD features 11 songs...4 of the songs have become You Tube music video sensations: "God Save Arizona", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", and his latest, "Mr. President - Mr. President".

Who: Ray Stevens

When: November 19, 2011

Venue: Imperial Palace Casino, Resort, and Spa

Where: Biloxi, Mississippi

Time: 8pm

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 17...

In this Retrospective installment we go back 17 years in the career of Ray Stevens to take a look at 1994. This was one of the busiest times in his career where a lot of his success was coming from the home video market. It was around this time in 1994 that two of Ray's home video releases were still among the Top-10 in home video sales. Comedy Video Classics, the 1992 collection of music videos, had sold more than 200,000 copies in retail stores beginning in 1993 (following it's year long advertising campaign on TV). That particular home video sold millions by way of TV advertisements. He followed it up in 1993 with Ray Stevens Live!, a home video of one of his Branson, Missouri concerts. Technically it was a partial concert with some of the performances edited out and placed on the sequel, More Ray Stevens Live!. After the Ray Stevens Live! home video was released to retail stores in the late summer of 1994 it became another retail sales success. Each of the home videos had lengthy chart runs...in early November of 1994 Comedy Video Classics had been on the charts almost 80 weeks while the newest, Ray Stevens Live!, had been charted for nearly 30 weeks.

In the meantime, while Ray's home video releases were selling unprecedented numbers, his publishing company received an award for "I Can't Reach Her Anymore", a hit single for country singer Sammy Kershaw in 1994. This was the second publisher award bestowed upon Ray in association with a Sammy Kershaw recording...the first being 1992's "Cadillac Style".

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 24...

In Retrospective 24 we take a look at the year of 1987 in the career of Ray Stevens. This was the year that marked the 30th anniversary of Ray's earliest recordings in 1957. This was also the year that MCA Records issued not one, not two, not three, but four separate projects on Ray Stevens! Those four releases were: Greatest Hits, Crackin' Up, Greatest Hits Volume Two, and Get the Best of Ray Stevens. The year was marked by the success of "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", a single from Ray Stevens that satirized televangelists and spoke to thousands upon thousands of people who experienced the scandals that were taking place at the time. A topical single it became a hit slowly...crossing over into the mainstream to such an extent that it was instrumental in garnering an invitation to appear on The Tonight Show in addition to write-up's from various newspaper columnists (Paul Harvey in particular). The song would get a Grammy nomination in 1988. It was written by Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer.

Ray, for a short period of time, did a series of animated music videos for several of his older songs. These video collections were released to retail stores by Curb Records in 2006. Each DVD features 5 music videos. Gourmet Restaurant is named for a song that Ray recorded in 1987 on the Crackin' Up album. Featured on that particular DVD, in addition to "Gourmet Restaurant", is "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty"...both songs come from the 1987 Crackin' Up album. Much of these animated videos have since been uploaded onto You Tube and you can see several of them when you visit Ray's You Tube channel, raystevensmusic, all one word. Crackin' Up features 10 comedy songs for those who don't yet own a copy: "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", "Three Legged Man", "Cool Down, Willard", "I'm My Own Grandpaw", "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty", "Sex Symbols", "Gourmet Restaurant", "The Flies of Texas", "Doctor, Doctor Have Mercy On Me", and "The Day That Clancy Drowned".

Get The Best of Ray Stevens was an album advertised on television and in newspaper advertisements. Years before Ray sold millions of home videos in the 1990's this 2-LP collection was being sold on TV and the official commercial shown Ray singing snippets of the songs. Commercials like this used to appear frequently for albums released by Heartland Records, too. Unfortunately I only saw the commercial a couple of times and couldn't tell you much about it...except that Ray appeared in various suits and costumes much like in the commercial he did for Comedy Video Classics in 1992. The vinyl album in the picture opens up, like a reading book, to reveal the songs and credits. Each vinyl disc is housed in a separate sleeve. The collection basically combines both Greatest Hits releases (plus or minus a couple of songs).

Let's Discuss Ray Stevens, Part 35...

During the CMA festivities that took place in Nashville during the week of November 7, 2011 Ray Stevens made several appearances. He often appears at the publisher awards but usually there isn't an in-depth or conversational interview that takes place. An exception to the rule occurred when Ray found himself being interviewed by a radio DJ, who uses the name of Danger Frog, from a Pittsburgh radio station. A lot of country radio stations from around the country make the annual trip to Nashville to attend the festivities surrounding the CMA Awards.

The clip of Ray's interview was uploaded onto You Tube recently and here it is...

Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw, Part 5!!!!!

Good Sunday morning Ray Stevens fans!! In my previous blog entry I posted about the happenings of Ray Stevens in 1986. That particular blog post was nearly a week in the making due to some unfortunate circumstances. Back on November 6th, around 2am, my computer monitor stopped functioning and so the blog I was in the middle of writing (the one called Retrospective 25) was saved in the draft folder. I never got the opportunity to get back on-line until late Saturday afternoon (November 12th) and so it was nearly 1 week before I could put the finishing touches on the 6 day old blog entry.

Due to the fact that my monitor stopped functioning I wasn't able to write a blog surrounding the appearance of Ray on Hee-Haw later that night. The appearance was exceptional (in my opinion!). He wore a red shirt and performed "Isn't It Lonely Together" during the first half hour...with the camera doing all sorts of visual tricks at various moments in the song. Prior to him singing the last line of the song the camera gave an extreme close-up of his face. The second performance was the high-energy enthusiastic "Gitarzan". I'm hoping both performances end up on You Tube as his debut appearance did. In his debut appearance on Hee-Haw he performed "Turn Your Radio On" (which was considered his most recent release) and "Along Came Jones". Strangely enough in his second appearance on the show he didn't perform any current release. These two 1972 appearances would be it for a period of 3 years...returning in 1975...and from then onward appearing almost annually for the rest of the show's lifespan.

In the meantime, while being off-line, Ray had conducted a series of interviews but only a couple of them, so far, have become available for audio playback. The interview was conducted by radio personality, Michael Berry, of KTRH radio in Houston, Texas. The interview runs more than 16 minutes and both parts were uploaded onto You Tube...

Part 1...
Ray Stevens KTRH interview

Part 2...
Ray Stevens on KTRH

One of the things that I was able to do on November 4th, a couple days prior to my off-line status, was place an order for the new DVD from Ray Stevens titled Internet Video Hits. Around the time of the DVD's announcement several people wondered why Ray would want to release a DVD of music videos that people can see on-line 24/7. I suspected that the reason for the DVD release was so people could have a collection of the music videos on one DVD that they could watch on their TV and also have the DVD as a way to introduce the music videos to those that aren't interested in being on-line for whatever reason. A lot of people are still in the dark when it comes to being on-line and using a computer and so the DVD is a perfect way of giving those who choose to be without a computer an opportunity to see what they've been missing. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, this DVD features 10 music videos. There's a message from Ray written on the back of the DVD case explaining the reason why this project was put together.

The music videos in the collection are:

1. God Save Arizona
2. Come to the U.S.A.
3. We The People
4. Caribou Barbie
5. Mr. President - Mr. President
6. The Global Warming Song
7. Throw the Bums Out!
8. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore
9. Obama Budget Plan
10. Nightmare Before Christmas

Those who want a copy of this DVD for your personal collections need to simply visit the web-store at Ray Stevens' official web-page. A link to the DVD's product page is located here.

His current music video, "Mr. President - Mr. President", increased by nearly 30,000 on-line views since my last look-in 6 days ago. The current total is 329,453. The video is a little over 1 month old.

Ray Stevens: Retrospective 25...

In this particular blog entry titled Retrospective 25 I'm spotlighting events that took place in the career of Ray Stevens in 1986...25 years ago.

What exactly was happening in the career of Ray Stevens in 1986? Well, for one thing, he was riding high on a wave of newly found popularity...a situation that just happened to be something of a recurring theme in his overall career. Every so often, while retaining his core fan base, he often becomes discovered by an entirely different audience...then, once they become enmeshed within his core fan base he's discovered by other people...on and on, down through history, this sort of ebb and flow effect has enabled Ray (in my opinion) to endure for decade upon decade in spite of the fact that music critic after music critic has long pronounced "the novelty song" a surefire way to kill a career rather than prolong it. 1986 is the year that Ray enjoyed his first and only #1 album...the album in question is I Have Returned and it wasn't an immediate chart success. Over the course of half a year, starting in the latter part of 1985 and into the spring of 1986 the album slowly climbed up the country album list week after week. It ultimately reached #1. A previous album (released late in 1984) reached the country Top-5 in early 1985. In the image above it's the cassette version of 1986's Surely You Joust.

Are there any other Ray Stevens fans out there who are overcome by giddiness, excitement, and full-blown euphoria after a vinyl album of Ray's arrives in the mail? How about having those same feelings if you come across a vinyl album of Ray's at a flea market? I'll expand this further by asking if any Ray Stevens fans have those feelings once they see the flip side of the album jacket...revealing imagery and, or, art work that is new to the eye. When the vinyl album arrived in the mail of Surely You Joust, Ray's 1986 album, I knew of the image beforehand but didn't know it come from the flip side of the album jacket. When I first saw the image of Ray hoisted in the air by a crane in a junkyard I assumed it was a rarely seen publicity picture for magazine or newspaper usage...little did I know that it's origins were from the actual vinyl album. The picture comes from January 4, 2008...a few weeks after it arrived in the mail from some on-line seller at eBay. I already had the cassette copy...it had been my grandfather's originally. He bought it new in 1986.

In the first image the cassette version shows three songs listed: "Southern Air", "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?", and "People's Court". The project was released at a time in country music where there were all sorts of clashes going on between various style trends. In times past country radio, as a whole, attempted to equally promote all the various sub-genres of country music within it's musical umbrella. In 1986 and moving forward country radio began to slowly remove certain styles of country music as well as artists of a certain age from the airwaves and replace them with brand new artists emerging on the country scene that tended to fit marketing strategies or a preferred sound. In addition to this country radio began to increase airplay exposure of acts that had been in the business a few years and had been overshadowed by long established acts.

As I'm sure most are aware, Ray Stevens has both a Facebook and Twitter page in addition to his official web-page. I, too, have a Twitter page but I rarely post personal thoughts there. I basically post links to Ray Stevens videos or news stories about Ray or I re-tweet messages from Ray's page. I sometimes provide links to any number of blogs that I've written or ones that I've come across by others.

I came across a blog today that mentioned the one you're reading now...

Unfortunately, though, the blog entry was written way back in April of this year! The reason why I wasn't aware of it until now is because the search engine I normally use didn't include that particular blog in their search results. I sometimes switch search engines from time to time to compare how detailed one search engines results are in comparison to another. It was while I was temporarily switched to a different search engine that I came across the April 2011 blog entry. The blogger said that my blog page on Ray Stevens is probably the best reference site on the internet. The blog I'm referring to is called R S Crabb Music Review & Top Ten Site. The entry is called On the Subject of Ray Stevens.

Ray Stevens on Hee-Haw, Part 4!!!!

In a couple of minutes I'll be ordering the Internet Video Hits DVD from Ray Stevens that I wrote about in my previous blog...but the main reason I'm writing this brief entry is to alert people to Sunday night at 8pm Eastern time. This is the time when RFD-TV will air their weekly episode of Hee-Haw. The episode airing tomorrow night was originally broadcast in 1972 and it features Ray Stevens and Donna Fargo as the special guests. Earlier in the year Ray's first appearance on Hee-Haw was reran on RFD-TV and tomorrow night we'll get to see his second appearance. Fast-forwarding 39 years to November 5, 2011 we see that Ray's current music video on You Tube, "Mr. President - Mr. President", has 310,245 views. This is another increase of nearly 10,000 views in a matter of a few days.

Ray Stevens: Internet Video Hits...

Good Wednesday morning...also, welcome to November! Yes, I know it's November 2, but it's my first blog entry of the month. A couple of days ago I wrote about an upcoming DVD from Ray Stevens titled Internet Video Hits. The DVD is now available for purchase at Ray's web-store. Click the above link for more information. I'll be purchasing mine this coming Friday.

The collection features 10 music videos taped during the years of 2009 through the current 2011 video, "Mr. President - Mr. President". The current music video vaulted past the 300,000 mark and has 301,328 on-line views at the moment. It's an increase of nearly 10,000 on-line views in a few days time.

1. God Save Arizona; 2010
2. Come to the U.S.A.; 2010
3. We The People; 2009
4. Caribou Barbie; 2010
5. Mr. President - Mr. President; 2011
6. The Global Warming Song; 2010
7. Throw the Bums Out!; 2010
8. The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore; 2011
9. Obama Budget Plan; 2011
10. Nightmare Before Christmas; 2010

Currently the music videos of "Throw the Bums Out!" and "God Save Arizona" are neck and neck in on-line view totals. "Throw the Bums Out!" has 822,825 on-line views while "God Save Arizona" has gotten 822,720 on-line views! The "Obama Budget Plan" has 848,469 views.