August 20, 2012

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 37...

In the Ray Stevens Nostalgia Valley this time around we take a look at a gem of an album from the late 1980's.

It's Ray's 1989 album, Beside Myself. This particular collection contains ten recordings, the standard total for many country music albums at the time. The thing that caused this album to stand out amongst his many fans was the inclusion of serious ballads...something that had been missing from the albums of Ray Stevens since 1983. When Ray joined the MCA label in 1984 he intentionally released nothing but comedy albums...remarking in interviews that the comedy songs from his past are what the public at large is overwhelmingly familiar with and in spite of the fact that he'd been recording ballad-heavy albums for years, in between the occasional comedy release, the public always seemed to insist on the comical side. Ray had consistently made mention in his interviews that the comical songs are just 1 aspect of his career. In 1980 he released "The Shriner's Convention" and amidst that comedy song's greatest popularity in the spring of that year he remarked that he wanted to distance himself from the comedy image and return to ballads and serious works. He did just that...from 1981 through 1983 he released three studio albums of ballads/serious songs...and then he joined MCA the following year as a comedy act. The risk paid off...from 1984 through 1989 Ray had one monster hit comedy album after the other. His first two albums for the label sold more than half a million copies within 2 years...the second comedy album had even reached #1 on the Country Album chart in early 1986...a feat unheard of for an all-comedy release at that point in time. By 1989 when Beside Myself was released Ray had been the recipient of numerous industry and fan-voted awards for his comedy albums and songs. The Music City News readers would go on to vote Ray as their Comedian of the Year from 1986 through 1994, 9 consecutive years! The first 5 songs on this album are ballads...and on the album's cover you see a more serious looking Ray positioned first. The remaining 5 songs are comical...as depicted on the cover with Ray in clown disguise. The album also featured a lot more songs from the pen of Ray Stevens, too. If you look at the songwriter credits on this 1989 album you'll see that Ray co-wrote 9 of the 10 songs. The one song that Ray didn't have a hand at writing was "Marion Michael Morrison", the salute to movie icon John Wayne. That song was written by Ray's longtime songwriting partner and friend, Buddy Kalb. The album's opening track is "Your Bozo's Back Again"...once more, with a title like that you'd think it would be a novelty song but it's a gorgeous ballad recording complete with calliope sound effects. Ray recently re-recorded this song for a CD titled Bozo's Back Again...it's just as great as the 1989 original.

The song that kicks off the comical portion of Beside Myself is "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O." which became a famous stage performance of Ray's at his theater in Branson, Missouri during the early 1990's. In the stage performances in Missouri, Ray used a filmed sequence on a giant video screen depicting the first part of the recording where a news anchor and a news reporter bring the story of a U.F.O. sighting in the woods. The witness tells of his encounter with the U.F.O. All three roles are played by Ray Stevens, of course. Now, along side this visual aid is the giant U.F.O. replica that swoops down and hovers over the stage, pink alien dancers running everywhere, and a super quick costume change into an Elvis-style jumpsuit. You can see this performance in the home video, Ray Stevens Live!, from 1993. Ray performed the song on the annual Music City News awards in 1989 and I believe that was the first time he performed it on stage. It didn't have all the bells and whistles that the Branson concert would have but it was a dry run of what the Branson performance would feature. When the camera panned the audience it shown George Jones quite amused at the production. That performance is located below...


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