November 30, 2012

Ray Stevens: Golden LP Series Extra...1995...

In this Extra installment I wanted to mention a few projects that emerged in 1995 featuring the music of Ray Stevens. There had long been a consistent string of compilation albums on the market featuring Ray's songs. While several were contractually released hits albums and other similar collections there were quite a few that were released by an entire series of low-budget and Independent record companies from all over the globe. This kind of thing seemed to taper off by 1997 but in 1995 there were at least five compilation releases did on Ray Stevens that I'm aware of. There was a 3-CD collection called The Incredible World of Ray Stevens which had two separate releases based upon which country a music consumer lived in. Warner Brothers released a 3-CD set called Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. Each of those CD's contained obscure, hard to find vocal gems from Ray that he recorded in the late '70s. A lot of those songs made their debut on CD in 1995. A fifth compilation in 1995 came from his record label at the time, Curb Records. They issued a CD titled 20 Comedy Hits. It came with liner notes in a fold-out cover which also featured pics of Ray. The pics of Ray were more contemporary to reflect the majority of songs on the CD being from the early '90s. It's the only CD compilation to deliberately showcase an abundance of his Curb recordings. In addition to those five compilation releases there was also the 1995 audio soundtrack of Get Serious!. This collection gathered the songs performed in video format in Ray's movie and presented them in audio format. The song titled "We Don't Take Nothin' Off Nobody" is heard in it's entirety on the soundtrack whereas in the movie only the first verse and chorus is heard.

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