November 26, 2017

Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville...John Berry

Hello once more!! I couldn't post a review/re-cap of last week's episode of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville because I wasn't able to see it. Severe storms passed through last Saturday night (November 18th) and although it didn't knock out our electric it did enough damage to knock out the signal of the PBS station that airs Ray's television series. I just finished watching the November 18th episode guest starring John Berry. I watched it on the new subscription based website that Ray launched last week. I posted a link to it in my previous blog entry which can be found off to the right hand side of the page in the archives.

Ray opened the episode singing "I Got a Woman", a classic originally recorded by one of his musical heroes, Ray Charles. This is one of the few episodes in which Ray is seated at the piano at the start of the show. After the performance Ray brings out John Berry who discusses his background. Born in South Carolina he was raised in Georgia...mentioning Atlanta and Athens. Ray asked how he managed to migrate from Georgia to Tennessee and the inspiration for it. John makes mention of being locally popular and of hearing Joe Diffie's recording, "Ships That Don't Come In".

John says that hearing the song led him to believe that if he truly wanted to become noticed as a singer at a national level than he should go to Nashville instead of being locally popular in Athens, Georgia. He relates how he and his wife made the trip to Nashville in 1992 and at the time he was in his mid 30's which John half jokingly remarked would be considered over the hill in today's music climate. Ray mentions a current CD of John's being available, What I Love the Most, which was released in June of 2016.

Ray, at various moments throughout the show, marveled at John's voice and simply referred to him as 'John Berry: Singer' to emphasize the tenor vocals that John's famous for. John performs a song from it titled "There Could Never Be Another Love". Afterward he speaks of his electronic duet with Patsy Cline and then performs two additional songs: "Standing on the Edge of Goodbye" and his signature song, "Your Love Amazes Me". A music heavy episode for sure as Ray closes with his version of "Up a Lazy River". This is one of the rare episodes in which no comedy emerged either in music or sketch form (there wasn't any Video Jukebox or Comedy Classic segments). As mentioned at the top of this blog post the John Berry episode originally aired the weekend of November 18th on PBS affiliates and had it not been for severe weather knocking the PBS signal off the air I would have been able to have seen the episode then...but thanks to Ray's television and video subscription website I was able to watch the episode I didn't get to see. It's only $4.99 per month or you can do as I did and pay for an entire year (which is $49.99) and by doing that I won't have to renew my subscription until November 2018. I also mentioned that you could find the website's address by searching my archives, well, I decided to provide a link containing information about Ray's television and video site in this blog entry.

You can read about the TV and video site, including a direct link to the TV and video site, by visiting his main website by clicking this LINK. After clicking the link and his website opens up be sure to click the Watch Now button. It'll take you to the TV and video site where you'll see the subscription offers and you can check out everything you'll get to watch once you become a member. There's a lot of content exclusive to the site (full length episodes of his summer 1970 television show, for example; and early and mid 1980s performances from television specials on The Nashville Network).

The local PBS affiliate that airs Ray's television program didn't air it tonight due to their annual pledge break. The PBS affiliates that aired the episode will have seen his special guest, Jeannie Seely. This episode should become available on Ray's TV and video site on Monday. I'm thinking that Ray adds the current episodes to his site once they've aired on all the PBS affiliate stations (many air the show on either Friday night or Saturday night...some air it on Sunday...which is what has me thinking the Jeannie Seely episode will become available on Monday). Once it becomes available on Ray's new TV and video site I'll watch it and give my recap.

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