July 15, 2018

Ray Stevens and the abc's of RCA...

Hello one and all...as I made mention in a previous blog entry the current season of the Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville television series wrapped up a couple of weekends ago and so most of my blog entries are going to be more along the lines of the kind I used to do before I began devoting most of my time to writing reviews and comments of his television program.

A couple of blog entries ago I wrote about Ray's under-rated stay at Warner Brothers Records in the late 1970s (1976 through 1979) and I revealed a collage that I created revolving around his music of that period. You can read that blog by clicking HERE. I posted it back on July 10th but it's something that I'm going to periodically refer to from now on because of my desire to spotlight those recordings to anybody that visits this fan created blog page.

Although I don't really need to remind anyone I'll go ahead and do so for any new readers that come across the blog:

I celebrate/spotlight all areas of Ray Stevens career. I also take pride in the fact that I offer accurate, fact based information when it comes to albums, music videos, or appearances from both the past and present by Ray Stevens. I also never marginalize any aspect of his career. There are some music historians and music fans, in general, that only blog about the widely known aspects of Ray's career and offer very little else about him or they offer partially accurate information due to sloppy research. I came across a discography of Ray Stevens from some website...it was an image taken from one of those music guide books...that discography had more skips than a well worn vinyl album. Albums were omitted and some had the wrong year of release. Sloppy...sloppy...need I type it again? Sloppy!

But let's move along to the subject of this particular blog entry. I call it the abc's of RCA and I title it as such because I'm going to shift some focus onto his RCA recordings in the early 1980s. I've written on this subject before...my older blog entries indicate as much...but I like to update my commentary and revisit past subjects rather than let previous thoughts and analysis rest in the archives. These RCA recordings were on the heels of the under-rated Warner Brothers recordings and like the recordings on that label his RCA material is rarely, if ever, available for purchase in any detailed quantity.

The RCA years in the career timeline of Ray Stevens cover 1979 to 1983. Ray signed with RCA in the latter half of 1979 and he went to work on his first album for the label...the results surfaced very early in 1980 in the form of the single, "Shriner's Convention", in February. The comedy album, Shriner's Convention, surfaced as well. The single and the album both hit the Country Top-10. I have a vinyl copy of the 1980 album in addition to the cassette release. The single received a lot of publicity in various country music trade magazines of the time period and given that the song and album were devoted to comedy (his first comedy album in 6 years) it forever more cemented his image as a comedy/novelty act among country music consumers. Around the same time that "Shriner's Convention" was hitting in America RCA issued one of the tracks from the album as an international single. "Hey There" was issued as a single in Canada, The United Kingdom, Germany, and in the Netherlands. That single's B-side is "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me" which is also the B-side of "Shriner's Convention". I've never been able to find any chart data on "Hey There"...no data on chart statistics or what month the single was released...but there are plenty of images of the single available on-line and I'll post one of those images later in the blog entry.

Anyway, upon the fast climbing success of "Shriner's Convention", just as in times past, whenever Ray saw success with a comical project he'd almost immediately distance himself from it and return to serious, non-comedy recordings. After the meteoric success of "Shriner's Convention" and everything that came with it early in 1980 he ultimately began work on a serious follow-up. In the fall of 1980 Ray emerged with "Night Games". Sufficient enough time had lapsed between the release of the rollicking "Shriner's Convention" in February and "Night Games" in August. Ray performed "Night Games" on a 1980 television special honoring his long time friend and sometimes business associate, Chet Atkins. On this same television special he and Chet performed a rendition of "Frog Kissing" which Chet had a hit with in 1976. Ray produced, arranged, and published the recording session. In the era of the Urban Cowboy fad "Night Games" told the story of life in singles bars and the relationships that form in darkness but often vanish in the light of day. The song climbed into the Top-20 on the country music chart.

The B-side of "Night Games" is a love ballad called "Let's Do it Right This Time". Each of these recordings, from the pen of Buddy Kalb, appear on Ray's 1981 album, One More Last Chance.

As you see in the above collage in panel two Ray is dressed in cowboy attire with an alluring woman at his side. On the back of the album Ray appears in a casual shirt and wearing the cowboy hat that the alluring woman is wearing on the front of the album. I have the album on vinyl but not in cassette which is why there isn't a photo of myself and a cassette version. Prior to the release of his 1981 album, however, the title track was issued as a single in January 1981 and it eventually became a Top-40 hit on the country charts. "One More Last Chance" is a super recording...stellar use of steel guitar and electric guitar...and you've heard songs referred to before as a lover's plea...well, this one is a highly emotional lover's plea. So much was put into the production...it's also a lengthy recording. There are numerous lengthy recordings on this 1981 album...it's ballad heavy...but some are kind of uptempo but still lengthy. The B-side of "One More Last Chance" is "I Believe You Love Me".

It is such a great album and, for me, it remains a mystery as to why no further single releases or publicity arrived for the rest of the calendar year concerning the One More Last Chance album. If you were at the movies in the summer of 1981 you no doubt heard Ray singing on The Cannonball Run movie. He sang the theme song, "Cannonball", and a love ballad, "Just for the Hell of It". The movie opened in theaters on June 19, 1981. Prior to this he appeared on the soap opera, Texas, and performed "One More Last Chance" on camera. It's credited on-line as episode 217...the original air-date being June 10, 1981. So, no, it wasn't like 1981 was a bleak year or anything in his career. What turned out to be Ray's final studio album for RCA arrived early in 1982 in the form of Don't Laugh Now. This album was far less ballad heavy and it also represented some changes on the technical side. Ray enlisted a co-producer, Bob Montgomery, and on several recordings the arranger was Ron Oates. On practically every studio album by Ray Stevens dating back to 1970 Ray is credited as both producer and arranger...and the keyboard/piano/organ/synthesizer player.

On this album Ron Oates is credited with keyboards and is the credited arranger of "This Old Piano", "Why Don't We Go Somewhere and Make Love", and the album's first single, "Written Down in My Heart". Ray is credited as the arranger on the other seven recordings. The neon-like cover art in the lettering seen on the vinyl copy ties into the '50s era rock and roll feel of the album's lead-off track, "Such a Night", along side the abundance of electric guitars heard throughout the album. Yet, "Written Down in My Heart" is a soothing love ballad with just a few touches of electric guitar. The single hit the country music Top-40 in early 1982...the B-side is the mid-tempo "Country Boy, Country Club Girl". The last single RCA released on Ray appeared in the spring of 1982, "Where the Sun Don't Shine". This sing-a-long carries a southern gospel overtone in the music arrangement but the lyrics offer a humorous story about a man leaving a woman and offering parting advice in the form of the song's title. It made the country music charts but didn't crack the Top-40. Ray remained an RCA recording artist, contractually, into 1983.

The company released a Greatest Hits compilation on him that year which was comprised almost entirely of recordings of Ray from Monument Records and Barnaby Records (covering the years 1968 to 1975) but it tacked on two recordings from his 1980 debut album for RCA. "Shriner's Convention" and the album track, "The Dooright Family", appeared on the 1983 compilation. In hindsight RCA should have included the six single releases from Ray during his brief stay on RCA and then filled the remainder of the album with older songs but instead there are only two RCA recordings on 1983's Greatest Hits. "Hey There", interestingly, is never included on any compilation album even though we all can clearly see it was released as a commercial single but yet the equally hilarious recording, "The Dooright Family", which was never released as a commercial single, has long become prominent on several compilation albums. Ray even produced a music video of the song in 1995...so it's gained a reputation among fans as being a 'hit' song in spite of it never being commercially released as a single.

After Ray's RCA contract ended he went over to the Mercury label for one album (1983's Me) and then he signed with MCA about midway into 1984. During his stay at the label he enjoyed much sales success for the rest of the decade as he embraced the comical image he had tried so valiantly to distance himself from for pretty much his entire career up to that point.

RCA, in the meantime, released a compilation in 1985 called Collector's Series. A brief overview of Ray's time with the label...it features eight recordings chosen seemingly at random...from his three studio albums for the label. This title would be re-issued in 1987 with a slight change in song selection. In the 1985 copy it includes his 1981 hit, "One More Last Chance". In the re-issue in 1987 that song is omitted and replaced by the non-hit, but comical "Put It In Your Ear" from the 1980 Shriner's Convention album. I have the 1985 vinyl and cassette copy of Collector's Series.

I used to have the 1987 re-issue on cassette but the tape was eaten by a malfunctioning player. The image in the fourth panel in the collage is the CD copy of the 1987 release of Collector's Series. Even though this eight song RCA compilation provides only material from his RCA period in each release (1985 and 1987) each one omits a couple hit songs: "Night Games" and "Written Down in My Heart"...but because it spotlights the RCA recordings and since no other compilation that's come along features as many I consider Collector's Series an essential purchase for fans looking for early '80s recordings by Ray Stevens. The next best thing is seeking out his vinyl albums from that time period. Those vinyl albums are: Shriner's Convention (1980); One More Last Chance (1981); and Don't Laugh Now (1982).

Here are the commercial singles, year of release, and catalog number for Ray Stevens on RCA:

"Shriner's Convention"; 1980 PB-11911
"Hey There"; 1980 PB-9525
"Night Games"; 1980 PB-12069
"One More Last Chance"; 1981 PB-12170
"Written Down In My Heart"; 1982 PB-13038
"Where the Sun Don't Shine"; 1982 PB-13207

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