May 5, 2019

Ray Stevens: Hot Chili and Barbeque...

Hello once again...an early Sunday morning has me looking at a couple of food related music clips from recently elected Country Music Hall of Fame (CMHOF) member, Ray Stevens. There's been something of a food topic over the last several blog entries...the previous blog entry focused on a mid 1980s television commercial for ice cream that Ray Stevens did for the Flav-O-Rich company. Prior to that I wrote about a 2013 music video from Ray titled "Red Hot Chili Cook Off" which was also being highlighted on Episode 8 of Rayality TV. When I watched the music video I took note of the unique view total and at that time (April 28th) it had 955,945 unique views...a day later it increased to 956,436. As of this writing the six year old music video is sitting at 961,377. Now, that is an increase of 5,432 unique views in a week's time (going back to April 28th)...I think it's quite an achievement for a six year old on-line music video to obtain over five thousand unique views. Now, of course, given that the video had been showcased on Rayality TV on April 26th that, too, more than likely caused RFD-TV viewers to search for the video on YouTube after having seen it on Ray's clip-filled series...so I'm not going to take full credit for the music video's 5,000-plus increase in unique views but speaking of his clip-filled television series...

This past Friday (May 3rd) Episode 9 of Rayality TV aired on RFD-TV (airtime is 1:30pm Central, 2:30pm Eastern). Ray's promo for that episode is below...



Also taking place on May 3rd was the uploading of "Barbeque", a live performance of the song from an episode of CabaRay Nashville, which guest starred Lee Roy Parnell. In the performance of the song Lee Roy is playing the guitar. It may have been deliberate or coincidental but when Ray recorded the song for his 1990 album, Lend Me Your Ears, Lee Roy Parnell was among the studio musicians on that project...and so, chances are, given his guest appearance on Ray's show that's why he was seen playing the guitar with the rest of Ray's band during "Barbeque". A limited animation music video of the song emerged on DVD in 2005 but has since been uploaded onto YouTube. The video used the 1990 audio recording. Ray's CabaRay 2018 performance of "Barbeque" could be the first time he sang it on television since 1990. I recall seeing Ray perform the song on an episode of Nashville Now right around the time Lend Me Your Ears was brand new. The song was never pushed as an actual single in 1990...that distinction fell upon two songs that became much more popular as music videos: "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...but nevertheless "Barbeque" was one of those great Ray Stevens comedy songs that took on a life of it's own with fans over the decades. Ray, as far as I know, doesn't perform the song as part of his concert set-list, neither, so this may be the only time you'll see him perform the song on stage for quite some time...

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