Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Seven...

Off to the left is a photo of Ray Stevens from his Hee Haw appearance in September of 1972. On this episode he sang "Turn Your Radio On" and "Along Came Jones". There aren't too many photo's of Ray from this time period showing him with a beard but this happens to be one. Now, obviously, his visual appearance has nothing to do with his music talents but I've often made an effort to highlight this beard/clean shaven dynamic simply as a fun kind of thing to interject into the blog entries from time to time. I'm pretty sure he grew a beard many times prior to 1972 but I've not come across any visual evidence indicating the bearded look from a professional standpoint...meaning that I'm sure personal photos that us fans never see probably had him bearded but as far as photos released to the public I've not seen any bearded Ray Stevens photos prior to 1972. It may come off a bit odd/strange that I'm kicking off Part Seven of this mini-blog series in such a way but in Part Six I ended that particular entry with commentary about Ray's brand new studio that he titled The Ray Stevens Sound Laboratory (his first recording studio) and the fact that he had grown a beard. Something I forgot to mention in Part Six was the production work Ray did on the single, "Rub It In", by it's writer Layng Martine, Jr. Barnaby Records issued Layng's single in August of 1971 and it reached the lower half of the Hot 100 pop chart in the fall of 1971. Ray not only produced the recording but he published the song. In an interview Ray gave in the late '90s he recalled producing Layng's recording and against his wishes the label issued the song in the fall rather than waiting until the following spring/early summer...given the song's subject matter dealt with suntan lotion and the lyrics conjured up imagery of beaches...certainly not the imagery one tries to advertise in the fall months of a year.

In the meantime it had been a year since Barnaby had issued "Love Lifted Me" as a single (February 1972) but, as pointed out in Part Six, that single didn't actually start to have any kind of a commercial impact until months later when it began appearing on the weekly music charts in Bangkok in late 1972...rising into the Top-5. I've never come across any kind of media reports explaining why the single had become such a hit over there but yet it did. In November of 1972 a second episode of Hee Haw guest starring Ray hit the airwaves. In this second 1972 appearance he sang "Isn't It Lonely Together" and "Gitarzan". Barnaby issued a new single on Ray in February 1973 titled "Losin' Streak"...this single and the resulting album, Losin' Streak, were recorded at Ray's new studio. This studio not only serviced Ray's recordings but he also rented the studio to other recording artists and producers which, as he explained in his memoir, turned out to be kind of a disaster due to the natural habits of human beings...in other words those he rented to didn't necessarily concern themselves with making sure they cleaned up after themselves or handled the recording equipment with care, etc.

"Losin' Streak" turned out to be the only single release from this great album. "Losin' Streak" wasn't written by Ray...it comes from the pen of writer named Nick Maarth...and right from the start of this album there's a noticeable change in music and overall sound. I happen to believe it had something to do with it being recorded at a different facility than his previous several albums and perhaps the fact that it was a studio that Ray owned he allowed himself to be even more experimental than he already had been. The title track tells the story of a guy that's lost his relationship due to his gambling habits in Nevada (specifically Reno) and now he's on a financial and personal "Losin' Streak". The arrangement is also something radically different compared to previous recordings found on a Ray Stevens album...this particular recording is filled with electric guitars as well as a complimentary steel guitar during the slow passages of the chorus. The remainder of the album runs the gamut from slow ballads to mid-tempo recordings. He covers "Bye Bye Love" but arranged it as a slow, bluesy ballad in contrast to the bouncy, up-tempo version most are familiar with from The Everly Brothers. On the other extreme he covers the Freddie Hart ballad, "Easy Lovin'", and arranges it mid-tempo. He re-arranges the production of a song he originally recorded a decade earlier...1963's "Just One of Life's Little Tragedies" is updated by Ray and not only does it feature a different music arrangement it also features partially re-written lyrics and an entirely new verse replacing one that had been written for the original. If you're as familiar with the 1963 recording as I am you'll definitely notice the changes in the 1973 recording. As you can see from looking at the album's cover Ray has a beard and he's belting out a song...it makes me think he's singing "This Is Your Life".

When I spoke of studio experimentation that is the song that features the most...it has multiple vocal over-dubbing and a lot of funky instrumentation piled on top of one another...including a sound effect that makes one think of a whip being cracked. Two songs from the pen of Layng Martine, Jr. kick off the second side of the 1973 album: "Being Friends" and the lyrically clever "Idaho Wine". There is an instrumental on here titled "Laid Back" and I make mention of this for those that don't have this album but know of the song titles.

After the non-existence of this LP and the "Losin' Streak" single on the sales charts Ray offered a new release in June of 1973...a salute to Music City, U.S.A. titled "Nashville". Ray has stated in various interviews that he wrote the song while he was on tour in Australia and it's a song from the point of view of a man that's seen the sights all over the world but the one place he's wishing he could be is where he calls home...in this case Nashville, Tennessee. Ray performed "Nashville" while guest starring on a television special hosted by Dean Martin. The special was called Dean Martin Presents Music: Country and just in case you're wondering, yes, Ray was once again clean-shaven by the time of the release of Nashville in the summer of 1973. The single reached the Top-40 of the country music chart and it was backed with "Golden Age". The overall album was much more heavy on ballads but it featured a more sparse array of instrumentation. It was a return to a sound that had appeared on his two studio albums in 1970 but without the abundance of lyrical topicality. Among the songs on Nashville were the title track and it's B-side as mentioned earlier plus there's his amazing cover of "Never Ending Song of Love", the original recording of "You've Got the Music Inside" (later re-recorded by Ray in 1978), the funky break-up ballad from the pen of Merle Kilgore titled "Destroyed" and a song with the unique title of "Fish Eat Sleep". Ray closed out 1973 with the release of "Love Me Longer" backed with the instrumental, "Float". The A-side is from the pen of Nick Maarth while Ray wrote the B-side of the single. "Love Me Longer" is such a good love song and Ray's delivery of it is exquisite. Unfortunately neither side of the single reached the charts but as we close out 1973 we look ahead to 1974...and when I return with Part Eight most of that entry will be taken up by a particular single release in the spring of that year...a single that you all probably already know of ahead of time but for dramatic effect I'll not mention it by name so I'll simply say be on the lookout for Part Eight of this mini-blog series!