Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Twenty-Three...

One of the most devastating natural disasters occurred in 2005 by the name of Hurricane Katrina during late August. The rebuilding of that area was extensive (a major understatement on my part) and the controversy that erupted in the days, weeks, and months following the hurricane was also socially devastating. Accusations as well as credible evidence dealing with flawed or unsafe levee's led many to feel that the presence of human error in the construction of the levee's could have prevented the destruction that took place. There were other controversies surrounding the perceived belief that the local Government as well as the Federal Government were inept and deserved a lot of the blame.

Ray donated a lot of his time performing at charitable events...appearing on the Branson Cares telethon held on September 13, 2005. This fundraiser being held while Ray was still headlining his own theater in Branson (which he closed in November of the same year). In March of 2006 a song surfaced, regionally, from a writer named Chuck Redden which criticized the fury of anger directed at local Government and Federal Government...pointing at the 'come and save us' mentality of the citizens. The song, musically, is based on the Johnny Horton classic, "The Battle of New Orleans", but it's title is "The New Battle of New Orleans". There are two versions of this song...there is the one that Chuck recorded and then there's a slightly different version that Ray Stevens recorded. Chuck's rendition had some lyrical changes applied to it by Ray and Buddy Kalb in order to make it a little less confrontational and more easier to take when heard by a general, rather than regional, audience and so a lot of the cussing and what some may call off-color observations in the original lyrics were replaced with ones from Ray and Buddy. Curb Records distributed "The New Battle of New Orleans" in the spring of 2006 as a CD single.

The camera quality isn't too good...I had a little trouble with the settings...I'm probably due for an update but anyway that is the CD single that Curb Records distributed in March 2006. I came across the CD on eBay a number of years after it had been released. Even though I had been in Ray's fan club from 1995 until it closed down in 2002 and was aware that he had an internet cite I really don't remember Ray promoting this CD single, much, if at all. I don't remember it ever appearing in his on-line store, either. Regardless of the lack of publicity I purchased my copy of this obscure CD single and am so glad I did! Ray's image/likeness doesn't appear anywhere on the CD. As you can see the front of the CD has his name and a skyline of the city. The back of the CD features the same photo with songwriter/publisher credits. Curb Records had continued to distribute a number of Ray's projects prior to their release of "The New Battle of New Orleans" in March 2006. He did a series of limited animation music videos and they shown up in a couple of DVD releases: Gourmet Restaurant and Teenage Mutant Kung Fu Chickens. These animated videos do not feature live-action Ray Stevens...so they're different from the experimental live-action/limited animation music videos found on the Cartoon Video Collection from a few years earlier. Throughout much of 2006, as mentioned in previous installments, Ray had retreated into brief retirement...rarely did he do concerts, appear on television, or issue video content.

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and all of the economical aid and charitable events tied to the hurricane elevated Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, into a beloved iconic city. Although the hurricane hit other areas of the region including numerous areas along the Gulf Coast it was New Orleans that was hit with the brunt of the storm and received the most horrific damage...more than 1,800 people died as a result of the hurricane.

Ray's thoughts of retirement were short-lived and he emerged with a wonderful album saluting Louisiana and New Orleans culture titled New Orleans Moon in the spring of 2007. This CD contains songs such as "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?", "Basin Street Blues", "New Orleans", and the title track he co-wrote with Chuck Redden, "New Orleans Moon". The CD doesn't feature "The New Battle of New Orleans" but it does feature Ray's cover of "The Battle of New Orleans", the classic hit by Johnny Horton. The CD doesn't feature a photo of Ray, either. I remember reading several articles that were shared on Ray's official website at the time of how much the region loved the CD and if I'm not mistaken he did several radio interviews with regional stations. Ray owned a house in Gulf Shores, Alabama and he often spoke of the destruction caused not only by Hurricane Katrina but other tropical storms that routinely pass through the area. The CD, issued on his own Clyde Records, was available through his on-line store exclusively from March until July 2007; after which the CD became available in all of the on-line retail music stores. The same month that New Orleans Moon became available all over the internet he issued a very catchy single filled with jazzy, New Orleans-style accompaniment titled "Ruby Falls" from the pen of his longtime friend and associate, Buddy Kalb. This single was issued as an Mp3 only...it wasn't part of any full length CD. The song is not entirely about the tourist attraction of Ruby Falls in Chattanooga, Tennessee but it uses the attraction's name to tell the story of a romance. I don't want to go into detail...it's one of those classic kinds of songs with a lyrical twist...so if I write anymore about it I'll spoil the satisfaction you're sure to get when you hear it for yourselves. You can find the Mp3 single on-line.

Ray closed out 2007 with another digital single...a song titled "Hurricane". Structurally the song's comparable to "The Streak" but this time around a television news anchor, a parody of Wolf Blitzer, asks three different reporters stationed at various locales to describe the chaos and interview passersby. The person interviewed each time turns out to be the same guy...often dropping one-liners and counting pigs as they fly by. CNN is the focal point of the satire as well as the bizarre practice mostly every news agency has of placing reporters at the scene of hurricanes, blizzards, and tornadoes as they're happening. A full-length Hurricane CD came along early in 2008. This comedy album was a combination of all new material and re-recordings of songs he had issued more than 20 years ago. The all-new material happened to be: "Hurricane", "Sucking Sound", "The Cure", "Hey Bubba Watch This!", "Bubba the Wine Connoisseur", "Down Home Beach", and a cover of "Rub It In" (a song he published in the early '70s and had been a hit for Billy 'Crash' Craddock). The remaining five songs were re-recordings. The album cover shows an image of Ray from 1992's VHS, Comedy Video Classics, with the subtitle: 12 comedy songs that will blow you away!. The phrase "watch out for flying pigs" is featured on the album cover, too. Ray co-wrote the title track with Buddy Kalb as well as "Sucking Sound". Ray is also a co-writer on some of the re-recorded songs from the 1980s. Chuck Redden wrote "Down Home Beach" and co-wrote, with Buddy Kalb, "Bubba the Wine Connoisseur". Ray issued a couple more projects in 2008...a compilation CD titled Laughter is the Best Medicine. The CD, initially, was sold in gift shops at local hospitals.

The allure of this CD, for me anyway, was finally getting to hear "The P.S.A. Song". This is a song that I had heard about since some point in 1999 or early 2000. It was written and recorded during the time Ray was dealing with his brief bout with Prostate cancer. In a fan club newsletter there's a photo of Ray in a hospital gown and there's mention of a music video of some kind being taped but, to date, I've never seen it...and it could have been one of those instances where footage was taped but ultimately wasn't released. The song had never appeared on any of Ray's CDs until this Laughter is the Best Medicine compilation came along in 2008.

In the summer and fall months of 2008 another Ray Stevens project became available...an out of left-field salute to the music of Frank Sinatra...featuring new arrangements by Ray on nearly all of the songs. The title of the CD?? Ray Stevens Sings Sinatra...Say What?!?. Ray appears on the album cover dressed in pop-crooner attire...wearing a fedora, too. Some of the songs Ray recorded for the CD include: "All the Way", "That's Life", "High Hopes", "Young at Heart", "Witchcraft", "I Get a Kick Out of You", and "Strangers in the Night". The latter is one of the songs that features an arrangement similar to the original. Ray had slowly began doing concert appearances again...and I had the opportunity to attend one of those concerts in 2008 in Renfro Valley, Kentucky. It was my first Ray Stevens concert and it was there at the merchandise table that I purchased my copy of Ray's Sinatra CD. A lot of these CD's that Ray recorded on his own label during this time period would eventually make their way onto on-line stores all over the internet. Ray often issued his CD's through his own label, on his own website, and held exclusive rights to the product for the first couple of months before they became widely available elsewhere on-line. These CD's were never carried in traditional retail stores...they were only available through mail order from his website's store or from other on-line stores and sometimes the music was offered digitally as Mp3's as Ray was slowly but surely gaining a presence on the enormous world wide web.

On-line communities and video hosting sites were becoming massively popular. Chat rooms, websites, web-stores, and message boards dedicated to all manner of entertainment had come to dominate the way consumers listened to and purchased music, movies, books, and away from entertainment the internet impacted the way we pay bills, communicate, and receive our paychecks. Ever since the internet boom of the mid to late 1990s the music industry feared how easy it had become for people to gain access to music 'for free'. In the 2000s the internet and all manner of cellphone devices had become nearly inseparable to people as the television and remote control had been to previous generations. Ray, like others of his generation, didn't appreciate the fact that people were clicking links and getting songs for free. Eventually the music industry and those that own or operate internet sites found common ground, more or less, and Mp3 sales are being tracked as is the process of collecting data on how many times officially uploaded music video content is being streamed/watched on video hosting sites. This kind of data provides feedback and in many cases revenue for record companies as well as the artists themselves...the more times a video is played/accessed the more beneficial it can be to a recording artist and the visibility is enormous and immediate...no longer do recording artists have to wait for a radio station or a television station to add a song or music video to a 'playlist' before we decide that we like it or not. The internet, once thought of as an enemy of the music industry, has become the single biggest promotional tool...enabling artists that aren't able to get their music on the radio or promoted on television to bypass those avenues for the internet. Ray would eventually benefit strongly from the presence of the internet...but first there were some detours along the route to this potential advertising goldmine...and I'll speak of this in my next installment of this mini-blog series as I discuss Ray moving his career into directions he never saw coming!!

Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Twenty-Two...

It's me once more!! In the last installment I made mention of several releases from Ray Stevens and in hindsight it all may have come across confusing or rushed. Well, more confusing than rushed, as I just finished reading bits and pieces of Part 21. The VHS you see off to the left was released in 2003 on Clyde Records. Greatest Video Hits is a compilation of music videos from Ray which made their debuts in the early and mid 1990s. The VHS contains 11 music videos altogether...the 11th is singled out as a bonus video, "Thank You". Ray appears as kind of an emcee on this VHS introducing each of the videos and often commenting on the song's inspiration/history. The set list includes seven of the eight music videos found on 1992's Comedy Video Classics, three music videos from 1995's Get Serious!, and the bonus video which was brand new in 2003, "Thank You". The VHS photo, as you can see off to the left, is Ray in performance of "It's Me Again, Margaret"; advertisements for this collection of music videos appeared in numerous publications (direct mail). Curb Records as well as Asylum Records joined forces and issued a CD single of "Thank You" backed with the very comical "When The Kids Are Gone" in 2003. You can sometimes find that promo CD single for sale on-line. The CD has "Thank You" as the second song on the disc...meant to be referred to as it's B-side...given Ray's reputation for comedy songs even though, in reality, "Thank You" was the song being pushed and talked about in his concerts and given the music video treatment. Ray co-wrote the song with Larry McCoy and in 2004 a studio album was issued on Clyde Records titled Thank You. The album's photo shows a painting of an eagle holding a banner that reads: Thank You!. The liner notes credit the illustration to an artist named John Sylvester. The lyrics to all of the songs are contained in a fold-out cover. Ray wrote or co-wrote eight of the eleven songs on the CD! It's one of his first albums in a number of years to contain largely self-written material.

This 2004 CD is chock full of, mostly, patriotic ballads centered around the events of 9/11 but there's also a number of love ballads added to the mix...enabling it to become Ray's first all-serious studio album since 1983. As if to slyly make reference to this fact Ray includes a re-recorded version of the love ballad with the comical title, "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out", which was originally found on his 1983 Me album (his final all-serious studio album until 2004's Thank You). Ray also updates his 1978 release, "Be Your Own Best Friend", for this 2004 album. Ray wrote/co-wrote the following songs found on this CD: "Thank You", "Come on Home to Baseball", "Blue Angel", "Let's Roll", "Be Your Own Best Friend", "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out", "When I Get Over You", and "Stand Up". The songs on the CD that he didn't write are: "Pledging My Love", "It Won't Be Easy", and the instrumental to close out the CD, "Boogie Woogie". A couple of months prior to the CD release of Thank You in July 2004 Ray had made a return to Branson, Missouri. He had taken back his theater following the closure of the country music production that had occupied the venue since 1994, titled Country Tonite. The re-opening of Ray's theater, after several months of re-decoration and aesthetic changes, occurred in May 2004. If I'm not mistaken it's at the theater where his recording of "Pledging My Love" from the Thank You album was recorded. There's a bagpipe solo heard in Ray's version of "Pledging My Love" credited in the liner notes to Jay Dawson. The "Thank You" song, by the way, is a salute to America's military...all branches. The inspiration for the song came from how the anti-war protestors and those that dislike the military have been allowed to taint the image of the military as some sort of barbaric gang of ruthless killers...enabled by a national news media all too eager to help conjure up that image...and so the song gives thanks to all branches of the military.

In 2005 Ray unleashed a 3-disc collection called Box Set. The project was not a career overview in the traditional sense. It included a lot of previously released songs...but most of the songs were re-recordings that he did for music video soundtracks in the 1990s during his Curb Records era...meaning that all of the most widely known songs appearing on this release were not the original recordings from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. The collection did feature a heavy dose of original recordings from his 1990s and early 2000s albums as well as exclusive recordings for the Box Set but signature songs like "Ahab the Arab", "Gitarzan", "The Streak", or "It's Me Again, Margaret" for example are recordings he did in the early 1990s. The exclusive songs at that time were: "Driver's Education", "Family Funeral Fight", "We're Havin' a Baby the Natural Way", "Kitty Cat's Revenge", and "The Cat Song"; both "Hello Mama" and "When the Kids Are Gone" appear on a full-length CD for the first time after each having only been available as CD single releases. In November of 2005 Ray closed down his Branson Missouri theater after a successful two season run.

The run of concerts had been a success but, as Ray pointed out more than a decade later, the times had changed since the early 1990s and the town had changed and become over populated with local talent and very few nationally known headliners...meaning that there wasn't a throng of tourists or bus tours bringing in people from all over the region given the small number of nationally known performers still performing there. Ray sold the theater to the RFD-TV company in 2006 and that organization staged a lot of performances there beginning in 2007. The cable channel has since sold the venue within the last couple of years and it's now under new ownership. It was after his wrap-up of concerts in Branson, Missouri that Ray, according to his memoir from a couple of years ago, contemplated retiring. He had shut down his fan club several years earlier (2002) after a 15 year run and had scaled back his television appearances as well as his time in the recording studio. In Part 20 I said that I'd make mention of Ray's self-administered thoughts of retiring in Part 21 but I got ahead of myself, obviously! The thoughts of retiring didn't begin to surface until 2006.

As a fan I could tell that he was slowing down and many times I myself wondered if he was ever going to release new recordings or new music videos. In my next installment I'll pick things up in 2006 as we march closer to 2009...a pivotal year in the career of Ray Stevens and one that shaped the direction of his career for the next several years...needless to say his thoughts of retirement were very short-lived, thankfully, as brand new music began surfacing...and more on this in Part Twenty-Three!!

Ray Stevens: The Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Part Twenty-One...

Hello once again!! It's seems as if I hadn't been blog writing in awhile but statistics show that it's only been a few days since I wrote Part 20 of this mini-blog series. In this installment we're into the new millennium and we've reached 2001. The internet explosion was in full swing and virtually every recording artist had established their own webpage. In these early years of the internet as we know it there were genuine concerns of how it would impact the recording industry...how audio files of music had almost overnight replaced the physical copy of CDs. The negativity surrounding this stemmed from upstart, Independent-driven internet sites offering music for free...the record companies had not yet figured out a way of using the internet in a positive way.

In hindsight the marriage of record companies and on-line retail stores looks so obvious but back then real fear existed on how recording artists and record companies could stay in business. Oh, there are still internet sites that provide 'free' music but by and large they've become a minority and fortunately there's been something of a negative stigma attached to getting music 'for free' and so music consumers, most of them, pay a small fee to whatever on-line store they choose and receive their music downloads. In this way the record companies and artists remain in business and the consumer gets their music immediately.

If I recall correctly Ray Stevens' first internet site had so many letters and what's referred to as special characters in it's address...I didn't get on-line until my parent's purchased me a Web-TV in 2002. The internet access, for me, was limited due to the device I was using at the time. I graduated to a desktop computer a couple of years later and then many years later graduated to a laptop computer. I still don't own a Smartphone device or I-pad or whatever. One day I might graduate to one of those devices...but I like the current laptop I'm using. However, getting back to Ray Stevens...the year 2001 will forever remain linked to the single most loss of life in world history when on September 11, 2001 terrorists hijacked several airplanes and set about using those flights as missiles. The most devastating were the flights that struck both towers of the World Trade Center...causing both to come crashing down. The loss of life from those inside the hijacked flights as well as the people inside the buildings was staggering. On top of this there were other hijacked flights meant to crash at other significant locations but failed to reach their intended target...one flight crashed into a field when passengers overtook the terrorists. The 9/11 terror attacks set in motion a lengthy War on Terror...a symbolic declaration given there was no official declaration of war directed at any particular country...but nevertheless the War on Terror was underway in the days after the 9/11 attacks. Recording artists, television performers, and the U.S. population from all walks of life, in general, had urges of patriotism surge through them...the likes of which I personally had never seen before...I'd only read about this kinds of patriotism in history books covering WWII. Sales of American flags had reached an all-time high.

Country music, more than any other format, was at the forefront in the weeks and months following 9/11. I think country music organizations had more fundraisers, too, for the victims and for the military. Ray emerged later in the year with a humorous offering in an all too serious National mood with "Osama Yo' Mama". Since 9/11 there had been several Patriotic songs emerge...some very topical and some were just pro-American values in general...and there were a few that were comical. Ray Stevens, forever the master of comedy songs, had the natural talent of walking the tight rope with a humorous novelty song amidst serious, super-Patriotic offerings in the weeks and months following 9/11 from Charlie Daniels, Alan Jackson, Hank Williams, Jr., Toby Keith, Aaron Tippin, etc. Ray's song humorously uses the 'your mama didn't raise you this way' logic and, from the point of view of Osama's mother, Ray unleashes a fury of contempt directed at the terrorist. Ray vocally performs the role of Osama's mama at various moments in the song. The President of the United States at the time, George W. Bush, is referred to in the song as Dubya. Ray delivers several lines as the fictional Dubya (not a vocal impression, by the way). A very catchy song and certainly a welcome treat during those earliest months after 9/11.

Curb Records distributed a CD single to radio stations late in 2001. It became an instant hit...and it was a kind of hit that clearly shown the disconnect between radio and the music consumer. This wasn't anything new in the career of Ray Stevens but it was another example of how radio insider politics plays a role in the airplay success rate of a song. The single made it's debut on Billboard's Country Singles chart for the week ending December 29, 2001. The single debuted in it's peak position (number 48) and spent the next four weeks floating around the bottom half of the chart. At the time the Country Singles chart consisted of 60 positions.  The song's final appearance on the airplay-driven Country Singles chart was January 26, 2002...a total of five chart weeks.

The single, "Osama Yo' Mama", then made it's debut on the sales charts in February of 2002. The Billboard Top Country Single Sales chart for the week ending February 2, 2002 has "Osama Yo' Mama" making it's debut on that particular chart while it was also charting on Billboard's Hot 100 Single Sales chart. The single itself never appeared on the Hot 100 but it charted for several weeks on this Hot 100 Single Sales chart beginning on February 2, 2002. Now, even though country radio's airplay of the single was limited at best, it's sales were strong. The single remained a top selling product for the first half of 2002. Curb Records issued a full-length CD, Osama Yo' Mama: The Album. The art work for the CD single and the full-length CD were the same...the only difference being the full-length CD had 'The Album' written underneath Ray's name.

CD single and full-length CD

The graphics, as you can tell, were designed to conjure up the spirit of Uncle Sam and patriotism. The facial expression, as you all should know, comes from his 1992 VHS, Comedy Video Classics. The CD single featured "Osama Yo' Mama" and "United We Stand". The full-length CD made it's debut on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart for the week ending March 2, 2002 in it's Top-30 peak position. The album was a top seller for a couple of months but the CD single, as mentioned, was unstoppable pretty much. It was a runner-up on the Country Single Sales chart for months on end unable to take over the top position during it's very lengthy chart run. Somewhere along the way in 2002 Billboard cut it's 25 position Country Single Sales chart to a very modest 10 position list. This eliminated a lot of artists that weren't heavily played on country radio but whose single releases were selling. I guess the radio programmers in country radio were just a little bit uncomfortable seeing artists like Ray Stevens, Hank Williams, Jr., Lee Greenwood, and Charlie Daniels (just to name a few) ranking among the top selling singles lists yet weren't being played on country radio and so the editors of Billboard, I assume, sought to publish a chart that reflected sales rankings of songs that were actually being played on radio...rather than have a sales chart dominated by songs that weren't.

A music video eventually surfaced of "Osama Yo' Mama" but it didn't appear regularly on any cable television music video programs of the time period. In December 2002 Billboard magazine unveiled it's annual year-end overview. Ray's "Osama Yo' Mama" single was ranked among the top selling singles of the year...which shouldn't come to no surprise. The Hot 100 Single Sales of 2002 had the single ranked number 41 out of 50 while the Country Single Sales had the single ranked number 5 for the year.

Ray's label, Clyde Records, issued a VHS in 2003 titled Cartoon Video Collection. This project features six music videos with live action Ray Stevens interacting with animated backgrounds. It was an experiment, most definitely, and the VHS collection closes with "Osama Yo' Mama". An equally funny sequel came along, "Hello Mama", set to the same music as "Osama Yo' Mama" but of course it came with different lyrics. In "Hello Mama" we hear a phone call between Osama and his mother...in the music video as well as in the song Ray portrays both parts. That particular song was released as a CD single...in very limited supply...but it didn't appear on any full-length CD until a couple of years after it's release. The hook of the song are the explosions heard at the end of each call as Osama realizes whatever phone he attempts to use is wired to explode. The music video appeared as a bonus feature on the 2004 DVD release, The Complete Comedy Video Collection. That particular title had two releases...some pressings feature the music video, "Power Tools", whereas other releases do not. Also, "Osama Yo' Mama" is featured as an extra bonus feature on the versions lacking "Power Tools". Ray's patriotic "Thank You" music video is also part of this collection. In the summer of 2004 Ray returned to Branson, Missouri...at his former theater no less...and more on this in Part Twenty-Two of this Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame traveled by Ray Stevens!

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

Welcome back to the mini-blog series I've been writing...focusing on the career path of Ray Stevens and why he's long been deserving of election to the Country Music Hall of Fame...an honor that at long last came along this past March with the formal induction to take place next month (October 2019). In part nineteen I left off in the final months of 1997...and so here we are in early 1998. The release of compilation projects that record labels were issuing on Ray Stevens peaked in this time period. The CD had been around for more than a decade but not every artist's catalog had become available in CD format...and throughout most of the 1990s as if to make up for lost time a wide array of CD's came along keeping Ray's music in print. It was also in this time period that Ray had long since become something of a music video mogul and had racked up millions in VHS sales. The titles available on VHS from Ray Stevens in 1998 were: Amazing Rolling Revue (1992), Comedy Video Classics (1992), Ray Stevens Live! (1993), More Ray Stevens Live! (1993), Get Serious! (1995), the behind-the-scenes documentary Ray Stevens Made a Movie?? Get Serious!! (1995), and the compilation, Latest and Greatest (1996). Varese Sarabande, an Independent record label, had previously re-issued a couple of Ray's vinyl albums in CD format...in 1998 the label unleashed The Country Hits Collection. Now, for me, this was another goldmine...I was slowly adding CD to my music consumption but still had no vinyl in my collection...and almost all of the songs on this CD were vinyl exclusives at that point in time. Some of the songs on this CD are: "Losin' Streak", "Sunshine", "Young Love", "Easy Loving", "Deep Purple", and something that was originally only found as a B-side on a vinyl single, "Piece of Paradise". I believe that this 1998 CD remains the only place you can find "Piece of Paradise" on CD. It may have been digitally re-issued in Mp3 format but I don't actively pursue Mp3's if there's a physical CD available for purchase...so my knowledge of Mp3 availability of a lot of Ray Stevens material is lacking as a result.

The 1998 compilation comes complete with a fold-out booklet of liner notes/essay and a number of rare photos, at the time, but most of those photos have since been uploaded onto the internet. Ray returned to the concert stage in October for a series of concerts at The Acuff Theater located in the Opryland complex. His appearances at the venue were promoted and featured as commercials on radio broadcasts of The Grand Ole Opry.

In the spring of 1999 near-tragedy struck...country music's premier humorist/funnyman Ray Stevens was diagnosed with the all too serious subject of Prostate Cancer. The disease was caught extremely early...and Ray credits the early discovery, of course, as the reason he ultimately beat the disease...and although it's been said by various experts down through the years that this form of cancer is one of the easily beatable and easily detected through PSA testing it nevertheless is a form of cancer...and the C word is serious business no matter how 'preventable', 'curable', or 'beatable' a form of it might be. I say all of that because, believe it or not, some cynical no-name questioned the seriousness of this type of cancer in a rambling post I came across several years ago. The remark, which I came across a couple of years ago, has remained in my collective memory due to Ray having to deal with the disease in the first half of 1999. The diagnosis, therapy, recovery and everything else involved with cancer meant that the series of summer concerts scheduled at The Acuff Theater were canceled. He beat the cancer and set about planning his next series of concerts at The Acuff Theater. His final appearances at the venue were in December of 1999 during Christmas-themed concerts built around his 1997 Christmas Through a Different Window release. As a member of his former fan club we were mailed exclusive Christmas cards...and during his appearances at The Acuff Theater in the Christmas months of 1998 and 1999 the cards doubled as advertisements. I was a member of his fan club from 1994 until it closed in 2002. It had been in operation since 1987.

Clyde Records issued a brand new VHS on Ray in 2000 titled Funniest Video Characters. This collection of music videos mirrors Comedy Video Classics in that it features eight music videos and the packaging is nearly identical as far as letter fonts, etc. and it features a mix of all-new music videos and a couple previously released. This latest VHS was unique in that it opens and closes with a two part video while six additional music videos are sandwiched between. "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone, Part One" opens the collection while "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone, Part Two" closes the collection. In between those two music videos: "Virgil and the Moonshot" (1997), "Juanita and the Kids", "Too Drunk to Fish" (1997), "The Haircut Song", "The Pirate Song", and "Freddie Feelgood". The role of the Blue Cyclone was portrayed by Buddy Kalb...also visible in many other music videos from Ray Stevens. Although this collection mirrored Comedy Video Classics aesthetically it didn't have the same economic results simply due to it being a victim of changing trends and times. Advertising rates on cable television had skyrocketed since 1992...and so this VHS wasn't heavily advertised through direct marketing as several of his previous VHS releases had been. I don't think it was ever released/distributed in retail stores...I hadn't come across any Billboard Video chart showing Funniest Video Characters listed among the top selling titles...so that has me thinking it was only available through limited direct marketing and through his fan club store.

This is all my opinion but upon the explosive success of the direct marketing boom, by the mid 1990s, someone got the bright idea to raise advertising costs and with so many late night television ads consisting of commercials for everything from car wax to oldies music as well as ads running through daytime hours for music collections "not sold in stores" the cable television companies, collectively, wanted an even bigger profit given how popular direct marketing had suddenly become. This desire for bigger profits led to less products being offered...the rise in advertising rates impacted the profitability of the actual products advertised...so direct marketing became a high risk...and one by one direct marketing lost a lot of it's impact as far as television exposure was concerned because the companies that offered the products didn't want to spend more money in advertising costs with the possibility of profit loss on their end. If you spend more on advertising but don't turn a profit it's a no-win situation. The rise of the internet also played a factor, too. On the recording front Ray had since left MCA Records following the release of several products (two albums as well as their retail distribution of his Get Serious! VHS) but he nevertheless continued on recording and unleashed a new album, Ear Candy, on his own Clyde Records label. The album cover shows Ray with a candy cane shoved through one side of his ear and out the other. This album features ten songs...several of them shown up in a future album from Ray while one in particular, "No Lawyers in Heaven", became a monster hit in the Bluegrass format more than 10 years later for Charlie Sizemore. Ray didn't happen to be the song's publisher, unfortunately, and so he didn't reap the rewards for the song once it became a hit...but Ray happened to be among the first to record the song...if not thee first to record it. One of the songs that Ray has often included in his concerts originated on this 2000 album. "Safe at Home", an ode to small town America within the recollections of a baseball game, became a very popular song in concert for Ray...in the latter half of the decade...but I'm jumping ahead 10 years, aren't I?

In my next installment of this mini-blog series we make our way into 2001 and we see Ray enter the world of the internet...very cautiously at first...and then we see how a national tragedy impacted an entire world and it played a factor in Ray's career. The 2002-2004 era marks the beginning of Ray's self-administered plans of retiring from the music business...what??? Well, not completely retiring...kind of retiring...well...I'll explain in Part Twenty-One.

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

In 1996 Curb Records issued a compilation on Ray titled Great Gospel Songs. This collection of gospel songs was a re-issue of his 1972 album, Turn Your Radio On, with additional songs added. This 1996 collection from Curb includes the rare, full-length version of "All My Trials". The gospel collection includes original liner notes and it includes some of the following: "Turn Your Radio On", "A Brighter Day", "Have a Little Talk With Myself", "I'll Fly Away", "Glory Special", and others. It's a thirteen track collection. The mid 1990s were a period of numerous compilation albums released on Ray Stevens...and sometimes several of his songs would appear on albums featuring other recording artists, too. Those are referred to, obviously, as various artists projects. One of those compilations from 1996 come from the Mercury/Polygram Records label in the form of All-Time Hits. A cassette version and a CD version was issued...the CD featuring eleven songs while the cassette featured eight. Oddly enough most of the tracks on this compilation were recordings that Ray did while he was on Mercury Records (1961-1963 and 1983) with a couple of selections from his RCA era. One of the selling points, for me, of All-Time Hits happened to be the inclusion of his 1983 single, "My Dad", from the Me album. It's very rare whenever one of his recordings from that 1983 album show up on a compilation and at that point in time I only had cassette tape in my collection...I had no CD's or vinyl...and so I first heard "My Dad" on that 1996 collection.

In July of 1996 a label called Varese Sarabande issued a CD copy of Ray's 1969 album, Gitarzan. The reissue came complete with liner notes within the fold-out cover and it also featured three 'bonus tracks' from later on in his career. The bonus tracks on the 1969 reissue were: "The Streak" (1974), "The Moonlight Special" (1974), and "Bridget the Midget" (1970). A couple of months later the import label released a CD copy of Ray's 1968 album, Even Stevens. It, too, featured liner notes about the album and it included four 'bonus tracks'. Now, unlike the bonus tracks on the previous compilation, three of the four bonus tracks on the Even Stevens reissue had rarely, if ever, been available in CD format before: "Party People" (1965), "Devil May Care" (1966), "Answer Me, My Love" (1967).

Amidst the avalanche of compilation albums released on him both overseas and in the United States from an array of record labels minor and major Ray Stevens returned to the concert stage!! In May of 1996 he began a limited run of concerts at The Wayne Newton Theater in Branson, Missouri. It was Ray's first concert in the Missouri town since shutting down his own theater in 1993.

Ray's schedule at the venue, in more detail, was as follows: He performed 8 concerts at the venue during the month of May...from the 6th to the 13th. He increased his concerts in the month of July and performed 12 concerts from July 15th to July 27th. He performed there 12 additional times in August from the 12th through the 24th and lastly from September 2nd until September 14th. By year's end Ray had quietly left Curb Records and signed a brand new contract with one of his former labels, MCA Records. The first project from MCA on Ray happened to be the retail distribution of the previous year's direct mail VHS, Get Serious!. The VHS reportedly sold Double-Platinum through direct mail (based on commentary from Ray on an episode of Music City Tonight in the first half of 1996). The VHS entered Billboard's Music Video chart for the week ending January 25, 1997...and if you're keeping track that happened to be the day after Ray's 58th birthday. The VHS had a strong chart run...reaching a peak within the Top-5 in February 1997 but keeping a consistent presence on the Video chart through August...more than 20 weeks altogether. In between the debut of Get Serious! on the Video chart and it's exit 20 some weeks later Ray issued a new studio album...his first in four years and his first for MCA since 1989. Hum It is filled with comedy, for the most part, and it included a special guest in the form of J.D. Sumner. He and Ray performed a parody of "Daddy Sang Bass" entitled "Mama Sang Bass". You can pretty much guess who portrayed Mama in that song. It's hysterical...the plot of which centers around a Church going couple that sing in the choir. Mama and Daddy work at a pharmaceutical factory...Mama works at making steroids for body builders while Daddy works on a line that manufactures birth control pills. Through osmosis and chemical reactions they symbolically switch gender but it's not physically noticeable...but one day they appear in the church choir and everyone gasps that "Mama Sang Bass" and, of course, Daddy sang tenor. A couple of other songs found on this 1997 album have since become music video classics: "Too Drunk To Fish" and "Virgil and the Moonshot". There are a couple of other songs on the CD that aren't comical but they aren't overly dramatic: "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" and the wonderful "I'll Be In Atlanta". In the latter Ray weaves a tale of the Old South with a lot of references to Gone With the Wind. It's a wonderful song...and an infectious melody...complete with Dixieland/jazz accompaniment.

Rhino Records issued a compilation on Ray in 1997 titled The Best of Ray Stevens. The liner notes were written by the legendary novelty song disc jockey known on-air as Doctor Demento. The art work shows illustrations of several characters from Ray's songs...in which the depiction of Ray has him in a 1970's suit with a couple of green and purple pills in his hand. It's a 20 song compilation that goes in chronological order, for the most part...the first 19 songs are in chronological order...the 20th song, "In the Mood", is from late 1976 and should have appeared on the CD between 1975's "Misty" and 1979's "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow". The liner notes are extensive and feature plenty of photos of Ray. The compilation was released as part of Ray's 40th anniversary as a recording artist...having issued his first commercial release in 1957. In the latter half of 1997 MCA issued Christmas Through a Different Window...it was Ray's very first Christmas album. He had released Christmas songs in the past but this was his first album of Christmas songs. The dagger of political correctness had all but sanitized comedy and this mindset had also played a role in the war on the idea of saying, Christmas, instead of the generic 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings'. Ray kicks off the album by addressing political correctness head-on: "Guilt For Christmas"...that's what Ray's sending everyone this year. As you could tell it's a bizarre, novelty song heavy Christmas album. Some of the gifts Ray leaves us in song are: "Guilt For Christmas", "I Won't Be Home for Christmas", "The Little Drummer Boy Next Door", "Bad Little Boy", "Nightmare Before Christmas", and "Redneck Christmas". He even revives "Santa Claus is Watching You" and "Greatest Little Christmas Ever Wuz". This Christmas album would set the stage for a series of Christmas-themed concerts from Ray at The Acuff Theater...but more on this and other interesting tidbits from the late 1990s era of Ray's career in the next chapter in Ray's road to the Country Music Hall of Fame!!

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

As we left off in Part Seventeen I was mentioning the happenings in Ray's career during the month of December in 1994. The final issue of Country Weekly magazine for the year featured a major news article on Ray and within it's pages officially released the news surrounding a movie he'd been working on during the latter half of 1994. The magazine, for those interested in seeking it out on-line, is the December 27, 1994 issue with Tanya Tucker on the cover. There's a small notation in the lower right hand side promoting the news article on Ray.

The filming had began in November of 1994 and so the information within the news article, which came complete with photo's of Ray from the set and in various costumes, was subject to change. The information provided turned out to be almost accurate. There is a section of the article which makes mention of the various cameo appearances by Ray's music industry friends and it states that both Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase would be making cameo appearances. However, an unforeseen illness prevented Lorianne from participating but Charlie was seen briefly as a reporter that popped up on a television screen relaying information about political correctness running rampant in America. Ironically several months prior to this issue of Country Weekly being released Ray was a special guest on Ralph Emery's syndicated radio series, Take Five for Country Music, in which Ralph asked Ray if the rumors were true that he was working on a movie of some kind. This interview took place months before filming began in November of 1994 and so Ray said there was no truth to those rumors...but obviously Ray wasn't going to reveal whatever was going on behind the scenes or whatever might be happening in the coming weeks or months in his career due to it potentially spoiling the public impact of whatever it was he may be working on. I was a member of Ray's fan club beginning in 1994 and in the newsletters that we received throughout the first half of 1995 the movie was referred to by the acronym: LFSDMCV. The letters stood for Long-Form Story-Driven Music Comedy Video which is how the project was referred to within the fan club newsletters due to it not officially having a title yet.

In the VHS world there's Short Form and Long Form video content. If I recall correctly a Short Form video is any VHS that has a running time of roughly 20 minutes or less while Long Form is obviously a VHS that has a running time of well over half an hour.

In the spring of 1995 one of the former record labels that Ray was signed to, Warner Brothers, at long last re-released a good dose of his recordings from the late 1970s. The material had been out of print since the early 1980s and so having this material in print again went a long way at introducing all of the newer fans that Ray picked up in the 1990s as a result of Branson and the music videos to his obscure Warner Brothers material from nearly 20 years earlier. Ray's first release for that label arrived in 1976 and so it was 19 years, technically. The label issued three separate compilation albums on Ray beginning in April of 1995: Cornball, Do You Wanna Dance?, and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. The titles of two of those compilations are somewhat misleading, though. The Cornball release featured three recordings you could consider novelty/comedy among the 10 songs featured. The one called The Serious Side of Ray Stevens would lead some to believe that the other two collections contain only novelty/comedy songs. It was only a minor annoyance because the bottom line, for me, was finally being able to hear a good sampling of his Warner Brothers recordings. I, at the time, had no record player and no vinyl albums or singles at all...and so those 1995 projects were a goldmine for me.

Why am I including this kind of commentary in a blog series meant to showcase the talents of Ray Stevens and his lengthy career path to the Country Music Hall of Fame? In case you're asking yourselves that question the answer is simple. I want this mini-blog series I've been working on to have a personal touch...instead of it coming off strictly as a stat by stat detailing of his career...and so at various moments in the first seventeen chapters of this I've attempted to personalize the overview by adding in remarks and highlighting things that may get overlooked or omitted from professional writers as well as historians. 

In June of 1995 Ray was once again nominated as Comedian of the Year at the Music City News awards. Unfortunately Ray lost to stand-up comedian Jeff Foxworthy who had taken country music outlets by storm with his redneck routine, which wasn't new, but it had never been marketed directly to the country music audiences. It would have been Ray's 10th consecutive win and based on the staying power of his 1992 and 1993 VHS releases he should have taken home the trophy for a 10th straight year but it wasn't to be. Country Weekly readers, however, named Ray their Favorite Comedian in that publication's awards ceremony in 1995. Their ceremony was called the Golden Pick Awards.

The movie that Ray had been filming since November of 1994 finally made it's way onto VHS in the late summer/early fall of 1995 as Get Serious!. The video was sold through direct marketing just as his previous VHS releases and it became another major hit with television viewers. The commercials ran on fewer cable television channels than the previous two releases in 1992 and 1993 but it nevertheless became a successful VHS...with commercials receiving the most air-time on The Nashville Network...selling hundreds of thousands of VHS tapes to a built-in audience more or less. The movie has a running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes and it combines a conventional motion picture with music video insertions which is why the film was referred to with that kind of descriptive acronym of Long-Form Story-Driven Music Comedy Video.

There are ten brand new music videos featured within the movie...some of them are "Gitarzan", "The Woogie Boogie", "Dudley Dorite", "I Used to Be Crazy", "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?", and "Ahab the Arab". Ray's co-star, Connie Freeman, portrayed Charlene MacKenzie in the film. The character, for those that are devoted fans of Ray, should be familiar. The character originated in a 1988 recording from Ray telling the story of attempting to teach a deaf woman how to drive. Charlene, throughout the movie at the most inopportune times, has trouble hearing. The two of them perform a song and dance routine in chicken costumes...the song performed being "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens", a Ray Stevens original...not to be confused with the pop song of the same name from the 1940s.

The plot of the movie centers around political correctness and the music videos aid in the telling of the story of Ray being on the run from protesters and local police...even the fictional record label Ray is signed to in the movie is after him for breach of contract. The record label executive, played by Paul Lynde impressionist Michael Airington, wants Ray to get serious with his recordings and come off more like an operatic Pavarotti rather than coming off like a clown but Ray adamantly refuses and the battle is on. I should point out that music industry conglomeration is also touched upon in the movie. Ray is signed to a label called Integrity Records which, at the movie's beginning, is shown being taken over by a company operating out of Japan called Sosumi Records (pronounced So-Sue-Me). The Integrity Records company sign in the front lawn is literally chainsawed from view to make way for the sleeker looking Sosumi Records sign descending down from a crane. Ray is given the bad news about the takeover from his manager, The Colonel, portrayed by legendary comic storyteller Jerry Clower who makes his first of several appearances at the conclusion of the "Gitarzan" music video. The executive hired to oversee Sosumi, as mentioned, is committed in his quest to transform Ray into the Pavarotti of Country Music. Chet Atkins has a cameo attempting to play the accordion at the insistence of the new label executive. Meanwhile characters from his songs are portrayed as real people and they bring a lawsuit against Ray for defamation. George Lindsey appears as a Shriner prior to the beginning of the "Shriner's Convention" video and reveals the custom made dune buggy, The Mone Mobile, which Ray drives throughout the film. The lawyer in the courtroom scene is portrayed by fellow country comedian, James Gregory. As we get deeper into the movie there are cameo appearances by Johnny Russell and the comedy duo, Williams and Ree. The movie is completely entertaining and in my opinion was a ground-breaking concept...a new twist on the movie musical.

This is one of the various commercials for the VHS...it features Charlie Chase providing the voice-over. There were other commercials for the VHS airing concurrently which featured other voice over talent. Charlie's voice-over, though, includes the naming of some of the music videos found in the movie. The person that uploaded this commercial left a little bit of time at the end and we see an NFL promo appear on-screen as a football game was coming out of a commercial break. I did some research and found that the Cowboys and the Vikings played a football game on cable channel, TNT, on September 17, 1995...and if you were watching that game you would have seen this commercial...



A Get Serious! soundtrack was released in cassette format, made mention of in the commercial, and on this soundtrack is a full-length recording of "We Don't Take Nothin' off Nobody" which, in the movie, is only partially performed. In addition there was a VHS released documenting the behind the scenes making of the movie. That VHS is titled Ray Stevens Made a Movie?? Get Serious!!!. Now, in Part Nineteen, I'll be exploring in some detail Ray's career as it pertains to record labels and releases in 1996 and 1997...which included a return to a previous record label.

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

As we enter 1992 Ray had recently wrapped up Season One in Branson, Missouri at The Ray Stevens Theatre. The theater had it's grand opening in May of 1991 and closed for the season just before Christmas 1991. He had inserted video snippets into his stage show...a large screen hung high above the stage and whenever he would perform a song there would sometimes be visual accompaniment playing above the stage to enhance the performance. The video content was a hit with audiences and so Ray issued a VHS sold exclusively at his theater of several comedy music videos. This primitive collection would be the stepping stone for a future release that took the VHS market by storm in 1992. It is probably an understatement to say that Ray Stevens dominated the television and print advertisements throughout the bulk of 1992 and into 1993. The direct marketing campaign for the VHS collection of music videos, Comedy Video Classics, began in the spring of 1992 through television commercials and it later morphed into print advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and even within the pages of TV Guide. The collection consists of eight music videos. Four of the music videos had previously been released: 1985's "Santa Claus is Watching You", 1988's "Surfin' U.S.S.R.", and his two 1990 music videos "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Sittin' Up with the Dead". The four new music videos were: "It's Me Again, Margaret", "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival", "The Streak", and "Everything Is Beautiful". The commercial for the VHS tape ran on network and cable television outlets...a majority of those commercials airing on cable television stations and as the sales campaign continued full steam ahead the more ever-present Ray's likeness and name had become. The VHS was released through his own label, Clyde Records, which had opened for business in 1988. It's first project was the 1990 direct market Boots instrumental album, from saxophonist Boots Randolph, that I made mention of in the last installment of this mini-blog series. Comedy Video Classics was phenomenal...it set records for VHS sales and ultimately was recognized by the RIAA for having sold more than 2.5 million copies through direct mail.

Ray's theater was the number one destination in Branson for tourists and locals alike and the Comedy Video Classics commercials continued to air, as mentioned, throughout the rest of the year. A secondary VHS was released through his gift shop and fan club titled Amazing Rolling Revue. This 1992 release was actually an unsold pilot for a television series that was never picked up. The footage, as far as I know, was taped at some point in the latter half of 1991 or early 1992 at the latest. The reason I say that is because there's a brief sketch centering around the alien, Zoltar, from the song Ray recorded in 1991 called "Tabloid News". On the VHS this sketch is referred to as 'The National Supermarket Checkout Examiner', a phrase heard in the song as well. As the television commercials and print advertisements for Comedy Video Classics continued to be a presence Ray won his seventh consecutive Music City News Comedian of the Year trophy. His first win having come in 1986. The second season of concerts from Ray at his Branson theater were well underway by the summer of 1992. Ray's record label, Curb/Capitol, officially split...and further audio recordings from Ray would be issued on Curb Records. His publishing company, Ray Stevens Music, would begin enjoying the massive popularity of "Cadillac Style"...a single from country artist Sammy Kershaw. The song was Sammy's debut single and when released in October of 1991 it immediately drew comparison to George Jones. The single remained a country radio staple for several years long after it's peak in early 1992. It was written by a writer that worked for Ray's publishing company.

Interestingly Curb/Capitol didn't finance or actively promote Comedy Video Classics...all of the publicity and promotional work in the direct marketing campaign was done independent of Curb/Capitol. In the spring of 1993, almost a year to the day that Comedy Video Classics hit television airwaves, the VHS was issued to retail stores for the first time and guess who distributed the VHS to retail stores? It was Curb Records. I'd always been under the impression that Curb didn't want to risk anything on a unique concept of selling music videos on VHS tape and passed on the opportunity of participating in the direct mail campaign but then jumped at the chance to distribute the VHS for retail availability. In retail stores it sold Platinum...a sales threshold indicative of over 1,000,000 copies sold...giving it an estimated sales total at that time of 3.5 million. The VHS entered the Billboard Home Video chart during the first week of May 1993...in the runner-up position. It took over number one the following week and it would remain on the Home Video chart for over a year...seldom ranking below number five during the first half a year of retail availability.

The following month Ray took home his eighth consecutive Comedian of the Year trophy at the annual Music City News awards. The same month Curb Records issued their third studio album on Ray...an album that caused a lot of confusion at the time and still causes confusion for many. Classic Ray Stevens arrived in June 1993 filled with brand new comedy songs...but the album's title had led a number of fans and those that run on-line music stores to label it as a compilation or a sampler album of previously released songs. The album received it's title to go hand-in-hand with the art work on the photo. The cover features a bust of Ray...mocking the bust of Beethoven...and the art depicts a classical music scene. Nevertheless a lot of people couldn't grasp the album's title...but the song being pushed as a single made it's debut during the 1993 edition of the Music City News awards. Ray performed "If Ten Percent is Good Enough for Jesus" to the delight of the audience...a satirical song criticizing Congress for the escalation in higher taxes and the mentality of punishing the successful with even higher taxes. Upon the conclusion of this song the very next category presented at the Music City News awards was for Comedian of the Year...and as Ray stood in the wings he heard his name called out for the eighth consecutive year!! The recording of "If Ten Percent is Good Enough for Jesus" found on the Curb Records album is from his Branson, Missouri theater. The remainder of the album is chock full of novelty songs touching on a wide variety of topics as well as a love ballad. The ordeal of a father being coach of his son's "Little League" team is detailed as is the overly zealous nature of some security officers in "Super Cop". The novelty, "The Bricklayer's Song", is found on here. Ray's cover is faithful to the traditional manner in which the song is performed and it was recorded at the Branson theater which Ray was performing in for his third consecutive season. This particular song has several alias titles...one of it's titles is "The Sick Note" while another is "Why Paddy's Not at Work Today" and then there's "Murphy and the Bricks".

I've always liked the comical stories of Jerry Clower and there's a song on here that takes one his stories and translates it into music form: "The Higher Education of Ol' Blue". The song's story counterpart from Jerry Clower is "Crack, W.L., and Rover" from an album he released in 1984 titled Starke Raving!. Ray wrote track seven, "If You and Yo' Folks Like Me and My Folks", while adultery is visited in two distinctly different recordings: the comical "The Ballad of Jake McClusky" and the love ballad, "Meanwhile". A brand new VHS became available through direct marketing from Clyde Records...a performance from his Branson theater and released under the title of Ray Stevens Live!. A second VHS, not sold on television and only available to fan club members and those that visited his gift shop at the theater, was titled More Ray Stevens Live!. The two VHS tapes were of a concert broken in two parts.

In the fall of 1993 after three consecutive seasons of sold-out and near sell-out shows at his Branson, Missouri theater Ray Stevens shocked the tourism industry and the locals of Branson by announcing the closure of his theater. Ray cited health reasons and over exhaustion as a result of two shows a day, six days a week for a span of 6 months per year. It was estimated that during the 18 months that the theater was in business during the 1991, 1992, and 1993 seasons Ray performed for nearly 1.5 million visitors. In interviews Ray spoke of the physical exhaustion and pointed out the irony in that most artists that opened up a theater in Branson did so because they were tired of life on the road and often sleepless or near sleepless nights going from one town to the next during extensive tours. He said the irony for him is that the daily grind wore him out and the idea of having a venue where the fans come see you rather than you go see them backfired for him...and he couldn't wait to take a lengthy vacation and rejuvenate himself physically before resuming his career. In hindsight the pace of the schedule is what caused the exhaustion...two shows a day, six days a week...artists 10 to 20 years younger than Ray, I bet, wouldn't have been able to pull off that kind of schedule but Ray managed to do it for an 18 month period. One of his lesser known nicknames happens to be the Energizer Bunny...and he proved it.

As 1993 came to a close Ray certainly earned a lengthy vacation. He scaled back his television appearances...except for the commercials that continued to air promoting Ray Stevens Live!...and he remained out of the spotlight, deliberately, for most of 1994...except for occasional appearances on interview shows airing on The Nashville Network. On one such appearance he received multiple plaques from the RIAA for the sales achievements of Comedy Video Classics in the realm of direct mail and retail. Billboard Magazine recognized it with a Video of the Year plaque.

The year of 1994 started off on a high note in spite of Ray's break from the concert stage and desire for some kind of vacation. Ray's publishing company shared in the success of "I Can't Reach Her Anymore" from Sammy Kershaw which became a big hit during the first half of the year. The writers, at the time, worked for Ray's publishing company. The single hit in January of 1994 and eventually reached the Top-10. The two single releases that Ray published on Sammy Kershaw were recurrents on country radio...a recurrent is an industry term given to a single that is still heard well after it's left the weekly countdown. "Cadillac Style" and "I Can't Reach Her Anymore" dominated the airwaves on country radio during a good portion of the mid to late '90s even though neither single claimed the number one position on the Country singles chart. Ray's direct mail company, Clyde Records, added some additional VHS titles to their impressive catalog of releases in the spring of 1994 in the form of stand-up comedy from Russian-born, United States comedian, Yakov Smirnoff. The comedian had been a hit on the national level for quite some time and he introduced a catchphrase, "what a country!", into the collective English-speaking vernacular. He signed an exclusive direct mail contract with Ray's Clyde Records company in 1994 and almost immediately a couple of VHS projects were released: What a Country! and Just Off the Boat.

While all of this was going on with Clyde Records, simultaneously, Curb Records began it's retail distribution of Ray Stevens Live! in the spring of 1994 as well. That particular VHS made it's debut on Billboard's Music Video chart the first week of May. In June Ray won his ninth consecutive Comedian of the Year honor at the Music City News awards. In the fall of 1994 after nearly a year of being on a self-imposed vacation, with his name and likeness continuing to appear in the weekly Billboard Music Video chart and in television commercials ensuring consistent publicity during his hiatus, Ray embarked on an ambitious project which ultimately surfaced almost a year later. In the final month of the year a quick look at Billboard's chart for Top Videos for the week ending December 3, 1994 finds Ray Stevens Live! with 31 weeks on the chart and Comedy Video Classics, by this time certified Triple-Platinum, in it's 83rd chart week. The two VHS tapes continued their strong sales on into the next year and all the while Ray was busy on a most secret project...but rumors were swirling that he was going to throw his hat into the ring and become a movie star!?! We'll get to bottom of all this in Part Eighteen!!

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

I touched on this compilation album in the closing of Part Fifteen. This was the first project released on Ray Stevens by Curb Records in 1990. It eventually went Gold (sales of 500,000) and it introduced the classics from Ray Stevens to the new decade and newer fans. Ray's first studio album for the label arrived in July of 1990 by the name of Lend Me Your Ears. On the album's cover we see Ray in classic attire from the Shakespeare play, Julius Cesar, holding a rabbit in front of Nashville's replica of the Parthenon. The album title is an obvious reference to the phrase heard in the play but it also doubles as a request to take a listen to this album. The comedy album features several songs that were turned into live action music videos including a couple that were, years later, turned into limited animation music videos. A very large life-size poster advertising the album accompanied Ray on several television appearances on The Nashville Network. The two brand new music videos were "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Sittin' Up With the Dead". In the case of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" he turned the song into a manic parody...similar in style of one of his music heroes, Spike Jones. The fast-paced music video became a hit on The Nashville Network's two television programs centered on music videos: Video Morning and Video PM. It was the second time in Ray's career where he recorded a song from the pen of Kris Kristofferson...the first happened to be in 1969 with "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". The record label represented a merger between Curb Records and Capitol Records...professionally Lend Me Your Ears marked Ray's 'return' to the Capitol Records roster...after having recorded a few songs for the label in 1958...but technically the album is credited to the merged label of Curb/Capitol.

The label had issued a promo single for disc jockeys of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" along with "Sittin' Up With the Dead", which you see off to the right. A promo single almost always featured the same song on both the A and B side. The latter song dealt with a legendary Southern tradition of taking care of the recently departed until an undertaker was able to take over and or the local funeral home shown up to take over. The story takes place in the past...with a lot of the music video intentionally shot in black and white to mirror the nostalgic overtone of the song. The music video was a hit as well...not necessarily in the same stratosphere as "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...but it had a visual impact on television viewers of The Nashville Network all the same. The year, 1990, marked not only the start of a new decade but it also represented one of those crossroads in his professional career. It also signaled a major shift in the marketing of country music. The business end of country music saw the ultimate change when record labels began decreasing the availability of vinyl albums and vinyl singles in favor of cassette and CD. Music consumers rarely had the opportunity to purchase a single anymore...the labels began increasingly supplying retail stores with full length albums rather than also offering single releases. The single releases remained available to disc jockeys and those in the music industry but they were rapidly disappearing from retail stores. The music video had become, since the mid to late 1980s, an important promotional item for the sales of albums. Ray, by the end of 1990, had released four music videos in his career to that point. Earlier in the year he won his fifth straight Comedian of the Year honor from the readers of Music City News magazine and viewers of The Nashville Network.

Ray's association with direct marketing...also referred to as telemarketing and direct mail...as you know goes back to the late 1980s. He tapped into a television audience in 1987 when MCA and company issued Get The Best of Ray Stevens. The album sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was rewarded a Gold album. The sales of albums advertised through television or print advertisements, rather than retail store sales, had lower thresholds. A Gold album for a direct mail project is indicative of more than 50,000 copies sold...and Platinum represents 100,000. Ray arranged and produced this project on Boots Randolph in 1990...a collection simply titled Boots...and it was released on Ray's Clyde Records label. The television commercial features Ray and others seated in an intimate venue...re-creating the image of a nightclub...as they offer testimonials while Boots is on stage performing. The television commercial, I think, is still available to view on YouTube.

Ray's second studio album for Curb/Capitol arrived in 1991 titled Number One with a Bullet. Ray appeared on the album cover wearing his familiar CAT hat and holding a very large bullet. The comedy songs range from the absurd to the demented to the sophistication of social commentary. Some of the song titles from the album are: "Tabloid News", "You Gotta Have a Hat", "Teenage Mutant Kung Fu Chickens", and "The Sheik of R and B". The latter recording is a pun on the title of a 1920's pop song called "The Sheik of Araby"...but for comical purposes the song's concept was completely changed and it's about a modern-day Sheik consumed with rhythm and blues. Buddy Kalb is credited as the writer or the co-writer on nine of the ten songs. Ray and Buddy had pretty much co-authored Ray's 1989 album, Beside Myself. Ray was a co-writer on nine of the ten songs on that 1989 album, by the way.

The year, 1991, marked the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack (that coming December 7th) and so it was probably not a coincidence that the Japanese are referred to in a couple of comedy songs. "A Little Blue Haired Lady", a comedy song about slow drivers, features a brief impression by Ray of a Japanese Ambassador casually mentioning that he tried to get a message to the United States warning of the upcoming Pearl Harbor attack but he was stuck in traffic behind "A Little Blue Haired Lady"...or in the vocalization provided by Ray: 'a rittle brue haired rady'. The centerpiece of Japanese culture, though, arrives in the album's closing song...the social comment of "Working for the Japanese". The song was issued as a CD single by Curb/Capitol in 1991 and was on it's way at becoming something of a hit but political correctness and cold feet within the country music industry, as a whole, caused the untimely fate of the single and it stalled in the middle of the Country singles chart. It was his first appearance on the Country singles chart since 1988.

It was around this point in time that Ray was becoming actively involved in Branson, Missouri. He had appeared in Branson in the past...including many appearances at The Roy Clark Celebrity Theater...and it led to Ray's decision to build his own theater and it opened to the public in 1991. He had attempted to sell the idea of operating a theater in Nashville to the local business community but he later commented in his memoir that there wasn't any enthusiasm for a venue that could perhaps draw people away from the already established tourist destinations.

The Ray Stevens Theatre in Branson, Missouri ushered in a new wave of popularity for the singer. Oh, he was as popular as before, winning his sixth consecutive Comedian of the Year trophy from Music City News during the June 1991 awards show and he even co-hosted that year's edition of the Music City News Songwriter awards...but the theater down in Branson gave the locals and the region a chance to catch a Las Vegas-style concert performance at affordable prices and just his naturally gifted talents as an entertainer quickly led to his show becoming the most popular attraction in the small Ozark's town packed with more than two dozen theaters on a two lane highway. When Ray opened up the theater in 1991 the longest running venue's were still there and still being headlined by their originators. Boxcar Willie and Roy Clark were the first two major country music artists to open theaters...Roy's theater opened in 1983. Eventually theaters from the likes of Mel Tillis, Moe Bandy, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Jim Stafford, and Shoji Tabuchi just to name a few, would make their grand opening. The audits for attendance shown that Ray's two show a day, six days a week grind schedule enabled him to get the most opportunity for sell-outs with concert goers in the afternoon and traditional concert goers in the late evening. The town relied heavily on tourism...and so it was natural that the town was packed during summer months when adults usually took vacation from work. The overall age bracket for the concert seekers, I'd guess, was 35 and older...a lot of the venues received heavy flow of retirees and those more affluent...and it also didn't hurt that the headliners for almost every attraction had considerable longevity in the music industry. This meant that Branson received it's share of flack and criticism from music industry journalists and critics as a haven for the traditional and a mecca of old-fashioned entertainment. The Branson market successfully, for a brief period of time in the early to late '90s, rivaled Nashville as a premier live music destination. Branson's Highway 76 from a bird's eye view looked like Las Vegas...especially images captured at night...Branson was a sprawling big money machine and The Ray Stevens Theatre was the top destination. It is during his run in Branson that the concept of the music video became permanently linked to his career and how he had the idea of selling music videos to the public whereas, prior to this, a music video was not considered profit generating on their own and were treated simply as a marketing tool to promote the sales of an album. Ray felt that music videos could sell and his gamble paid off enormously during his second season of concerts at his theater in 1992. Ray's become a mogul of the VHS home video world...and we'll take a look at this unexpected but phenomenal phase of Ray's career in Part Seventeen!!

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

Hello once more!! As we left off in Part Fourteen I made mention of Ray receiving his 11th and, to date, final Grammy nomination in the spring of 1988 for "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". The topical song was still on the minds of most...including an occasional mention in the commentary of radio legend, Paul Harvey. The topical nature of the televangelists soon gave way to the topicality of politics as things were heating up in the Cold War. Ray's first single of the year came with a music video...his second of his career...and it was "Surfin' U.S.S.R.". As you could imagine it was a song blending the California surf music culture with real world politics. The music video featured additional content not heard in the audio recording...specifically the opening routine where there's a news bulletin and Ray is heard mimicking Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev discussing a Naval incident near Malibu. The song pays a lot of homage to the sounds of the Beach Boys...with Ray vocally sounding as close to Mike Love as possible. The B-side takes on cable/satellite television which, at that time, was still pretty new to a wide audience. The song title, "Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex", comes from the common disclaimers that show up in the description of programs that air on satellite television. In this performance Ray uses the southern exaggeration as he tells the story of how his wife and children are being corrupted by the uncensored movies and graphic imagery that paid subscriptions offer.

In the summer of 1988 MCA released Ray's album, I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like. The album's title is a twist on the phrase 'I never yet met a man I didn't like' by Will Rogers. On the album cover Ray is seen performing a rope trick in the style of Will Rogers. The album reached the middle half of the Country album chart. In June of 1988 Ray took home his third consecutive Comedian of the Year trophy from Music City News. Ray's album featured a heavy dose of satirical humor with a lot of emphasis on the bizarre. It brought back "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", a song that originally appeared a year earlier on Greatest Hits, Volume Two. On the album it's sandwiched between "Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex" and "The Booger Man". The latter is a funky, bluesy, harmonica heavy ode to all types of monsters, bogey men, and horror films. By song's end Ray and his girlfriend are alone at night in his car...where Ray's deliberately parked near the woods...and he tells her that she better snuggle up close due to "The Booger Man" out there on the prowl. I'd seen Ray perform this a couple of times on television...typically around the Halloween season. Side One of the album closes with a hysterical version of "Bad"...the song written and originally a worldwide hit for Michael Jackson. Ray arranged the song as a blend of rhythm and blues and classic country...with a fiddle sawing away against the urbane sounds of pop...and every so often Ray throws in some Michael Jackson phrasing which make the vocal performance even more hilarious. Now, in the fall of 1988 his next single shown up in the form of "The Day I Tried to Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive". The song reached the Country charts (below the Top-40) and he performed it on the Hee Haw 20th Anniversary Special. It tells the story of Ray teaching a deaf woman how to drive and all the chaos that happens when he attempts to give her instructions and directions but her deafness creates obvious confusion and destruction along the way. One of the wrecks takes place in Clarkdale, Geogia (an in-joke referring to Ray's birthplace). The song was written by Buddy Kalb. It's B-side is "I Don't Need None of That".

The realm of the bizarre is visited even more so on "Blood and Suede" as Ray assumes the role of storyteller and in a hushed, somewhat gravelly vocal he tells of a car wreck on Mulholland Drive between a Mercedes Benz and a Porsche. The wreck happened as a result of a young rock and roll singer not paying attention while driving...his attention was taken by his listening to his own music...with the volume turned way up. The driver of the Mercedes was under the influence of Cabernet. It's a social commentary piece at it's core. There's a whistling heard during the intro and fade out to the song and it's similar to the familiar whistle you hear in the theme song to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. The album's closer is one of his greatest comical songs of the decade...where he sings all about the love, peace, and harmony...it's the "Old Hippie Class Reunion"...far out, man!! Ray performs the song as a couple of spaced out hippies...one speaks in a slow, mellow voice while the other has a gravelly, boisterous voice (the same used for Cactus Pete a year earlier on "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty"). The two speak of their wild parties and their affection for loud music...which has caused the gravelly voiced hippie to nearly lose his hearing...having to constantly ask the mellow hippie to repeat his words. Their love for smoking anything flammable plays a hilarious role in the song, too.

If you happened to have been introduced to Ray Stevens' music in the 1980s you no doubt witnessed the countless number of compilation albums that seemed to surface year after year after year by nearly every record label major and minor, domestic and foreign, and what this did was keep his music in print/available but what it also did was confuse a lot of people, too, trying to assemble their personal collections of his music. There are dozens of Ray Stevens albums generically titled Greatest Hits as well as The Best of Ray Stevens...and then there are those titled The Very Best of Ray Stevens...and of course there's the television album from 1987 called Get The Best of Ray Stevens. There are a number of compilation albums that were contractually released and those particular albums were under Ray's control...but nearly all of the other compilation albums had nothing to do with Ray beyond showcasing his music.

In this internet day and age I've seen commentary from people suggesting that all those compilation albums were released with Ray's knowledge and consent but the truth is more than fifty percent of those compilation albums were issued without his consent. Any record label wishing to issue a compilation album on an artist pays a licensing fee for every song they wish to release...that is, if the song was recorded for another record label...and so Ray's music had gotten licensed, re-licensed, re-re-licensed, etc. etc. In 1989 Mercury Records issued a compilation on Ray titled Ahab the Arab...and the same year they issued a very similar compilation titled Funny Man. The compilation albums shared the same letter font, album photo, and the exact track list of eight songs.

These are the two compilation albums that Mercury Records issued on Ray in 1989. Can you spot the differences? In the first image the photo of Ray is a little bit lighter. The second photo has Ray's suit a little bit brighter...the basic difference is the tinting of the photo and the album titles. This photo had originally appeared on a compilation album several years prior on an Independent label called Spot Records. The recordings on those two collections come from the early 1960s...which may confuse some if they look at the album cover. The image of Ray Stevens shown on the album cover is from more than two decades after those songs were recorded. Yes, I'll admit it, way back when I was just starting my Ray Stevens collection I seen Funny Man on the cassette tape rack at a local store. I had heard those songs on a cassette version of The Best of Ray Stevens that Mercury Records originally released on vinyl in 1970 but was then re-issued in cassette format in 1987. Anyway...when I seen Funny Man and seen the recordings and looked at the photo of Ray...I thought it was going to be a collection of re-recorded songs but as it turns out the recordings are all from the early 1960s. So, from personal experience, I know how misleading the photo can be on those compilation albums. Fortunately I learned quick and have long since grown used to seeing Ray from all time periods show up on compilation albums...regardless of whether the music featured matches the time frame of the photo used.

Well, anyway, Ray was successfully marketed as a country comedian throughout the middle of the 1980s but in 1989 he released his sixth album for MCA titled Beside Myself. He had filled his first five albums for the label with comedy, comedy, and more comedy but yet on this one he filled the first side of the album with serious songs and the second side with comedy. As the photo depicts: serious Ray is seated beside comical Ray. If you're keeping track the last studio album from Ray to feature ballads was Me in 1983. The album was yet another example of his incredible talents. The album kicks off with the appropriately titled "Your Bozo's Back Again". The music accompanying most of the serious recordings is pop/easy-listening. "Another Fine Mess" with it's heavy use of saxophone gives it a jazzy feel. A salute to legendary actor, John Wayne, takes center stage in track three's "Marion Michael Morrison". The sing-a-long "Butterfly Inside a Coupe De Ville" has to be one of the strangest song titles in history but it's a deep kind of song in a bouncy sort of way. The first side of the album closes with the patriotic show stopper, "There's a Star Spangled Banner", tells the fictional story of a P.O.W. in Beirut and his longing for freedom. The second side of the album kicks off with the only single release from the entire album...the tabloid-like "I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O.". The song became one of his popular songs...although it never reached the charts. When he performed it on stage he would have a U.F.O. hovering over the audience while pink aliens would run through the crowd and run up on the stage. Ray performed it on the 1989 edition of the Music City News awards and during the telecast he picked up his fourth consecutive Comedian of the Year honor. The B-side of the U.F.O. novelty was "I Used To Be Crazy" which allows Ray to demonstrate all kinds of vocal mimicry and lyrical mayhem. "Stuck on You" is a story song concerning the side effects of using instant wonder glue (a variation on Super Glue). The album also includes the cleverly titled "The Woogie Boogie". Beside Myself would also appear on the Country album chart...marking six albums in a row from Ray Stevens to make an appearance on Billboard's Country Album chart. His tenure on MCA Records represented one of the most commercially and critically successful periods in his lengthy career...but Beside Myself marked what appeared to be his final album for MCA Records but more about that in the coming installments of this Road to the Country Music Hall of Fame mini-blog series. In the meantime, though, Ray signed a new recording contract with Curb/Capitol Records in 1990. The label's first project on Ray arrived in the form of a compilation album, His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits. The album's photo shown Ray from 1984 in a publicity image for "It's Me Again, Margaret". The compilation album eventually was certified Gold by the RIAA. His first studio album for Curb/Capitol hit in the summer of 1990...and we will pick up from here in Part Sixteen!!