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!!