Ray Stevens: 1991 performance of I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O.

One of the funniest comedy songs from Ray Stevens came along in 1989 titled "I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O.". The song itself tackles the tabloid driven newspaper stories where people claim to have either spotted Elvis at a fast-food restaurant or seen him in bizarre places long after his 1977 death. The concert performance of the song was one of Ray's most elaborate. It almost always began with the lights being dimmed and a prerecorded video clip of Ray playing the part of a news anchor, a reporter, and the witness himself would be shown to the audience. Upon the conclusion of the video clip the lights would come up and Ray would start singing the song.

The video clip below, from 1991, is one of those elaborate performances. The prop of a gigantic U.F.O. was part of the stage performances. In this particular video you'll see one of the song's writers, Buddy Kalb, playing the part of the reporter. The dialogue performed in the opening sequence isn't the dialogue performed on the 1989 recording. In this 1991 reenactment Buddy's reporter character uses nearly word for word dialogue found in Ray's 1974 recording, "The Streak", instead of using the reporter dialogue heard on Ray's 1989 studio recording of "I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O.". Ray, playing the role of the witness, offers different dialogue in this 1991 sketch than what's heard in the 1989 recording. In the 1989 recording the witness who claims to have seen a U.F.O. was out in the woods camping with his wife in a Winnebago. In this 1991 performance the witness claims to have seen the U.F.O. hovering over a fast-food restaurant while awaiting food to take to his wife, Ethel. It's my guess that Ray had gotten a lot of audience feedback over how the witness in the 1989 recording sounded so much like the witness who seen "The Streak" in 1974 that they (Ray and Buddy) decided to re-write the opening part of the song to make it appear that the U.F.O. witness is the same man who seen "The Streak".



That performance is from the 1992 VHS, Amazing Rolling Revue. That was the title of a 1991 unsold television pilot Ray produced and since it wasn't picked up by any network Ray decided to issue the 1991 unsold pilot on VHS in 1992 through his fan club. It wasn't sold through nationwide television advertisements and so it wasn't as well known as some of his other VHS releases at that time. Ray had earlier performed "I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O." on the 1989 edition of the Music City News Country Awards. It's my belief that it was the first time Ray performed the song on stage and in that performance it included the gigantic U.F.O. and the pink aliens running all over the place. In the stage performances in Branson, Missouri in the early '90s Ray would be in an Elvis suit while performing the song. Ray appeared as fictional anchorman Stan Blather in the pre-recorded video clip that played before the start of the song in the Branson performances. Ray portrayed the reporter, too, as he had in the 1989 recording; and the witness, also played in the video by Ray, returned to being a camper in the woods in a Winnebago with his wife.

I don't know if Ray continued performing this song after he left Branson in 1993. I don't think he performed it during his brief return during the 2005 and 2006 seasons...and he never performed it in the concerts I'd been lucky enough to attend. I seen him in Mount Vernon, Kentucky at Renfro Valley in 2008; Nashville, Indiana at The Little Nashville Opry in 2009; and on the West Side of Nashville at the CabaRay in 2018.