Ray Stevens: CabaRay Nashville "My Babe" group performance...

It's a very windy Sunday afternoon...not as windy as it was a couple of days ago...two weather fronts colliding in the atmosphere. Speaking of colliding...in this performance Ray Stevens is joined by Charlie McCoy, Don Schlitz, and Bobby Bare for a performance of "My Babe", a Blues song from 1955 vocally recorded by harmonica player, Little Walter. Today is the birthday of Charlie McCoy who, himself, is a legendary harmonica player. He reaches 80. Charlie spent a couple of decades on the television show, Hee Haw, originally as part of the band but later was promoted to music director. In the opening credits of the show, especially in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, he was credited as 'Charlie McCoy and the Hee Haw Band'. Charlie, like Ray, played on a lot of sessions throughout the late '50s and into the mid '60s. Ray eased up on his recording session intake by the late '60s simply because his own recording career required more of his time and energy but Charlie continued on as harmonica session musician for nearly every recording studio and record label in Nashville. Charlie also had a series of top selling single releases of harmonica performances. His commercial success as a harmonica player in the 1970s rivaled the instrumental successes of saxophonist Boots Randolph, guitarist Chet Atkins, pianist Floyd Cramer, trumpeter Danny Davis, and fiddler Johnny Gimble. All of those musicians plus Charlie, Jethro Burns, and Roy Clark formed what was known on Hee Haw as The Million Dollar Band. This super group performed instrumentals on Hee Haw on a recurring basis throughout the late '70s and into the mid '80s. Here is Ray Stevens, Charlie McCoy, Don Schlitz, and Bobby Bare singing "My Babe"...