Ray Stevens: Arrangement, Production, Action...

Hello all Ray Stevens fans!! The title of this blog entry seems quaint but it took me several minutes to come up with a title such as that. I was thinking to myself 'lights, camera, action!' and how could I come up with a similar phrase...and after a couple of minutes I came up with 'arrangement, production, action!'. I title the blog entry as such because I wanted to spotlight Ray Stevens, the music arranger. Music arrangement is something that most recording artists leave to studio musicians or a record producer. When you're Ray Stevens, though, the art of music arranging goes hand in hand with production. The construction of a song begins, usually, with the lyrics and then music comes second. This isn't a set in stone rule, though...sometimes music is written first and lyrics come later. A music arranger determines the instrumentation and tempo of a song...and in the second half of the 20th century most recording artists weren't writers or composers...and so the technical aspects of creating a song went by with little notice. If you happened to purchase sheet music, for example, the composer and lyricist were credited as was the recording artist. Ray happens to his own producer and music arranger...and he wrote most of his songs until the mid 1980s...and so if you purchased sheet music of one of his songs from the late '60s or '70s you'd see him credited as the artist, writer, producer, arranger, and publisher. 

Ray's music arranging talents are on full display on just about everything he's recorded since the mid 1960s. He even worked as a music arranger throughout the 1960s on recordings by other artists. There are numerous songs recorded on Monument Records that feature Ray's arranging skills...but his arranging wasn't limited to just Monument Records. He produced and arranged recordings on Mercury Records, RCA Records, and a variety of low-budget record labels. When Ray was working as an arranger and session musician in Nashville during the 1960s his bosses were: Shelby Singleton (Mercury); Jerry Kennedy (Mercury/Smash); Fred Foster (Monument); and Chet Atkins (RCA). I'm sure Ray did some session work and, or, arranged songs for the recording artists at Columbia (headed up by Don Law) and perhaps Decca (headed up by Owen Bradley) but for the most part whenever I come across a vinyl single online from another recording artist which credits Ray Stevens as the song's writer or music arranger the producer is usually Shelby Singleton, Jerry Kennedy, Fred Foster, or Chet Atkins. There isn't any kind of list that features the songs Ray Stevens has written, produced, or arranged for other recording artists. I'm always coming across songs that Ray participated in throughout the 1960s. 

I've never really set down and tried to compile a list of songs he's written, produced, or arranged for other artists because if I'd attempt to do such a thing I'd obviously not be able to track down each and every recording and so a list like that would always be incomplete. Also, some record companies don't credit the music arrangers. I found out today, for example, that Ray did the arranging on two Willie Nelson recordings in 1968. One of the songs is called "Did I Ever Love You?" and the other is called "Down To Our Last Goodbye". The two songs come from a 1968 Willie Nelson album on RCA called Good Times. The album was produced by Chet Atkins and Felton Jarvis. Since it's the birthday of Willie Nelson today (he reaches 88) Ray posted an audio clip of "Down To Our Last Goodbye". If there wasn't any attention drawn to those songs or that 1968 album I wouldn't have known of Ray's involvement. "Did I Ever Love You?" has a sort of bouncy arrangement with a decidedly Nashville Sound pop flavor. Those two songs are on YouTube...and Ray gave "Down To Our Last Goodbye" a soft arrangement...both of these songs go up against Willie's distinctive vocals as you could imagine. The music, however, isn't up front and so it doesn't drown out his voice...or make it seem like he's having to compete with the instrumentation.

One of the songs on Ray's current digital album, Slow Dance, is his rendition of "Slow Dancing". Ray re-arranged the song to fit his style...now this doesn't mean that he's turned it into a comedy song. There are actually some people online that are assuming that Ray's current recordings are going to be comedy songs. A comment I came across weeks ago from somebody that hadn't purchased the digital album yet had him wondering how funny Ray will make these songs. Although customers can play audio samples of the songs on Amazon so they can hear a snippet of how they'll sound it's clear that some people don't do that and they automatically think 'comedy' when they see Ray Stevens. Great Country Ballads, Melancholy Fescue, and Slow Dance are all serious...as is the album he's releasing next month, Nouveau Retro. The albums put his music arranging skills on full display. He doesn't re-create the original performances of the songs he's chosen to record...he creates entirely different performances through his re-arrangements. Here's the Curb Records audio clip of "Slow Dance"...