May 11, 2021

Ray Stevens calls Tony Orlando's Radio Show...


Hello one and all...this past Saturday night Ray Stevens called in to Tony Orlando's radio program. He hosts a 2-hour radio program on WABC in New York (10pm - 12am) called Saturday Nights with Tony Orlando. I became aware of this show just this past Saturday when I seen a promo on social media about it. As a big fan of Ray Stevens that's what caught my eye...so I listened to the show Saturday night online. I held off writing a blog entry about Ray's guest appearance because I didn't know if Ray would be posting about it on his own social media pages. There was no advanced publicity for Ray's guest appearance except for the promo on Tony Orlando's social media pages. Well, a couple of minutes ago, Ray uploaded a brief conversation from the interview. Since I was waiting for some kind of mention of the interview to surface on Ray's social media before writing a blog entry I'm now going to share the interview in this blog entry. The image below is just a publicity photo...clicking it won't take you to the podcast. The link to the interview is in the next paragraph.


Ray uploaded a conversation pertaining to a month long tour that he and Tony Orlando, and several others, were on in 1961. The tour, according to their recollections, was virtually non-stop the entire month. I came across an advertisement from October 20, 1961 showing this tour making a stop on the Iowa Danceland show. The Danceland advertisement shows Ray Stevens, Tony Orlando, Ral Donner, Janie Grant, and Bobby Vinton appearing that night. The upload on Ray's Facebook page is less than 2 minutes but the interview itself is more than half an hour. Tony's topic during the May 8th radio show was Singers and Songwriters. You can listen to the interview by clicking HERE

The interview is lively...Ray has frequently referred to Tony as Mr. Shyness as an ironic reference to Tony's outgoing personality. Tony plays several songs of Ray's during the interview...including 1968's "Mr. Businessman" and 1975's "Misty". You'll hear Ray speak of how elated he happened to be in the 1990s when Comedy Video Classics and several other VHS tapes became top sales hits...proving his instincts correct...and leaving the major record labels in shock since they passed on his direct-mail experiment. Ray also sounds as if he was slightly insecure while on tour with Tony Orlando in 1961...watching Tony walk out on stage and sing love ballads whereas Ray sang "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills". Tony attempts to recite the full title of the song and almost makes it...the full title is "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills".

In a career spanning 60-plus years there's no way to cover everything...but the signature hits are covered and then there's talk of contemporary events. Ray speaks of the CabaRay and how he's hoping to get the showroom up and running in the fall but a lot of it will also depend on the people feeling safe to attend indoor events again. There wasn't any talk of his current recordings or the upcoming Box Set next month...I guess he's saving the main publicity for when the box set arrives. Tony closed the interview by thanking Ray for 60 years of friendship.

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