May 4, 2021

Ray Stevens sings "I'm Movin' On"...

Hello all once again!! I'm a fan of Ray Stevens...and that's not a big surprise...and you probably could guess that I'm a fan of classic country music, too. Earlier today a video clip emerged of Ray Stevens from 1970 singing "I'm Movin' On" which had originally been a huge hit for Hank Snow. This performance comes from Ray's summer 1970 television show and he re-arranged the song...but he's never recorded it. The song was written by Hank Snow. If you know your country music history then you'll know that Hank Snow was Canadian and had a very successful recording career in Canada before coming down to the United States. 

"I'm Movin' On" was just one in a series of massive hit singles for Hank Snow...numerous singles from him spotlighted his uncanny ability to sing up-tempo songs with alliterative and tongue twisting lyrics with the highlight being "I've Been Everywhere". I don't know who the arranger was for Hank Snow's up-tempo songs but most of them had that delivery to where, if you tried singing along, you'd mess up once or twice attempting to keep pace and navigate through all of the lyric gymnastics. Hank's recording of "I'm Movin' On", in 1950, hit number one and stayed there for 21 weeks. So, then, here's Ray Stevens in 1970 singing one of Hank Snow's classics, "I'm Movin' On", and performing it his own way...in a medley with Joe South's "These Are Not My People"...so it's "I'm Movin' On" and then an insertion of "These Are Not My People" and then it returns to "I'm Movin' On". It's a showcase for Ray's arranging skills...

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