Ray Stevens: "Down in Mexico" audio track...

Hello all once again!! If you're a long time Ray Stevens fan then you know how much he idolized the music of The Coasters. Ray has recorded numerous songs over the decades that were originally recorded by the group. Some of those were "Along Came Jones", "Little Egypt", "Yakety Yak", "Searchin", "Poison Ivy", "Western Movies", and a few others. The group was actually a contemporary of Ray. A lot of people make the assumption that The Coasters were some kind of group that Ray grew up listening to as a kid when in fact The Coasters were hitting, nationally, right around the time Ray was just entering the music industry on a regional level in the 1950s. "Down In Mexico" was, in fact, the first major hit for The Coasters in 1956 and it appeared on their 1957 album, The Coasters. Their rendition features what became synonymous in nearly all of their songs: a raucous saxophone. The song comes from the pen of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller...the writers for almost all of the best-known songs released by The Coasters. When "Down in Mexico" was hitting in 1956 for The Coasters Ray was working as a disc jockey on a local radio station in Georgia...and as it turned out he was several months away from recording his debut for Prep Records, a subsidiary of Capitol Records. 

"Down in Mexico" is more or less a love song...telling the story of a guy who goes down to Mexico and finds himself in a honkytonk where he comes across a piano player, Joe, wearing a purple sash. Throughout the song the line '...in a honkytonk Down in Mexico...' is heard often by backup harmony. In the rendition by The Coasters it's the various members of the group singing the harmony vocals...in the Ray Stevens rendition it's Ray's over-dubbed voice providing the background harmony. A wild dance erupts between a Mexican dancer and the guy that walked into the honkytonk...and all kinds of Mexican flavored instrumentation is heard throughout. Ray plays most of the instruments by way of his synthesizer. Buddy Skipper is credited with playing the tenor saxophone...Ray is credited with baritone sax...but there isn't a saxophone solo like there is with The Coasters rendition. 

One of the major differences in the Ray Stevens rendition besides the advance in music technology and audio advancements is the differences in the fade out. On The Coasters rendition Carl Gardner speaks in a Mexican-American accent as the song fades out. Ray mimics this same approach during the fade out but adds in a whole lot more vocal effects that elaborate on the man's excitement over encountering the obviously vivacious and alluring Mexican dancer. So, then, add this to the list of Coasters songs that Ray Stevens has lovingly brought back...