November 22, 2021

Ray Stevens: Thanksgiving 2021...

Hello all of you fans of Ray Stevens!! It's fast approaching Thanksgiving...this coming Thursday! I call it Thanksgiving week. I'm sure most of you do. I'll be engaged in what I'm typically engaged in every Thanksgiving and that's a lot of food and whole lot of football. Turkey, dressing, perhaps dumplings, but definitely chicken and noodles and a whole lot of mashed potatoes and homemade macaroni and cheese...in front of the television watching whatever games are on. 

In years past I'd post a blog entry centering around things to be thankful for as a Ray Stevens fan. This year is no different. One of the things to be thankful for is what seems to be his desire to always seek different ways in which to entertain his fans. To the outsider you'd probably never think that Ray puts in a lot of effort and work into his recordings...some may think it doesn't take much to walk into a recording studio and sing "comedy stuff". Oh how wrong that mindset happens to be. There isn't an album of Ray's that hasn't included his input...from the obvious such as Ray singing the songs to being the music arranger on just about everything he records. Also, some of you know that he's a musician and plays a wide variety of instruments while in the studio. When Ray is on stage he simplifies things by playing the piano...but he'll usually have a guitar when singing "Gitarzan". If you've seen video of him in the late 1970's he'd have a guitar on his back, literally, while seated at the piano. 

Speaking of the guitar...this photo of Ray Stevens is from that very same late 1970's time period I was referencing in the above paragraph. I'd seen Ray use a guitar when singing "Honky Tonk Waltz", one of his single releases in 1976, on a couple of television shows. In each performance he incorporated the acoustic guitar. I don't know if he wasn't using an acoustic guitar player in his road band or if he simply wanted to play the guitar at various moments in the song. The musicians aren't credited on his 1976 album, Just for the Record, and yet whenever he sang "Honky Tonk Waltz" he'd play a guitar at the beginning and during the music break...alternating between it and the piano. So, perhaps he played the guitar on the studio recording and wanted to play the guitar during the concert performances, too? I don't know if we'd ever find out given the lack of musician credits on the 1976 album. In getting back to the topic of this blog entry...another thing to be thankful for is having Ray Stevens enthusiastic and upbeat...and very prolific. He released five albums this year...and he said in a recent interview that 2022 will more or less mirror 2021 as far as number of albums go! This means there will be five albums released in 2022!! It goes without saying but another thing I'm thankful for when it comes to the music of Ray Stevens is I like how he sings whatever he wants to. As far as I know he doesn't do market testing or research or anything like that...he doesn't make his decisions based on what others have to say...when he goes to put out a song or an album it'll be something that he enjoyed recording. 

I've been a fan of Ray Stevens ever since I was a teenager and probably before that...and I'm thankful for being in the right place at the right time one Saturday afternoon with my grandparent's. We were inside a pizza place...inside was a jukebox and on this jukebox was "Mississippi Squirrel Revival". I picked the song out because of it's title...and that one play made me a Ray Stevens fan for life!!    

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