Hello fans of Ray Stevens!!! As we wind down women's history month and as we wind down the examination of love songs and comedy songs that Ray has sung that fit the theme of this limited blog series during women's history month we begin with 1981 and the release of the fabulous album titled One More Last Chance. This album is chock full of love songs...everything from full-on passionate pleas of longing to heartache and heartbreak. It's a ballad heavy album and the title track features a neat combination of steel guitar and electric guitar trading solo's within the song. It starts out with an electric guitar but eventually you'll hear the steel guitar. "One More Last Chance" is a song about a broken relationship and how the guy realizes his mistakes/faults and begs forgiveness. The woman has apparently taken him back time and time again and given him one last chance each time but now, as he says, he wants her to give him just "One More Last Chance". The album's title track was the second single release from the album. The first single had actually hit several months before the album was released. Late in 1980 "Night Games" emerged. The bouncy song is like a page right out of any night club all over the country. In 1980, when the topic of bar rooms was brought up, what would immediately come to mind is the movie, Urban Cowboy, and the bar/nightclub featured in the movie was called Gilley's. The bar was a business venture between country singer Mickey Gilley and a businessman named Sherwood Cryer. It was located in Pasadena, Texas and was in operation from 1970 until it literally burned to the ground in 1990. The album cover shows Ray in the clothing that most, if not all, country music and aspiring country music singers as well as fans were wearing in the aftermath of the 1980 movie. The bar and movie popularized the mechanical bull, too.
"Night Games", as mentioned, fits into that era as we hear about a single's bar where we're told the story of two strangers hoping to find romance. The thing that happens, however, is the two have a one night stand and they wake up to find they're not compatible and feel just as strange to one another as the moment they met the night before. Elsewhere on the album is his up-tempo rendition of "Pretend" plus we have a big ballad titled "Certain Songs". Heartbreak is the subject in the ballad "Just About Love". A tale of a couple with opposite personalities and backgrounds is told in "Melissa". We're not told why the woman is no longer in the relationship, however, but from Ray's singing we're informed that he's missing her. In a ballad-heavy album "Pretend" is the only song that's really super charged up-tempo. "Night Games" is a bouncy sing-a-long whereas "Let's Do It Right This Time" and "One More Last Chance" are a combination between ballad and mid-tempo.
In 1982, from the Don't Laugh Now album, Ray returns to a more balanced approach of up-tempo and ballad recordings. The album kicks off with the rocking "Such a Night". The retro feel of the music arrangement might be the reason the album's title is written in a '50s neon design.
The album, produced by Ray Stevens and Bob Montgomery, is fun to listen to as are so many of Ray's albums. "Such a Night", "Take That Girl Away", "Oh, Leo Lady", and practically the entire album is devoted to love songs as well. The two songs that were issued as single releases were "Written Down in My Heart", a ballad, and the gospel-flavored "Where The Sun Don't Shine". The cleverest song, "Oh, Leo Lady", takes the sound of yodeling as in oh-lee-oh-lady-hoo but transform it into a love song using astrology. In the song Ray sings about being in love with a Leo in spite of his horoscope saying that a Leo isn't part of his destiny. It's the only song, that I'm aware of, that uses astrology as a backdrop and incorporates Leo, Gemini, Pisces, Jupiter, Scorpio, etc. into the lyrics. The album's title track is a slow ballad that visits the theme of unrequited love. In the song Ray sings about a guy that's in love with a woman and he tells her how much he loves her and for how long he's had feelings for her. He asks that she "Don't Laugh Now" given how she's always seen him as a friend and nothing more. "Country Boy, Country Club Girl" is a song about two people from different backgrounds finding one another. He's a country kid who worked as a lifeguard inside a ritzy country club. He falls for a woman named Mary Lou Pickett. Her father happened to own a mill in town and he raised his family in an eight column house.
In 1983 Ray left the RCA label (signed with them in the latter half of 1979) and signed what turned out to be a one album deal with Mercury Records. He'd been on that label in his past. He recorded for them from 1961 until 1965. The results of the newest partnership began showing up in the latter half of 1983. A series of single releases emerged as well as the album, Me.
In hindsight there wasn't a lot of publicity surrounding the album. The album contains 10 songs and it features a combination of up-tempo, mid-tempo, and ballads. In recent years through social media several songs from the album have been discovered by fans...one, in particular, is the fun "Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee". The song should have been used for Nashville tourism or Tennessee Tourism but it never was. The single releases happened to be "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out", "Mary Lou Nights", and "My Dad". The latter, written by Dale Gonyea, is a salute to fathers. Although it has the eye catching title of "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out" it's a serious recording about mental stress and the anguish that being in love, or losing love, will bring. "Game Show Love" is my all-time favorite from the album. Through the incorporation of game show titles and catch-phrases we hear a song about how a woman was never serious about a relationship and all she did was string him along. The opening line in the song's chorus: 'love, is just a game to you...'. In "Yolanda" we hear a song about a guy's desire for a Spanish woman and in spite of his not being able to speak the language he nevertheless can't get her off of his mind. Have you ever heard a song about an anniversary of a break-up? In "Special Anniversary", a phrase we don't hear until the end of the song, Ray sings about seeing a woman that he used to love and wonders if his running into her is just a coincidence given that it had been exactly one year since the two broke up. It was a fantastic album and much, if not all, of the brief publicity for the album and it's songs arrived in the first couple of months in 1984. However, the Me album was ultimately overlooked and overshadowed by some big changes that took place in Ray's career in 1984. Seen below is Ray performing "My Dad" from an episode of his CabaRay Nashville television series.
Ray left Mercury Records and signed with MCA Records. Although the entire terms of the recording contract will never be public it was reported in country music media that he was signed as a comedy act. It was the first time in his career where he shifted his full attention to comedy and the first time he fully embraced being marketed as a comedy performer. His first five albums for the label were all comedy and the first four were huge record sellers. The 1984 debut, He Thinks He's Ray Stevens, contained what became an immediate classic... "It's Me Again, Margaret". This comedy song, in case you hadn't heard it, is about a prank caller named Willard McBain who calls up his victim, Margaret. In a series of phone calls he embarrasses the woman until she finally gets the police involved. They eavesdrop and hear Willard's latest verbal assault and he's arrested. There were some other songs on that album dealing with women. "Happy Hour is the Saddest Time of the Day" is a nutty comedy song about a pair of alcoholics. She's sobered up and left him which is why Happy Hour is a sad time for him. "I'm Kissin' You Goodbye" is the album's opening track. This is a very funny song, if you listen to it carefully, but it's performed seriously with an up-tempo bluegrass flavored arrangement.
This concludes my look at love songs (both non-comical and comical) from Ray Stevens. Now, don't let this overview lead you to think he's not recorded much more than what I've covered in this 5-part series. He's recorded more since 1984. In 1985, for example, there was "Punk Country Love" and then there was "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?" in 1986. In 1987 there was "The Flies of Texas", which in spite of it's title, is a love song about a guy who thinks he's marrying into money only to learn that his potential father-in-law owns a fleet of garbage trucks. "The Three Legged Man" tells the wild story of a guy who steals a woman away from another man. The other man happens to have a wooden leg and he steals it, too. So, now, he's a guy with three legs with a woman who has two legs and they're being chased by a one legged man.
Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! We only have 11 more days left in the month of March and so in this installment of love songs from Ray Stevens we pick up in the year 1977. Ray was no stranger to love ballads but during his years at Warner Brothers (1976-1979) and RCA (1980-1982) there were a whole lot more love ballads per album than at any other time. Well, that's not an official stat but it certainly seems like Ray was singing more love songs than ever.
Here we have the great Ray Stevens, in performance, in 1977 belting out one of those love songs. Completely lost in the song as anyone can see from looking at the photo. The album released that particular year was almost completely written by Ray. There were 10 songs on the album and Ray wrote 9 of them. Feel the Music, the name of the album, also features an unusual album photo. On the front of the album there's an illustration of a stereo speaker. On the back of the album there's an illustration of the back of a stereo speaker. The idea behind the album's cover art ties into the title track, "Feel the Music", literally. I come across a music critic's review of the 1977 album a couple of years ago while browsing online. The critic described Ray's style as bluesy-country. "Feel the Music", production wise, is marvelous as practically every Ray Stevens production is. The song has a catchy melody and at various moments Ray sounds as if he's totally in the spirit as the production takes on a gospel vibe. It's an inspirational song. Some of the love ballads on the 1977 album happen to be the exquisite "Road Widow", a song about a traveling musician constantly on the road but constantly thinking of the wife waiting at home. I'd never heard the expression, road widow, before but it's a neat song title for this kind of lonely, road weary song. How many of you are familiar with the phrase 'cheery sad song'? There shouldn't be hardly anyone familiar with the phrase since I just made it up. The phrase describes a sad love song with an up-tempo sing-a-long arrangement. A great example of this happens to be "Alone With You". When you see the title of the song while reading the track list on the album you'd think a song with a title like that would be a full-on, heavy romantic ballad. Well, it isn't.
"Alone With You" is a sad song about a couple who have lost the spark they once had and that the love is all gone and he sings "I'm all alone with you". The music arrangement is up-tempo and bouncy, as mentioned. Now, staying in the same vein, we have the mid-tempo bluesy "Blues Love Affair". That particular song is about a guy who's more or less unlucky in love and all his relationships cause him to be down in the dumps.. causing him to feel as if his love life is just a love affair with misery and the blues. The bluesy-country flavor continues with "Junkie for You", where Ray uses a man's intense desires for a woman as something comparable to an addict. It's a song that only Ray could've come up with.
Ray issued two albums in 1978. The first release was his salute/tribute to the music of the 1950s and 1960s. It was specifically rhythm and blues songs that crossed over to the pop chart. The album title, There is Something On Your Mind, is named for the album's closing number. It's a classic that's narrated frenetically. Ray provides commentary on both the front and the back of the album cover. He explains his reasons for recording the album. Then, on the back of the album, commentary from Ray appears underneath each track explaining his decision for recording it and giving some history behind each song. Every track on the album is a love song. It includes his renditions of "One Mint Julep", "Money Honey", plus several medley performances "Dance Trilogy", "Old Faithful Trilogy", and "Banned in Boston Trilogy". The latter features abbreviated performances of "Sixty Minute Man"/ "Work With Me, Annie"/ "Annie Had a Baby". The second album of 1978 was the more conventional album. Titled Be Your Own Best Friend it centers around love ballads, for the most part, and most of the love songs are performed in a soft-rock/Easy-Listening flavor. The one that features this touch the most is the inspirational "With a Smile".
The love songs found on the album are "You're Magic" (one of my all-time favorites), a soft re-recording of "You've Got the Music Inside", and the majestic "L'amour". That recording is another of my all-time favorites. It also has a neat backstory. Ray mentioned in an interview in the early 1990s that while he was on tour overseas he had heard one of the most beautiful melodies but couldn't understand the lyrics because the singer was French. Ray eventually found out the French recording artist's name and the title of the song. The singer/writer was Gilbert Becaud. Ray got permission to use the melody and he wrote English lyrics to it. "L'amour" is fabulous.. the music and Ray's singing.. it's heavenly. The album credits both Gilbert Becaud and Ray Stevens as the writers. There are a couple of sad love songs on the 1978 album and those are "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right", more of a song of reconciliation, but we're not told if the pair patched things up or not. "Comeback" is a fast tempo song where Ray pleads and begs for the woman to comeback and don't hesitate. "The Feeling's Not Right Again" would become the name of Ray's 1979 compilation album on Warner Brothers but it made it's debut on Be Your Own Best Friend. The song deals with a man who can't seem to find his soul mate since every time he gets into a relationship it just doesn't have much feeling to it.
In the latter half of 1979 Ray moved to the RCA label. His first project for the label happened to be his first comedy album since 1974. Shriner's Convention hit early in 1980, the first all-comedy studio album from Ray since Boogity Boogity. The album featured the hit title track and a couple of other recordings became fan favorites. As far as love songs go there happened to be a couple of bizarre ones with it being a comedy album after all. One of the most clever love songs is "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me". The women in their southern accents pronounce the word, tamper, as tampa. So, when Ray hears all the women he encounters during Spring Break say that he's never going to tampa with them it confuses him...considering he wasn't planning on going to Tampa anyway. The song doubles as a neat tribute to Florida, though, as Ray name drops quite a lot of famed beaches and cities.
"The Last Laugh" has Ray singing about multiple ways he'll end his life as a result of being treated badly by a former lover. "Rita's Letter" is a song about a woman that receives a letter from her second husband telling her that he'd be in the neighborhood and would she like to reunite. Eventually they come face to face and she learns that he's changed his name from Beauregard to Nirvana and is part of a religious cult wearing a robe and pony tail. In "The Watch Song" Ray tells the story of being in a bar room fight. In the song Ray's accused of being the other man in a woman's life and her husband wants to fight. They fight and the guy breaks Ray's wristwatch and it causes him to snap. Ray beats the man up, too much it seems, because the guy dies. Ray's character finds himself headed to life in prison and an eventual death sentence. Throughout the song Ray wonders aloud and prays John Cameron Swayze will help him get out of prison and off death row.
Well, I couldn't let Saint Patrick's Day go by without at least composing a blog entry spotlighting not only this photo of Ray Stevens in green but shining the light on a music pot of gold...an audio pot of gold. A collection of recordings by Ray Stevens that capture the spirit of what most people over the many decades have come to identify Saint Patrick's Day with: drinking alcohol and throwing parties. The holiday is synonymous with the color, green. The Irish connection and the lore of leprechauns, shamrocks, pots of gold, and luck. Ray has never officially recorded Irish ballads or traditional Irish music. I haven't done any detailed research to find out why Saint Patrick's Day went from celebrating an actual Irish Saint named Patrick to a day that's long been tied to alcohol (public intoxication) and wild partying. Nevertheless, there are those who are authentically Irish who have no issue with the fun and craziness that surrounds the Irish holiday but there are those of Irish heritage that do not appreciate the 'image' of the Irish as intoxicated fools continuing to show up every year on March 17th. Some protest the stereotypical imagery associated with the holiday (shamrocks, leprechaun costumes, orange wigs and beards) but I believe the protests are coming from a loud vocal minority considering the holiday comes and goes each and every year with celebrations of Irish heritage (food, drinks, music, clothing) on the day marking the death of Saint Patrick (March 17th). My family's heritage (on my dad's side) is Irish-Scottish and I don't find anything offensive about how people choose to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day. Whether you simply want to wear green, or, drink alcohol, or listen to various recording artist's do a rendition of "Danny Boy", no matter how you choose to celebrate, well, it's perfectly fine with me.
What Ray Stevens songs do you think are in my personally selected pot of gold? I have a couple of songs in mind and the first one I'm spotlighting is Ray's rendition of "The Bricklayer's Song". Ray recorded this in 1993 on stage at his Branson, Missouri theater. It appears on his comedy album that year, Classic Ray Stevens. The song tells the story of an Irishman and his wild misadventures with a rope, a pulley, and a barrel of bricks.
Ray performed "The Bricklayer's Song" on an episode of his CabaRay Nashville television series but the performance isn't isolated as a stand alone upload on YouTube (so far) and I've forgotten which episode contains that performance. There are nearly 80 half hour episodes of the series so far. I could go through my notes and check which episode he performed it on...hey, I just went and looked...Ray performed the song on the episode guest starring Leroy Van Dyke. If you visit YouTube and search 'Ray Stevens + Leroy Van Dyke', the full episode will appear in the search results. Along the same amusing lines as that song but this time the setting is a brewery we hear the story of Clancy who works at a brewery in Milwaukee. We're told he's worked there for years and loves his job...working overtime and even weekends. Clancy met his end, however, in the most unfortunate of ways. You will hear all about it in Ray's 1987 recording of "The Day That Clancy Drowned", from the pen of Sheb Wooley.
Have you ever heard the Ray Stevens recording of "Little Brown Jug"? He recorded it for his massive box set in 2012 titled The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. The song originated in 1869 but became closely linked to Glenn Miller in 1939. The Prohibition Era in the United States (roughly 1920 - 1933) naturally caused a lot of songs/imagery of alcohol to become popular due to the Government imposed ban on all things alcohol related. Oh yes, bootlegging became fashionable even if it was against the law. This recording from Ray features modern instrumentation but it captures the spirit of the previous recordings of decades ago...and with practically everything Ray records there's a lot put into the production and his vocal performance gives the song it's essential cheery overtone...
One of the recordings from Ray Stevens that I think about on Saint Patrick's Day is his 1984 recording of "Happy Hour is the Saddest Time of the Day". It's a song on his comedy album that year, He Thinks He's Ray Stevens. He performed it on a country music television show that year and during the performance he applies make-up in time with the music and eventually appears on camera, right in front of our eyes, as a sad clown which masks the hilarious, clever lyrics. The screen cap from the performance shows him in the clown make-up but it's fun to watch the performance and hear him sing about loss love and how happy hour brings sorrow instead of happiness...
Oh yes...perhaps the most popular or the second most popular woman from a Ray Stevens recording is Ethel. The woman that kept seeing a streaker in Ray's 1974 million selling single, "The Streak". The catchphrase, well one of them, even appears on the album cover. Throughout the recording Ray's eyewitness character continually warns Ethel not to look but it's always too late. Ray wrote and recorded a rough draft of the song shortly after reading about the fad of streaking prior to it becoming a national fad, most often happening on college campuses. Ray didn't immediately release the song but once streaking became a huge news item, perhaps reaching it's peak at the Oscar ceremony, Ray decided to put the finishing touches on his song and record it. When he released the song on Barnaby Records there were already at least a dozen or more novelty songs about streaking available. Ray has always felt that the reason his recording out performed the other songs is due to his having the concept of the song partially written weeks before streaking became a cultural phenomenon. He owed the song's success to having had the time to focus on it rather than cobbling together lyrics seemingly at random just to cash in on the fad. The single sold millions of copies worldwide. The sales figure that's often cited is more than 5,000,000 copies sold. It not only reached the top of the Hot 100 pop chart here in America but it crossed over and become a Top-5 hit in country music and a number one hit in the United Kingdom. In America the song was at number one for three weeks. It had a meteoric rise to the top...once it hit the Hot 100 it was sitting at number one within a month's time. The single reaches it's golden anniversary this year but for this occasion it's okay if Ethel takes a look and celebrates the milestone. Although the 1974 Boogity Boogity album is officially a comedy release it did contain at least one love song. It happens to be the album closer, "Just So Proud To Be Here". Ray also includes his rendition of "Don't Boogie Woogie", a rocking piano pounding performance that sounds a lot like Jerry Lee Lewis and ironically Jerry Lee Lewis would in fact record that song...one year after Ray. Here's an audio track of "Just So Proud To Be Here". I don't know if Ray chose to write a song with this as a title because of his friendship with Minnie Pearl or not. If you'd ever seen Minnie in performance she'd holler out her opening "How-dee!" and follow it with "I'm just so proud to be here...".
In 1975, still with Barnaby Records, Ray issued the single, "Misty". Now, technically, the name of the song is a woman's name but the song is actually about emotional feelings. If you've never heard the song before it's about how misty-eyed a man gets the moment the love of his life is near him. So, yes, it's still a love song but it isn't about a woman named Misty. Ray won a Grammy early in 1976 in the category of Best Music Arrangement for his recording of "Misty". Elsewhere on the Misty album there are plenty of love songs. One of the greatest on the album is his version of "Lady of Spain". There's also the delightful "Sunshine", a song that's arranged and sang with such vocal happiness that you're bound to smile throughout as you listen to it. On the opposite end of the up-tempo productions we have the sensual vibe that exists throughout his performance of "Take Care of Business". That song, from the pen of Layng Martine, Jr., uses a phrase heard throughout Ray's 1968 single, "Mr. Businessman". Layng was a writer at Ray's publishing company and if I recall correctly the songwriter chose "Take Care of Business" as a title because he felt it might grab Ray's attention to the point of his possibly recording the love ballad...or he used that title because "Mr. Businessman" happened to be one of Layng's favorite Ray Stevens songs. It's one or the other. Ray's marvelous ballad renditions of "Indian Love Call" and "Young Love" are on the 1975 album as well.
In 1976 Ray exited Barnaby Records and signed on with Warner Brothers records. His debut album for the label, seen above, is titled Just For the Record. It's a glorious album chock full of up-tempo, mid-tempo, and ballad performances. In the category of love songs this album has plenty. His rousing rendition of "You Are So Beautiful" was the album's debut single and it was followed by another love song, "Honky Tonk Waltz". A savory ballad found on here is "Once in Awhile" whereas "Cornball" is a bouncy sing-a-long kind of song where Ray sings about a guy that no matter how hard he tries he can't seem to impress the woman but he's so desperate that he feels the need to remind her that he'll always be available if she ever gets lonely. I tend to use the word, glorious, a lot when describing specific Ray Stevens recordings. I'll use that word again.. "Gimme a Smile" is a glorious love song about a strained relationship that's reached a breaking point and Ray asks for forgiveness and a smile.
So far I've touched on quite a few Ray Stevens recordings that fall into the category of a love song or those that contain women's names in the song titles in these first three blog entries focusing on Ray singing about women. In part 4 I'll be spotlighting some recordings of Ray during the years 1977, 1978, and 1980 as women's history month continues.
Hello once again Ray Stevens fans!! We're on the eve of the annual tradition of setting our clocks ahead one hour at 2am. I don't if the State you live in participates in the clock changes (spring forward/fall back) or not but it's something we've done for decades. One of the main points of this limited blog series was to spotlight some of the songs Ray Stevens has recorded that deal with women. I originally wanted to pinpoint songs that feature a woman's name in the title but then I figured I'd also toss in some notice to songs that are about women, in general, and therefore those would fall into the love song category.
Although a casual music listener probably wouldn't think of love songs or deep, romantic ballads when they hear the name, Ray Stevens, but he's recorded and written a lot of love songs. Some of those love songs actually do involve a lot of mature, straightforward lyrics. The issue has almost always been that music listeners can't separate the funny man from the serious one and once he gained a reputation for comedy/novelty it was almost written in stone in the ears and minds of music listeners and music critics that Ray shouldn't be taken seriously. We all know that Ray was able to overcome the novelty/comedy image throughout much of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. His recordings were very well done, immaculately produced, and arranged. Ray is his own music producer and music arranger and those talents continue to show up on his most recent recordings, too. I decided to use that particular pose of Ray because I feel it captures him deep in the performance. His eyes are open so you can't say he's lost in the feeling but it's a capture that captures a side of Ray Stevens that gets overlooked. So, then, in my second part of this mini-blog series devoted to women's history month we begin with a song Ray wrote and recorded in the late 1960s. The song originally appeared on his 1969 album, Have a Little Talk With Myself. "The Little Woman" celebrates the joy of domestic living and the pride one has in living a modest lifestyle. It also, as you'll find out when listening to the song, demonstrates the strength of a marriage. In the song's storyline Ray is approached by a woman who has perhaps a one night stand on her mind but he gently turns her down and states how much he loves his wife who's waiting on him at home. Ray explored this theme of domestic tranquility in a previous recording a year earlier in 1968 on the song, "The Great Escape". In that one he criticizes the hectic pace of working in the city and all that's one his mind is making the escape back to the tranquil suburbs and returning to his wife and their subdivided house. In the embed below it's the audio track of "The Little Woman".
In 1970 one of Ray's albums, Unreal, featured numerous love songs. One of them, in particular, dealt with the sad side of love. "Islands" tells the story of a couple who've drifted off into their own separate worlds. The woman has left the guy and the song is something of a lover's plea for her to return. Sad love songs tend to outnumber positive love songs on that 1970 album. A couple of other sad ones are "Night People", "Imitation of Life", and the war ballad "Loving You on Paper". The album had it's share of positive and inspiring songs, though, such as "Come Around", "Can We Get To That?", and "America, Communicate With Me". In the video clip below you'll hear Ray perform "Loving You On Paper" from a May 1971 episode of the BBC music series, In Concert.
In Ray's 1973 album, Nashville, there are all kinds of love songs on it. First off is the title track. "Nashville" isn't necessarily about a woman but it's a love song directed at the city of Nashville, Tennessee. In several interviews Ray mentioned that he wrote the song while touring Australia and was homesick. He missed being in Nashville and being with his family. Ray's take on "Never Ending Song of Love" is fabulous as is the love ballad "Love Me Longer". The album features the original recording of "You've Got the Music Inside" which he would re-record five years later. In the latter recording from 1978 he gave it a softer music arrangement to mirror his softer vocal performance.
As was the case in 1970 with the release of two albums Ray released two albums in 1973, too: Nashville and Losin' Streak. Some of the love songs on Losin' Streak were a re-recorded version of "Just One of Life's Little Tragedies" (originally recorded by Ray in 1963), "Idaho Wine", a mid-tempo recording of "Easy Loving", and a bluesy rendition of "Bye Bye Love". The Losin' Streak album isn't officially uploaded onto YouTube and neither is Have a Little Talk With Myself but if you manually search for songs from either of those two albums you'll come across the audio tracks. I'll follow up with part three later on this week.
Hello one and all...all you fans of Ray Stevens!! March is Women's History Month and I thought it would be neat/fun to take a look back in the long career of Ray Stevens and single out some of his recordings about women or those that have the names of women in their title. This is going to be a multi-part blog entry and so I'm not going to start off with the obvious ones. Also, as you could guess from the picture sleeve, I'll be going in chronological order from earliest to present day. Now, having said that, it doesn't mean that I'm going to spotlight each and every song dealing with the subject matter. It's just a sampling. In this first installment I'm focusing on three recordings in particular. The first comes from 1964 and was issued as a single only release. The song would eventually find it's way onto an album a few years later. "Bubble Gum the Bubble Dancer" is a novelty song about a bubble dancer. Ray tells us the story of how the dancer, named Bubble Gum, excites the patrons at a club called the Blue Rendezvous. As he's singing about how wild she's driving the men in the audience he adds in some vernacular from the time period such as using the term, cats, to describe the audience. He also gets in the slang expression, hullaballoo, which was such a recurring expression in the early to mid '60s that a television teenager dancer show was created with that title. When you hear the song, and even though it was recorded in the early 1960s and Ray's vocals and the music reflect this, there are moments in the song where you'll detect the phrasing that would come to the forefront in future recordings. When Ray gets to the line where he sings "..and then the music stopped and the house was still..", the way he enunciates the words, stopped and still, are certain to catch your ears. The B-side is a chilling song, "Laughing Over My Grave". Ray sings about a woman who's had enough and she has the man worried about what she's got planned for him. In his worst thoughts he thinks his days are numbered and he can hear her laughing over his grave.
In 1967, by now on the Monument record label, Ray released a single titled "Mary, My Secretary". In this toe-tapper of a song we hear Ray sing about how a secretary that works for him is creeping into his thoughts and is causing his eyes to drift toward her...and while he tries to hold back temptations he ends up once again calling his wife to explain that he's going to be late getting home, again. Ray belts out how his secretary, Mary, is breaking up his happy home. It was a single-only release. The other side of the single happened to be "Answer Me, My Love", a song that deals with a man pleading to his wife that he's never been unfaithful.
In 1970 Ray signed with the Barnaby Records label. In the final month of the year he released the novelty song "Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues". As is the case with most any single that's released within the last 2 or 3 months in a calendar year it reaches it's greatest peak in the first few months of the following year. Early in 1971 "Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues" peaked in the Top-50 of the Hot 100...reaching number 50, as a matter of fact. It reached the Top-10 in the United Kingdom...stalling in the runner-up position for several weeks. The song is about a tap dancer working at a Go-Go on Sunset Strip. Ray tells us about Bridget's success as he acts as the narrator and emcee spotlighting Bridget and her backup group, Strawberry and the Short Cakes. During various moments in the song the performance takes a backseat to a rabid fan, possibly drunk, who interjects his enthusiasm into the goings on. The fan hollers "Uh huh I dig it, I really dig it!!" to which Ray, acting as a combination emcee/security guard, hollers back "you can't do that, fella!!". Eventually as Bridget and her group dazzle with more tap dancing the fan hollers out how much he digs it and Ray hollers "watch out, fella, you can't come up on the stage!!!". It's a very funny novelty song written, produced, and arranged by Ray Stevens. It was originally released as a single-only late in 1970 and it wouldn't make it's appearance on a studio album until four years later. It was placed on the 1974 Boogity Boogity album.
He also made a limited animation music video of the song several decades later and I'm including it in this blog entry, too. I'll be writing part 2 of this blog series soon.
