In this 5th installment of the Audio Diary series of blog posts, I'm spotlighting a 2015 recording from Ray Stevens which doubled as a salute/tribute to the comedy legacy of the late Jerry Clower...but first a little, brief backstory on Jerry Clower's friendship with Ray Stevens.
In country music circles Ray Stevens and Jerry Clower are two of the most popular and beloved entertainers when it comes to country comedy. On YouTube their recordings are being heard by hundreds and thousands of people weekly.
Jerry Clower, in his comedy stories, always said that he backed into show business. He said this because he didn't begin recording comedy albums until he was middle age. In fact he was perfectly content to remain a fertilizer salesman for the Mississippi Chemical Corporation. He had been born in 1926 and served in the Navy during World War Two. After his military duties he went to Mississippi State University and played college football while getting a degree in Agriculture.
He worked with the 4-H and eventually found himself selling fertilizer. It was during one of his speaking engagements selling fertilizer to potential customers that his speech was recorded...for you see, during his speaking engagements, he would tell wild stories about his youth, his military experiences, his years playing football, and the misadventures of a family with the last name of Ledbetter. One thing led to another and his monologue found it's way to music executives. When MCA Records came calling in 1971 he was 44 years old and having no previous desires of being a comedian or even a celebrity of any kind he found himself on a major record label, receiving his first of several Gold albums, and within several years he was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry (1973) and the rest is history. He passed away in August 1998...a month shy of turning 72.
Ray and Jerry's paths crossed multiple times on various country music awards shows and talk shows. In fact, in 1986, the two of them and Minnie Pearl got together and recorded "Southern Air", a comedy song dealing with a run down airplane where Jerry plays the part of the Captain and Minnie plays the role of the stewardess...with Ray playing the role of the meek passenger fighting off Minnie's flirtatious behavior as well as commenting on all of the in flight chaos going on around him. Ray was a labelmate of Jerry Clower at MCA for five years (1984-1989).
In 1995 Ray issued a Direct-to-VHS movie titled Get Serious!. In this movie Jerry Clower appears several times in the role of the Colonel.. the boisterous manager of Ray's career who spends more time relaxing and taking it easy instead of overseeing Ray's career and professional reputation which, in the storyline, is being trashed and tarnished by a new, yet, humorless music executive (played by Michael Airington). Here's Jerry Clower as Ray's manager early in the movie as Ray is wearing his Gitarzan costume.
In 2015 Ray released the comedy album, Here We Go Again!. It was his first album of comedy in four years. The album featured the audio tracks of the hit YouTube music videos "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me" and "You Didn't Build That"...it also features the song "There Must Be a Pill For This" which became a YouTube hit video a number of years later after Ray performed it on his CabaRay Nashville television series and uploaded the performance onto YouTube. The 2015 comedy album also includes the song, "Knock Him Out, John". The title of the song is a phrase heard in the first comical story released on Jerry Clower in 1971. The story about the raccoon hunt and how the hunters were led to believe that the dog chased a raccoon up into a tree...only to discover it was a lynx...the one that discovered that it was a lynx was a man that Jerry identified as John Eubanks. In the story Jerry says the phrases 'knock him out, John!!!' and 'shoot this thing!!' many times as the story reaches it's climax. Ray recorded "Knock Him Out, John" as a tribute to Jerry and I'm sharing the audio track below.
In the song, Ray puts Jerry's story about the raccoon hunt to music and uses phrases from the story to give added highlight. One of the best things is Ray's impression of Jerry Clower's famous holler. In the song the holler is timed with the music and you'll hear it at various moments throughout the song. Don't be surprised if after hearing the song you don't find yourself trying to do the holler.
Hello one and all...in this latest fan created blog entry about Ray Stevens I'm relaying some information that was posted online a couple of hours ago. If you're familiar with Ray's half-hour television series, CabaRay Nashville, then you'll know that it once aired nationally on RFD-TV under it's original title, Ray Stevens' Nashville. It then moved to local PBS syndication. At the time of the move I recall remarking in one of my blog entries, or, it may have been on a social media site, but I remember telling other fans of Ray Stevens that he's simply moving from one set of letters to another (from RFD to PBS). Ray's association with PBS has lasted, to date, for 5 years. Ray's television series made it's debut on RFD in November 2015 and it left the airwaves in early January 2017. In that time span 26 first-run half hour episodes aired and they were repeated. The show became the most-watched original series on RFD and second only to reruns of Hee Haw. When Ray and RFD decided to part ways in the latter half of 2016 one of the events that took place was a day-long marathon of the show. All 26 episodes aired back-to-back. After the 26th episode from the marathon aired, CabaRay Nashville officially ended it's association with RFD early in January 2017. While all of this was going on, though, Ray had been producing new half hour episodes of the show that we, at the time, thought would air on RFD. However, in the final weeks of 2016 we were informed of the show moving from RFD to PBS and that the title of the show was changing to Ray Stevens' CabaRay Nashville. The first airdate of the show on PBS affiliates happened January 6, 2017. The first 26 episodes to air on PBS stations each week were the episodes that had previously aired on RFD. In the summer of 2017 all-new episodes of the series began to air on local PBS affiliates.
Now, ever since the show moved from RFD to PBS, there have been all kinds of comments from the fans that their local PBS stations don't or won't carry Ray's show. There was, for a brief time, an online subscription based service called Ray Stevens Backstage which featured the PBS episodes. That is where I first saw some of the PBS episodes of the show before a local PBS affiliate in my area began to air Ray's show. Although I was now able to watch his show each week on a local PBS station I knew that a lot of other Ray Stevens fans were unable to. So, I began writing reviews of each episode. You can find those reviews in the archives. CabaRay Nashville, while still airing on local PBS affiliates, made a return to RFD in early 2019. In addition to that series, RFD also began airing a half hour sketch filled series from Ray called Rayality TV. The sketch series aired in a daytime time-slot while CabaRay Nashville aired in a prime-time time slot. The two programs remained on RFD until November 2019. I wrote a blog entry that month all about the abrupt removal of Ray's shows from the RFD schedule and you can find it in the archives. The departure from RFD, for a second time, came a month after Ray's induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. While all of this was going on Ray had opened up his CabaRay showroom early in 2018 and episodes of the show were still airing on local PBS affiliates.
Then, today, the announcement was made that beginning May 27th Ray Stevens' CabaRay Nashville would begin airing on YouTube. I saw a video reminder on Ray's YouTube channel a few days ago and wondered what was going on. In a message to some other fans of Ray I speculated that he might be testing the waters on YouTube to see what the reaction will be to full-length episodes of the program. I had a wild assumption that perhaps he might produce some more episodes of the show and release them on YouTube, first, and then add them to the syndication package currently airing on PBS. However, in the announcement that was made this afternoon, Ray Stevens will be uploading a full-length episode of his television series once a week on his YouTube channel. The upload will happen every Friday evening at 6pm Central, 7pm Eastern. He didn't indicate whether or not he'll be uploading the episodes in chronological order but I assume that's how they'll be uploaded. In his social media post about the YouTube debut he also mentioned that the main reason he decided to do this is because of the build-up of concerns from fans that have never been able to see the program after it left RFD.
There were a lot of fans that weren't aware that the show had returned to RFD in 2019...and there were also fans of Ray that didn't even have RFD on their channel line-up. So, with the decision to air full-length episodes on YouTube once a week starting May 27th, there will be so many fans of Ray Stevens and fans of the guest stars on the show, that will probably be watching the show for the first time. I, for one, can't wait to see the reactions from other Ray Stevens fans who, for whatever their reason, never had the chance to see the television show before. Now, starting May 27th, everybody can watch full-length episodes of Ray's CabaRay Nashville series.
Hello Ray Stevens fans!! A few days ago Ray uploaded a performance of "It's Me Again, Margaret" taken from a concert he gave at Casino Rama in 2015. The concert happened to be taped and performance clips from that concert have appeared on Ray's YouTube channel in the last couple of years. If you ever see Ray Stevens in person you'll know that he rarely performs songs on stage the way he recorded them in the studio and from concert to concert he adds or subtracts lyrics. I've often felt he does this to establish a connection to the people in the audience...he looks out into the audience and sometimes smiles throughout a performance and often during a comedy song he'll use facial expressions or engage in other kinds of non-verbal comedy...purely to entertain an audience. I wonder if he intentionally performs the way he does because he wants to make it look real and natural? There are plenty of recording artists who've remarked that they block out everything when they reach the stage and they focus on the performance. I think Ray focuses heavily on the songs while he's in the recording studio...working on making what he feels will be the best recording...but once he hits the concert stage he perhaps can't, or doesn't want, to pretend there's no audience sitting out there and so I imagine that he loves communicating with an audience and wouldn't have it any other way. He puts emphasis on different lyrics in each performance as if he's striving to allow his songs to evolve and change...rather than sound exactly as they did on a recording. He also does stand-up/one liners in between his songs.
"It's Me Again, Margaret" is a standard in Ray's career. It's been in his concerts ever since 1984 and in 1992 he made a music video of the song for the VHS, Comedy Video Classics. He performs the song, most of the time, while wearing a rumpled hat...but sometimes he doesn't. In some of the real early performances he didn't use a hat...but later on he began to use one...and probably seeing that it got laughs it became a fixture and it's turned into a beloved prop. I've seen performances where simply holding up the hat drew large applause...they knew from seeing the rumpled hat that the song was soon to be performed...it's the only song that I can think of that gathers anticipatory applause. I was in the audience at the CabaRay in 2018 and as if on cue once he began talking about the hat the audience began to applaud...and once the song was concluded there was thunderous applause and whistles.
Here now is Ray Stevens, from 2015, performing that beloved novelty, "It's Me Again, Margaret", but this is one of those rare performances where he's not using the rumpled hat...but it's still fun to watch..
Hello one and all...earlier today Ray Stevens uploaded a performance he gave at the Casino Rama in Orillia, Canada. He has uploaded several performances from that 2015 concert onto his YouTube channel and "Misty" is the latest upload from that concert. When Ray performed that concert his rendition of "Misty" was turning 40 that year...and when you see the video I'm sure you'll notice that Ray gives just as much energy and execution into the performance in 2015 as he's given every year...going back to 1975! He simply is a great recording artist.
The video is of high quality...as are the other video clips from the 2015 concert. Ray has made it clear, however, that the Casino Rama concert was recorded for online presentation only. That announcement was made when several other Ray Stevens fans were wondering if this footage will make it's way onto any future DVD release.
Have any of you made your way to the Ray Stevens CabaRay showroom yet? You were aware that the Piano Bar is open, right? Pianist John Jonethis is appearing at the Piano Bar inside the CabaRay. Ray re-opened the Piano Bar last month and there have been several video uploads on YouTube promoting the re-opening. However, tonight is the final night of the Piano Bar exclusive...next Saturday (September 4th) Ray Stevens returns to the concert stage at the CabaRay showroom. John Jonethis had been performing at the Piano Bar on Friday and Saturday nights, beginning at 7:30pm Central time, but starting next Saturday he'll begin playing in the Piano Bar at 5pm Central until a little bit before Ray's concert begins at 7:30pm Central. Yes...Ray Stevens will no doubt sing "Misty" at the CabaRay.
Hello all once again! I just come over from Amazon and I was looking over the various best seller lists and seen that the 2015 Ray Stevens comedy CD, Here We Go Again!, sitting in the Top-40 of Amazon's best selling New Releases. I wondered why the CD would be placed on that list...it was released in 2015...and then I seen on the product page that it now shows Curb Records instead of MRI/Player Records. Ray's Player Records is a subsidiary of his own label, Clyde Records, and the subsidiary record label was what the CD was originally released on in February 2015. However, when you visit the Here We Go Again! product page on Amazon, it states that Curb Records began distributing the CD and Mp3 beginning in February of this year. The CD copy of Here We Go Again! on Curb Records was released first followed by the Mp3 in March 2021.
When I was looking through the list of Best Selling New Releases in the Digital Country music format and I came across this CD I wondered what was going on...and as I explained in the paragraph above Curb Records has added this particular Ray Stevens album to their catalog and given it's the first of May Here We Go Again! is technically seen as a 'new release' for Curb Records even though it's been around since 2015. The main song from the comedy album is "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me". Since then he's uploaded performances of the song from his CabaRay Nashville television show...and he also uploaded a performance of "There Must Be a Pill For This". This is the album which also features "You Didn't Build That", a topical song that was turned into a music video in May 2015 as the follow-up to "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me". The "You Didn't Build That" video, to date, has amassed almost half a million unique views. The view count so far is 450,637. Ray added a previously released song on this collection, "Come to the U.S.A.", from 2010. The title lends itself to the overall theme of the airport/travel cover art. On the back of the CD the songs are listed as if they're on an incoming flight board at an airport. Some of the other songs on this CD, for those that do no have it in their collection yet, are: "Little By Little", "Pickin' On the Chicken", and the salute/tribute to Jerry Clower, "Knock Him Out, John". Curb Records added a playlist over on YouTube of the songs on this CD. I may write some blog entries and include audio tracks of some of the songs from that CD whenever the mood strikes.
On March 27, 1974 Ray Stevens released "The Streak". Little did he nor his fan's know that "The Streak" would take on a life of it's own in the 47 years since. Ray got the idea for the song when he was skimming through a weekly news magazine during a flight from Los Angeles to Nashville. In the final pages of a magazine he'd read a small news item where it made mention of a college kid that took off his clothes and ran through a crowd and it was called streaking. According to Ray's recollections he immediately began writing ideas for the song. Once he seen the local newscasts on television all he recalls is seeing stories about streaking and how it's taking over college campuses all over America. Ray wrote "The Streak" and Barnaby Records issued it on March 27, 1974. An international news event occurred at the Academy Awards telecast on April 2, 1974...a streaker ran across the stage behind actor, David Niven. Although there were more than 50 novelty songs out capitalizing on streaking it was Ray's that emerged as the biggest hit. The single debuted on the Hot 100 on April 6, 1974 and thanks to the Academy Awards incident and streaking, in general, "The Streak" literally streaked up the Hot 100 pop chart. It hit the top in it's 7th week, May 18th, and remained at number one for three weeks. It was the number one pop song in America on May 18th, May 25th, and June 1st. It crossed over and hit the Top-10 on the Country chart. It was also an international hit peaking at the top in the United Kingdom and in the Top-10 and Top-40 of other English-speaking countries. The single also sold more than 5,000,000 copies worldwide.
In recent concert appearances Ray sings "The Streak" almost exactly the way he recorded it but for a number of decades, notably the mid '70s through the early '90s, he elaborated on the song and would perform it in concert with an operatic addition. He would open the song with the action news reporter and the witness but then he'd stop the performance and tell the audience that some humorless critics have often said the song had no class. So, in order to please the critics, he decided to perform the song in operatic fashion. After about a minute of operatic splendor he'd revert back to how the song should be performed. In those performances one of the recurring sight gags was Ray putting on a yellow CAT hat every time he'd play the part of the witness who'd tell his wife, Ethel, not to look. Don't Look, Ethel is one of several catch-phrases synonymous with Ray. However, in this performance from 2015, he performs "The Streak" as it was originally recorded, give or take an added line here or there, but there's no CAT hat involvement.
Hello all...if I recall correctly I was spotlighting a song from Ray Stevens back in 2015 from his Here We Go Again! comedy album...a song called "There Must Be a Pill For This". One day I might look back into the 2015 archives of this fan created blog page and see if I can pin point the exact blog entry. I'm sure it's in the blog entry where I wrote a review of the album or in one of the blog entries where I was tracking the unique views of "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me", the main song from that 2015 album. Anyway, at the time of the album's 2015 release, I was wondering if Ray would issue "There Must Be a Pill For This" as a music video since the hilarity in the lyrics and the subject matter itself would've been perfect, I thought, for a music video depiction. In the song Ray zeroes in on a social quandary, of sorts, as it relates to pill taking.
No, this isn't a song that's heavy with a lot of morality overtones or anything like that, it's a song that pokes fun at the ever-increasing presence of pills being advertised to the public at large. Pills of all descriptions and purposes...from losing weight, to gaining weight, to battling hair loss, to those certain types of pills people take for all kinds of hormonal, sexual, mental, and physical stimulation. Ray sings about an assortment of ails and ills so he naturally draws the conclusion "There Must Be a Pill For This" since there's seemingly a pill for everything! The overall point of the song is to poke fun at those various sexual enhancement pill commercials that air on radio and television. Advertised as 'male enhancement', the commercials are blunt and inappropriate, I think, but nevertheless they were all over television and radio enticing insecure men and those with actual medical issues to take a pill to improve sexual performance. Ray, within the song, sings about the variety of other pills out there for all kinds of issues.
The song begins with Ray singing about two people who meet one another in the woods...the man and the woman, we're told, are sitting across from one another in a bathtub in the woods. You can tell how hilarious and absurd the novelty song is when it starts out with the couple meeting in a bathtub in the woods. The song's chorus is more detailed as Ray says there must a pill for those times when the moment arrives. I don't know why the song wasn't made into some sort of music video in 2015 or 2016 but a performance of the song from Ray is better than nothing...and here's Ray singing "There Must Be a Pill For This" on an episode of his CabaRay Nashville television show.
Well, here I am once again and I'm writing a blog entry about Ray Stevens. Are you a serious collector of Ray Stevens music? I have a lot of vinyl albums, vinyl singles, cassette tapes, CDs, and digital downloads of Ray Stevens in my personal music collection. I also have several trinkets and memorabilia. I asked that question because the main topic of this blog entry is the Ray Stevens recording of "Such a Night". I should be a little more technical...it's a performance of "Such a Night". The recording happened in 1982 and it's on his studio album, Don't Laugh Now. The album came at a time when Ray was intentionally focusing on the serious, ballad side of his recording career. It's something he had always focused on during the majority of his recording career...but he would eventually market himself comedy beginning in 1984. He would continue, every so often, to release serious recordings...he even does so to this day...but from 1984 onward the comedy aspect of his recording career has dominated.
The video comes from a concert he gave in 2015 during what was billed as the Here We Go Again! tour. He had released his memoir the previous year and if I recall correctly you could have your book autographed after the concert during the photograph/autograph session. The tour was named after his comedy album that year...the one that features "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me" on it. "Such a Night" is typically what Ray opens his concerts with. I don't know how long it's been his opening number...he performed it at the couple of concerts I've been fortunate enough to attend. The song goes back to the rock and roll sounds of the 1950s...and when you hear the music arrangement you'll discover it immediately. One of Ray's favorite rhythm and blues groups, The Drifters, recorded the song in 1953 and that's the rendition Ray likely became familiar with. Their rendition was issued in January 1954 and it eventually climbed into the Top-10 of the Rhythm and Blues chart. Ray often makes a point to specify that he was influenced by The Drifters when the lead singer was Clyde McPhatter, a singer who also previously recorded with another rhythm and blues group, The Dominoes, that Ray has previously cited as an influence (along side Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Spike Jones, and The Coasters). Johnny Ray had a number one with "Such a Night" in England in 1954. Elvis Presley recorded his version of the song in 1960 and had a hit with it, too. The song's been recorded by numerous recording artists over the years. Ray titled one of his DVD releases, Such a Night: 50 Years of Hits and Hilarity. Yes, the opening number of the concert was "Such a Night".
The concert footage was taped at The Welk Theater in Branson, Missouri in 2010. The title of the DVD was in reference to 2010 being the 50th anniversary of the Ray Stevens novelty single, "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon", which had become the first single of Ray's to attract national attention. He had been recording since 1957 but in 1960 "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon" had began gaining traction as a regional hit...and as it gained national momentum it also attracted the lawyers of King Features Syndicate, the company that owned the rights to the character 'Sgt. Preston', and they threatened a lawsuit if the record company, NRC, didn't pull all copies of the song off the market. The single was charting nationally just below Billboard magazine's Hot 100...there used to be a 25 position chart filled with songs that hadn't broken into the national music scene, yet, and the songs were said to be Bubbling Under the Hot 100 if they made an appearance there...the near-hit in 1960 inspired him to focus on novelty material to gain national attention and so he did! However, as the video above demonstrates, Ray Stevens sings any type of music.
It's me once again! I was going over the episode list of the Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville television show and it dawned on me that I never highlighted the show's 5th anniversary last month. The reason it slipped my mind is because of the activity surrounding the 50th anniversary release of "Everything is Beautiful". Ray's television series, which runs 30 minutes, debuted on November 7, 2015. The series was originally titled Ray Stevens' Nashville and it followed the release of his 2014 memoir of the same name. The show's first 26 episodes aired on cable channel, RFD-TV, on November 7, 2015. The series left it's airwaves in December 2016. The show moved to local syndication on PBS in January 2017...and for the first 26 weeks in syndication the local PBS stations carrying Ray's show repeated the RFD episodes.
The show's title changed to Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville beginning with it's move to local PBS stations in January 2017. Ray was in the process of having his CabaRay showroom built during the latter half of 2015 and throughout 2016...and it was expected that a grand opening of the showroom would occur early in 2017 but some technical/legal issues with the building permit caused the construction to be delayed from the start and so the showroom wasn't finished until the fall of 2017. The grand opening of the CabaRay happened in January 2018. All the while this was going on throughout 2017 and into 2018 local PBS stations were airing all new episodes of Ray's television show. In June of 2017 in nearly all of the local PBS markets airing his show viewers that had previously seen the RFD episodes were now going to be treated to brand new episodes. Ray and his crew throughout the latter half of 2016 and throughout much of 2017 and into early 2018 eventually produced 52 half hour episodes, specifically, for PBS and the earliest of the completed episodes began airing, as mentioned, in June of 2017. Ray taped 9 episodes at the CabaRay showroom early in 2018.
All in all there have been 78 half hour episodes produced of the series and one behind-the-scenes special that aired during pledge break on several PBS stations. These 78 half hour episodes continue to air on local PBS stations scattered throughout the country. The bulk of the local PBS stations airing the show are in Tennessee but there are other local PBS stations across the country that are airing it. Some local PBS affiliates either carry it on their Statewide network or on a digital sub-channel. Here is an incomplete list of PBS stations currently airing Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. A couple of States air the show on their main PBS feed but the majority of the PBS stations are local affiliates that are geographically specific in nature and therefore the coverage is confined to a specific area within the State.
It's me once again! If you search the archives of my blog entries and look up the month of May in 2015 you'll come across references to a Ray Stevens appearance at the Nashville Public Library. Ray was doing a prolonged book signing tour of his memoir, Ray Stevens' Nashville. Ralph had interviewed Ray in June 2014 at the library for a series called That Nashville Sound. In May of 2015 the library saluted Ralph's former television series, Nashville Now. In the clip you'll see Con Hunley seated to Ray's right. Ralph reveals within the first few minutes that Ray was partly responsible for the library saluting Nashville Now. They re-created the iconic desk Ralph sat behind with the red guitar logo of The Nashville Network which you see in the above screen cap and obviously you will see it in the video clip below...
Ralph Emery; 2015
Nearly three minutes into the interview Ralph asks Ray to tell the people what his upcoming plans for Nashville entertainment happens to be. Ray reveals that he purchased land in West Nashville and that he'll be building a venue, The CabaRay. Further in the interview the two discuss the upcoming television series; with this interview taking place in May of 2015 the television program would hit the airwaves in November that year on RFD-TV, initially titled Ray Stevens' Nashville. The series would run on the network until December 2016. It received a slightly re-titled name, Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville, once the series began airing in local syndication on PBS stations in January 2017. Since the interview is from May 2015 everything I made mention of in the weeks and months following the interview obviously hadn't happened yet. Ray speaks of his current CD, Here We Go Again!, and points out the writer of "There Must Be a Pill For This", Don Cusic, seated in the audience. Ralph and Ray also acknowledge Buddy Kalb who's seated backstage. As seen in the screen cap above, Ralph is holding the hardcover edition of Ray's memoir. I have the softcover edition. I could've ordered the hardcover version but if there's a choice between hardcover and softcover I always choose softcover. The hardcover books have those flaps that I have to tape to the inside of the book's front and back cover to prevent them from flying off anytime I go to open the book to read some pages...so hardcover's are annoying and a nuisance...so I'll always choose softcover if there's an option.
It's an entertaining interview...chock full of information on Ray's activities at the time and a look into the future. The CabaRay would open to the public in 2018. Ray had originally planned for a grand opening in the summer/fall of 2017 but technical delays prevented an opening. The lengthy waiting period to receive the building permit is what thrown construction off schedule.
Earlier today the audio of "Pickin' on the Chicken" emerged on the social media sites of Ray Stevens. It's track six on his 2015 CD, Here We Go Again!. If you're familiar with Ray's CabaRay Nashville television series (locally syndicated on PBS stations) then you'll know that he's performed this song on an episode of the television series. The song comes from the pen of Ray's longtime associate/collaborator, Buddy Kalb. As a song it gets into the mind of a chicken who is obviously annoyed that his species has become the brunt of so many jokes, punchlines, expressions, and sayings by humans and he's fed up with it. The chicken wonders out loud why are people picking on the chicken when 'we' haven't harmed a soul or did anything to deserve it. It's a novelty song in the purest sense of the word...layers upon layers of absurdity and I mean that in a good way. Throughout the song the chicken points out the various phrases and nick-names that reference a chicken. If you hadn't heard the song I'll point out in advance that he isn't singing it in any sort of clucking manner. There are moments in the song where he lets out with some cackling but there's no humanized 'chicken speak'. The fact that it isn't entirely dominated with chicken clucks and animal sounds may disappoint some but it's a cleverly worded song nevertheless. The photo depicts Ray at an airport in front of an awaiting Limo with a gorilla for a chauffeur. The back of the CD has the track list of songs written as if they're on a flight schedule at an airport.
The disc itself features imagery of Ray as Gitarzan and a monkey placed into an illustrated depiction of an airplane's control panel. The CD was released on Ray's label, Player Records. I don't know why it wasn't released under the Clyde Records label. This is the only release on Player Records...further CD releases from Ray carry the label, CabaRay Entertainment. In the distance, though, it looks like that's the Clyde logo just beyond the Limo and on the tail of the plane that's in the air. I wonder if that flight in the air is called "Southern Air"...it would be an inside joke recalling one of Ray's novelty songs from 1986 if that were the case.
The notable songs found on this CD happened to be 2010's "Come to the U.S.A.". That song had originally appeared on a CD from Ray in 2010 in addition to a music video of the song hitting the internet that year. "You Didn't Build That" was released as a music video single on YouTube on May 19, 2015 (five years ago next Tuesday). The official first release from this CD arrived as a music video on February 24, 2015, "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me". The CD closes with a salute to the late southern comedian, Jerry Clower (1926-1998), on "Knock Him Out, John". I wrote about this CD several blogs ago spotlighting the fact that it reaches 5 this year. Search the archives if you want to read more commentary about the 2015 CD.
Hello once more!! I frequent social media sites a lot and within the last several days I've been seeing a lot of video sharing of a certain Ray Stevens music video from 2012 called "Grandpa Voted Democrat". This is one of numerous political comedy videos released by Ray Stevens during what I refer to as his 'political phase' for lack of a better description. It started out of the blue in the final months of 2009 when a video single titled "We The People" hit YouTube and from there it took off like a rocket, as the saying goes. Ray found himself performing in a number of high profile political rallies and events throughout 2010...even appearing on several cable news television programs and talk radio programs.
He found himself back in Branson, Missouri performing a series of concerts at The Welk Theater on the strength of the political music videos. The concerts were broken in two halves in which the first half was a traditional concert filled with Ray's numerous serious and novelty recordings while the second half was strictly a political show where he performed a number of songs that gained their popularity through YouTube.
This videography lists the politically themed music videos, their release date, and unique view count rounded to the nearest hundred thousand or million depending on the level of unique views. In case you were wondering the letter 'K' stands for thousand and the letter 'M' stands for million. As an example: 2010's "Caribou Barbie", a music video about Sarah Palin, has received an estimated 648,000 unique views. 2014's "If You Like Your Plan" has received an estimated 454,000. I'm not posting exact numbers. I've highlighted in bold the music videos that have gotten more than a million unique views and italicized those with more than two million.
1. We The People; 12/11/2009 5.6 M
2. Caribou Barbie; 3/11/2010 648 K
3. Throw the Bums Out; 3/22/2010 1.3 M
4. Come to the U.S.A.; 5/13/2010 10 M
5. The Global Warming Song; 6/29/2010 1.2 M
6. God Save Arizona; 8/4/2010 1.1 M
7. Obama Budget Plan; 4/25/2011 5.2 M
8. Mr. President - Mr. President; 9/27/2011 3.5 M
9. Obama Nation; 7/23/2012 1.4 M
10. Grandpa Voted Democrat; 11/3/2012 2.2 M
11. If You Like Your Plan; 9/22/2014 454 K
12. Nero Fiddled; 10/10/2014 62 K
13. You Didn't Build That; 5/19/2015 401 K
As you can see by looking at the list of Ray Stevens YouTube political comedy music videos almost all of them have well over 100,000 unique views and several more have over 1,000,000. The only politically themed music video to not reach 100,000 or more is 2014's "Nero Fiddled". It's a moving and powerful music video. I'm sure some may have thought it too dramatic or heavy handed and that may have played a role in it's on-line performance...but it's hard to really tell because Ray emerged with "Dear America" a couple of years later. That recording wasn't politically based but it was just as powerful as "Nero Fiddled" and "God Save Arizona". "Dear America", by the way, sits with a little over 363,000 unique views as of this writing. It hit YouTube on September 6, 2016...a couple of months before the Presidential election of Donald Trump. I didn't include it in the list of political music videos because it's a patriotic song. A lot of people want to blend patriotism with their political beliefs but in my opinion those are two separate things.
Anyway, as you can see, I decided to embed "Nero Fiddled" in this blog entry. Ray appears with his back to the camera...and that may have been another reason this particular video clip didn't break loose like the others did.
Now, then, in a much more lighter mood...here's the video clip that's found new life on social media...2012's "Grandpa Voted Democrat"...
In a recent blog entry I listed the episodes of Ray's television series, Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. The series airs in local syndication on PBS stations. It might be airing in your area...check the PBS affiliates in your area to be sure. If it isn't airing on what's called the main PBS station check their sub-channels. If you happen to have a PBS station found on Channel 24, for example, the sub-channels would be referred to as 24.1, 24.2, 24.3 on the on-screen program guide and sometimes they'll be found in the section of your on-screen program guide located with the other local stations in your area. There's been a lot of confusion over the years because many, if not all, of the main PBS stations have put Ray's show on their sub-channels and the existence of those sub-channels don't get a lot of publicity and it's left a lot of Ray's fans unable to find the show even though there's a possibility it's airing on a local PBS sub-channel but fans don't realize it.
My advice, as it's always been, is to thoroughly search the line-up's of your local PBS station and their sub-channels. All television stations offer a program guide on their website...so search for Ray's television show using the search guide. If it airs on your local PBS station then you'll receive information on air-date, whether it's airing on the main PBS channel or one of it's sub-channels, and the time it's airing. In this video clip we have Ray Stevens playing piano and singing harmony with Larry Gatlin on "All the Gold in California".
The video clip emerged a couple of days ago on May 2nd...it was Larry's 71st birthday. The performance is from the second episode of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville from November 2015...but at the time the series was called Ray Stevens Nashville and when it moved into local PBS syndication in January 2017 it received the slight change in title but the opening sequences were left intact as was the theme song, "Nashville".
It's the weekend and that means somewhere out there on local PBS stations there are airings of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. Although the series is syndicated on local PBS affiliates across the country, which means local stations can air it at any time they choose, most of the local PBS stations that air it have placed it on their Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening time-slot while other local PBS stations air it on Sunday. In a lot of these local markets the series is airing on what are known as secondary channels/sub-channels or over-the-air channels. The best way to explain it is there might be one main PBS station per large market per State and in that PBS station's umbrella of channels there may be three or four secondary channels affiliated with the main PBS station. As mentioned those channels are referred to secondary/over-the-air because they're owned and operated by the main PBS station. In my area the local PBS affiliate airing Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville is in the umbrella of KET (Kentucky Educational Television). Ray's show airs on one of their over-the-air channels, KET2. The line-up for KET2, in my area, is assigned to television station WCVN in Covington, Kentucky. There is a KET3 and another sub-channel in the KET umbrella of channels. There have been 78 half hour episodes produced of the series between 2015 and 2018. Since there is an abundance of episodes and with it airing weekly (rather than daily) the local PBS affiliates are able to air a little more than 50 episodes per calendar year and still have more than 20 additional episodes to air before the series begins it's repeat cycle. If we were talking about daily syndication the series would've been into it's first repeat cycle perhaps within 30 weeks in the same calendar year. So, then, each local PBS affiliate that picks up the series (it's free) won't need to concern themselves with repeating an episode until the following calendar year. There are several stations, which I consider loyal, that have continued airing the series year after year and I love the fact that they continue to air the show, in repeats, because it keeps Ray's name out there and it allows people to find the show if they previously weren't aware of it's existence whereas other local PBS affiliates aired the episodes on a first-run only basis and didn't go into a repeat cycle.
I've posted an episode guide in past blog entries and I'll more than likely post an episode guide in future blog entries, too. The episode guide is based on the official release dates and not based on actual air-dates. A syndicated series can air out of order or it can run in chronological order...some PBS affiliates may be airing the first series of episodes whereas another PBS affiliate may be airing some of the later episodes but here is the official episode guide:
Season One:
1. Steve Wariner
2. Larry Gatlin
3. Bobby Bare
4. Don Schlitz
5. Charlie McCoy
6. Bobby Braddock
7. Jimmy Fortune
8. Aaron Tippin
9. John Conlee and Jeff Bates
10. Tanya Tucker and T.G. Sheppard
11. Gene Watson
12. James Gregory
13. Billy Dean
Season Two:
1. Bobby Goldsboro
2. T. Graham Brown and Suzi Ragsdale
3. Williams and Ree
4. Leroy Van Dyke
5. Bellamy Brothers
6. Gatlin Brothers
7. Collin Raye
8. Darryl Worley and Lee Greenwood
9. Bill Anderson
10. Sylvia
11. Con Hunley
12. Jimmy Wayne
13. Reed Robertson
Season Three:
1. Mandy Barnett and Harold Bradley
2. Shenandoah
3. Michael W. Smith
4. B.J. Thomas
5. Rhonda Vincent
6. Restless Heart
7. John Michael Montgomery
8. Baillie and the Boys
9. Tommy Roe
10. Mark Wills
11. Duane Eddy
12. Angaleena Presley
13. Riders in the Sky
Season Four:
1. Rex Allen, Jr.
2. Lari White
3. Charley Pride
4. Janie Fricke
5. Gary Mule Deer
6. Garry Morris
7. John Berry
8. Jeannie Seely
9. Don McClean
10. Felix Cavaliere
11. Suzy Bogguss (Christmas episode)
12. Deborah Allen (Christmas episode)
13. The A-Team (New Year's Eve episode)
Season Five:
1. Ray Hildebrand
2. Steve Wariner (edited repeat of series debut episode)
3. Paul Overstreet
4. Daily and Vincent
5. Jenny Gill
6. Tracy Lawrence
7. Sam Moore
8. Wilson Fairchild
9. Deana Carter
10. Gary Puckett
11. John Rich, Part One
12. John Rich, Part Two
13. Tony Orlando
Season Six:
1. Jamie O'Neal
2. Mark Chesnutt
3. Special Moments (compilation/clip-filled episode)
4. Hall of Fame (Ray gives a tour of the recently opened CabaRay)
5. Moe Bandy (first live episode taped at the CabaRay showroom)
6. Linda Davis
7. CeCe Winans
8. Micky Dolenz
9. Tribute Show**
10. Ronnie McDowell
11. Shoji Tabuchi
12. John Schneider
13. Lee Roy Parnell
**- The Tribute Show episode features Ray singing songs made famous by country music artists that had passed away: Jerry Reed, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, and Mel Tillis. As most of you know there are pledge breaks on PBS stations nationwide. In the latter half of 2017 one of the gifts being offered for those donating at a certain level happened to be a DVD documentary of Ray's television show featuring backstage footage and the production of the show. The documentary is narrated by the announcer for Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville, Bill Cody. The special aired on the local PBS affiliates that were airing his show. The televised airing featured interruptions by pledge breaks but, of course, the DVD itself lacked the pledge break interruptions. I donated to the local PBS affiliate and got myself a copy of that documentary when it was brand new. Since it's initial airing it's been available in select PBS on-line gift shops and it's since been uploaded onto YouTube by one of the members of the video hosting site. It hasn't officially been uploaded by Ray's social media staff and so I'm not going to post it here. I'll post a promo for the special...
Hello once again and I'm here putting together an early Happy Birthday blog entry centering around Ralph Emery and the friendship he's had with Ray Stevens for quite a few decades. Since this is my Ray Stevens fan-created blog I'm going to, as mentioned, spotlight Ralph Emery's career as it relates to Ray Stevens. Tomorrow (March 10th) Ralph turns 87. He was born March 10, 1933 in McEwen, Tennessee as Walter Ralph Emery. The album cover you see on the left hand side of the page is a Mercury Records release from 1970. The Best of Ray Stevens features a very obscure performance of "Ahab the Arab" with an introduction by Ralph Emery. Although I've never found out the origin of this recording I've often assumed that it was recorded at some point in the the latter half of the '60s on Ralph's local television program, The Ralph Emery Show, and Mercury placed the audio onto this vinyl album. I've also come across a vinyl album from the mid '60s in which Ralph appears as an emcee at a concert and among the performers is Ray Stevens...and so the opening performance of "Ahab the Arab" heard on this 1970 compilation album could have come from that vinyl album. Ralph hosted a lot of similar programs relating to country music in the 1960s and it's difficult to find an accurate account of the time-line and titles of the programs he hosted. Opry Almanac is listed as a local television show he hosted, beginning in 1963, and some sources on-line state that this show eventually was re-titled The Ralph Emery Show in 1972 but then there are sites that state each was a separate local television show and that the local Ralph Emery Show debuted in 1966 in the late afternoons. There's also a program he hosted called 16th Avenue South in the mid 1960s and sources say it was a local television show that focused on pop music!? If so, that could be the program where this version of "Ahab the Arab" originated because Ray was definitely marketed as a pop artist in the 1960s. Ralph also hosted a syndicated radio show in addition to his television work.
While all of this was going on Ralph was also at the helm of WSM radio's all-night show, Opry Star Spotlight. This program was, in time, referred to as the "all-night show" informally. Ralph hosted this show from 1957 until 1972 and due to it airing in the overnight hours when WSM radio's signal was at it's strongest he was able to be heard in nearly every State in the Midwest and certainly all the Southern states. Remember, too, this was decades before satellite/internet radio became the norm and so it was something to behold that a disc jockey on a local station was being heard well outside of their market. The legend of Ralph Emery's radio years are tied to the "all-night show" but, as mentioned, he hosted a syndicated radio series in addition to other radio programs that aired in syndication...including one titled Take Five for Country Music and an hour long show where he simply played the current records of the day.
Ralph Emery and Ray Stevens, 1979
Upon the retirement of Ralph from the all-night show on WSM radio in 1972 he continued hosting his television show and syndicated radio programs and he maintained a presence on WSM radio in the daytime hours for a number of years following his departure from the overnight shift. He was also one of the Grand Ole Opry staff announcers during the majority of his time at the radio station. He began hosting a nationally syndicated television series in 1974 titled Pop! Goes the Country. This is the show upon which television viewers across the country were introduced to Ralph Emery. Ray made numerous guest appearances on this television show and by the time this episode aired in 1979 Ray had become well established not only as a 'pop' recording artist but he had also crossed over into country music and remained there permanently by decade's end. In Ray's earliest appearances on Ralph's various television and radio programs he was still officially marketed as a pop act even though he had been living and recording in Nashville and had played on hundreds of recording sessions up and down Music Row since the 1960s. Ralph's programs always had the welcome mat open for Ray Stevens. I wish every radio and television appearance from Ray were available. I find his earlier appearances fascinating and I like to compare/contrast the various decades of his career. I also like reading older interviews of him and compare his thoughts in one era with his contemporary thoughts and gauge how much he's changed or remained the same. Oh yes, I also like to see older clips so I can make note of whether Ray's clean shaven or bearded. As you see in the screen cap Ralph is also shown with a beard...and he wore one for a number of years. His entire run on Pop! Goes the Country (1974-1980) has him bearded. Ralph shaved off the beard but kept a mustache at some point in 1986/1987 but by 1991 he was clean shaven and he's remained that way.
Now, in between Ralph's departure as host of Pop! Goes the Country in 1980 and the debut of Nashville Now on TNN in 1983 he hosted a short-lived series on TBS titled Nashville Alive!. Ray appeared on this show...a photo of Ray and Ralph in one of Ralph's books is credited as coming from that TBS series. Also in the photo is Ralph's wife, Joy, in a gorilla suit. Nashville Now introduced Ralph to an even wider national audience. Pop! Goes the Country, syndicated nationally, aired on the weekends in various time-slots depending on which station carried it. The bulk of it's airings took place in the late afternoons on Saturday or Sunday opposite sports programming. However, Nashville Now aired in the same time-slot every weeknight on cable channel TNN for 10 years. The length of the show was 90 minutes for most of it's run and it aired from 7pm to 8:30pm Central/8pm to 9:30pm Eastern for much of it's history. Later it was pushed to 8pm to 9:30pm Central/9pm to 10:30pm Eastern to make clear a place for Crook and Chase and their expanded hour-long program. They had previously aired after Nashville Now but by the early '90s they were scheduled as Ralph's lead-in show. Ralph's main competition was whatever was airing on network television and whatever happened to be airing on cable television...notably CNN...considering almost every other cable channel at that time specialized in repeats of television shows and movies...rarely was there a cable channel that specialized in original programs. Ralph's TNN show was trimmed to an hour for several years before it's eventually end in 1993.
Ray Stevens, Boots Randolph, and Ralph Emery; 1990
In the screen cap above, unfortunately a bit blurry, we see Ray Stevens and Boots Randolph in conversation on Nashville Now with Ralph Emery. In this appearance Ralph has his mustache and they're discussing the album that Ray produced on Boots Randolph and released through Clyde Records. This happened to be one of the first projects released through Ray's own label and there's a television commercial for that CD on YouTube from 1990. If you were a member of Ray's fan club at any point in the 1990s, as I was, then you should be familiar with this CD. It was one of the items offered for sale in the Ray Stevens mail order catalog for much of the decade. Unfortunately I don't have any super vintage photo's of Ray Stevens and Ralph Emery, from the '60s, specifically. I know they must exist but they haven't surfaced on-line for public sharing/viewing. Some photos of the two of them can be found in several of Ralph's books and there's a photo of the two of them in a radio studio from the early 1970s in Ray's 2014 memoir. Ray hosted several book signing events throughout 2014 and into 2015...one of those book signings featured Ralph interviewing Ray at the Nashville Public Library.
The Nashville Public Library hosted the special book signing event in 2015 where a set of Nashville Now was recreated and Ralph interviewed Ray Stevens, Barbara Mandrell, Lorrie Morgan, and Con Hunley. It was part of their on-going series, That Nashville Sound. Previously that series hosted an interview by Ralph Emery of Ray Stevens discussing his memoir and career, in general, and later on the library hosted the recreated Nashville Now special event.
Ray Stevens and Ralph Emery, 2015
When Ray made the announcement that he would be opening a showroom in West Nashville titled CabaRay one of the people attending the ground breaking ceremony happened to be Ralph Emery. The groundbreaking took place, ironically enough, in March 2016. On groundbreaking day Ray and several friends were photographed at the site of the soon to be constructed showroom posing with shovels and digging into a mound of dirt. The construction company was also on hand, of course. As we all know a myriad of issues came up along the way...most of it tied into the lengthy approval for a building permit. Once this was obtained...nearly half a year later...construction got underway which pushed a fall 2017 grand opening time table to an early 2018 grand opening (the showroom opened for business in January 2018).
Ralph Emery, Gorilla, and Ray Stevens; 2016
As we see in this photo Ralph is toasting the groundbreaking of the CabaRay along side a gorilla and Ray Stevens in March of 2016. I don't know if this is the same gorilla that met Ray Stevens at the airport in the cover photo of Here We Go Again! in 2015. It might be that gorilla's cousin...it's difficult to tell. Anyway, by the time this photo was taken Ralph had long since retired. After the end of Nashville Now in 1993 he didn't go away...he continued to appear with a recurring interview series called On the Record. That series was based on a highly rated interview Ralph conducted in 1992 with his pop music counterpart, Dick Clark. In fact there was a second program in which Ralph was the subject of an interview from Dick Clark. In the hour long series, airing on TNN, Ralph initially interviewed guests that had also authored books. Ralph had become known for a series of books based on his experiences and memories from his career in country music...the first one was appropriately called, Memories (1991), and this was followed by a series of other books throughout the 1990s: More Memories (1993), The View From Nashville (1998), and 50 Years Down a Country Road (2000). Ralph also interviewed country artists regardless of whether or not they had released a book but the conversation was almost always centered around autobiographical information and life experiences rather than the show turning into an hour long commercial for the book or the guest's latest recording.
In 1995 Ray Stevens appeared during the opening week of Ralph's daytime talk show on TNN. This show aired from the Opryland theme park live at 9am Eastern/8am Central beginning in the latter half of the year. Ray's appearance featured a sight gag in which he walked out on stage screaming in a pseudo-Austrian accent about how hot the cup of chocolate happened to be and he 'tripped' and spilled the contents all over Ralph, seated behind his desk. Ralph was caught off guard because instead of scalding hot chocolate spilling out of the cup it was nothing more than marshmallows. Ralph asked Ray how in the world he happened to make the cup appear to have steam coming from the top of it and he explained the hand trick...covering the powdery marshmallows in the cup for several seconds and then removing your hand from the top of the cup will make it appear as if steam is rising from the cup. I've never attempted the trick but that's the way he explained it. Ray promoted his Get Serious! VHS movie and performed "Can He Love You Half as Much as I?".
The morning show Ralph hosted on TNN was later moved to an early evening time-slot later in 1995 but it was eventually canceled soon after. I don't know if the end of that series was due to any backstage problems or any conflicts with the Opryland management or what...it was certainly a format that Ralph had mastered and so it wasn't like he was attempting something new. It could be a case of lack of enthusiasm from TNN or just a change in viewing habits causing the interview format to have run it's course!?
In the late 1990s Ray taped several new music videos for a collection ultimately released on VHS titled Funniest Video Characters. In this collection was "The Pirate Song"...a music video for a song Ray originally recorded in 1985 but later re-recorded in 1991. It had since became one of those fan favorites. Ralph Emery appears in that music video. Once you know he's in it and you spot him I bet your eyes will be drawn to him every time he's on screen. He plays one of the underlings of the Captain.
Getting back to sight gags...in an episode of Pop! Goes the Country in 1977 Ray performed a sight gag involving a large ceramic chicken mask...while wearing the mask he clucked a piece of "In the Mood". In another interview he was asked to imitate a chicken and so he began flapping his arms and clucking. A clip of this was featured on a 1990 surprise tribute special to Ralph Emery. In that special Ray performed a song he wrote specifically for the special, "Ralph, You Have Embarrassed Us All". He sang it with Roy Clark, Faron Young, and Kathy Mattea. In the video clip the introduction is by Johnny Cash and Barbara Mandrell.
Now, fast forward 24 years from 1990 to 2014 and here we see Buddy Kalb, Ralph Emery, and Ray Stevens during a photo opportunity at the Nashville Public Library. This was taken at some point before or after Ralph's interview of Ray took place.
Buddy Kalb, Ralph Emery, and Ray Stevens; 2014
Ironically enough Ray Stevens wasn't a guest on any On the Record episodes and I suspect the reason for this was there wasn't time to fit in an interview, due to Ray's busy schedule, and the concept of the series emphasizing an introspective, personal interview instead of a breezy, let's have some fun type of interview, perhaps led Ray to avoid appearing on it. It's anyone's guess. In the meantime a peek into Ray's life was on the horizon as TNN was putting together an episode of The Life and Times, a recurring biography series, and the producers decided to tape an episode about the life and career of Ray Stevens. The hour long special featured rare photo's from Ray's personal collection and video clips not seen since their original airing...specifically snippets from his NBC television summer show in 1970. This hour long special features commentary from Ralph Emery, Norro Wilson, George 'Goober' Lindsey, Charlie Chase, Brenda Lee, and Buddy Kalb...in addition to Ray himself.
Last year Ralph Emery officially inducted Ray Stevens into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Ralph was elected in 2007 and current members officially induct a new member each year at the Medallion Ceremony. In December of last year the two of them appeared as Guests of Honor at a fundraiser in Dickson, Tennessee at the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum where they had their pictures taken and signed autographs. To date that is the last time the two of them publicly appeared together. I put the two of them together in this collage, though. Happy early Birthday, Ralph Emery!
Hello one and all!! I was over on YouTube looking over some stats surrounding the video clips/music videos from Ray Stevens. As of this writing the combined number of unique views of the various videos uploaded to his YouTube channel currently sits at 111,624,798!!! So, it's a little more than an even 100 million.
I found myself looking through the stats because in the comment section over on the official YouTube page for the
video clip advertising his 2015 CD, Here We Go Again!, as February's sale of the month in his on-line store, I left a reply addressing a statement made by someone else
that said, and I'm paraphrasing: "...probably no one born after 2000 has any idea who Ray Stevens is...".
In
my reply I openly wondered if the comment was a baited statement just
waiting for someone to bite...of which I gladly bit because it sounded
like a statement that was partially true and I felt I could offer a
factual reply and explain how, as a recording artist, you can make a
comfortable living without your music ever making an appearance on a
weekly chart. If you find an audience and they like what you do and you
continue to reach people and build your audience and they purchase your
music or attend your concerts, etc. etc. then you don't actually need
your image and music plastered all over entertainment magazines and on
radio.
The reply I gave, specifically, was: "Oh well, it's their loss, even though it sounds like a baited statement
just waiting for someone to bite which I'm gladly doing. The recently
inducted Country Music Hall of Fame legend, Ray Stevens, I don't think
relies on age specific demographics or ever did...pure entertainment is
all that's necessary...but you're somewhat accurate about those born
after 2000...but I'd argue that he's known by a lot of people under 35.
It isn't just a collection of people 60 and older watching his YouTube
videos. He has his own slice of the gigantic internet pie.".
Here's some facts you can't argue with...
He's
had a YouTube channel since 2009 and he's had his own website since, at
least, the late 1990s. I came onto the internet by way of Web-TV in
2002 and Ray had a website then and he has one still. The design of his
website and product availability in his web-store has obviously changed
over the years but he's had an internet presence for nearly 20 years.
The YouTube channel hit the internet on July 13, 2009. As I mentioned at the top of this blog entry the total number
of combined unique views obtained by all of the video uploads on his
channel currently sits at 111,624,798. It's a fantastic stat for an
entertainer that turned 81 years of age a couple of weeks ago on January
24th.
I'll bet there will be somebody out there who,
upon reading what I just wrote, will feverishly scour YouTube for an
entertainer older than Ray and check the combined unique view total of
that performer's video uploads and if it's larger than Ray's they'll
cheerfully plaster the information all over social media sites just to
diminish Ray's total. Childish, yes, but it's speaks to the lengths of
what people will do on social media. There are some people who resent
Ray's successful career. You may be asking yourselves: Are there people
that deliberately resent any kind of success Ray Stevens has? It's sad but true...but there are
people out there like that and I'm making that accusation based on
years of on-line experience on my part and seeing with my own eyes the
kinds of things said about his music and his business decisions on
various social media sites.
An example being his 1992 performance of "I Saw Elvis in a U.F.O." which was part of his 1993 VHS, Ray Stevens Live!.
The performance was uploaded onto Ray's YouTube channel on June 12,
2013. The reaction, as of this writing, consists of more than 3,700
thumbs up ratings and 105 thumbs down ratings. A hysterical performance,
for sure, and highly entertaining but apparently that wasn't the case
for 105 people. The video itself has 423,786 unique views as of this
writing. There will be those that say "nobody has to like the same style of music...or the same singer..." and that's a perfectly fine statement...but what I'm getting at is there are people who purposely click videos for the sole purpose of thumbing it down or leaving vile comments...or they do both. If you don't like a singer then why access their video content in the first place...but of course I answered that rhetorical question already just before asking it. It gives those with anger a chance to show it off. The deliberate nature of a person thumbing down a video or writing scathing remarks simply because they do not like that artist is something that can't be stopped, unfortunately...along with all the positives that come with the internet there also come the negatives.
Shifting gears...after months of procrastinating I finally got around to clearing some space for my two new record players that I received as Christmas gifts. A couple of my turntables were stolen, pretty much, as part of a complicated family issue revolving around my grandfather's power of attorney and the disappearance of a lot of my items I kept in storage at his house. I managed to retrieve all of my vinyl, my modest collection of TV Guides, and everything else of mine from his house but the two record players came up missing and I've never been able to find them. Anyway...I received two turntables this last Christmas, to replace the two that came up missing, but I had them sitting in their boxes unopened...I hadn't figured out where I'd put them. The wait/procrastination ended this past Friday and I have the turntables out of their boxes and sitting in my room. One of them is close to the desk I'm sitting at and another is close to my bedroom door. I have the one near the bedroom door sitting on top of a couple of crates...the crates contain the vinyl albums and vinyl singles I've purchased over the years. Those items had been sitting next to my desk on a stand...and so with the relocation of the vinyl items into the crates it created space for the other record player. I listened to Collector's Series this morning. Yes...I just had to play a Ray Stevens album to break in the new record player with. The compilation album of eight songs that RCA issued in 1985...so that particular collection is 35 this year. It's the only compilation to spotlight some of the recordings he issued on RCA Records during his tenure with them. He signed with them late in 1979 and ultimately released three studio albums on the label in 1980, 1981, and 1982; followed by a Greatest Hits album in 1983. The 1983 release only featured two recordings from his RCA period, "Shriner's Convention" and "The Dooright Family", while the remaining eight songs spanned the years 1968 through 1975...so it wasn't necessarily dominated with RCA recordings...but Collector's Series continues to remain the definitive collection of his RCA recordings. One of my new record players appears in this photo. The lid doesn't lift up all the way which perhaps is a good thing...like the hood of a car if you want the lid to remain open you lift the lid and then prop the second half of the attachment into a designated space on the first half of the attachment and it acts like a lock and it keeps the lid opened. I hadn't played anything on the other record player near my desk, yet. That'll come later today and yes it'll be another of my vinyl Ray Stevens albums holding the distinction of being the first thing played on that record player, too.
Hello one and all...for the month of February the Ray Stevens web-store is offering his 2015 CD, Here We Go Again!, at a discount price. If you frequent his on-line store you should be familiar with the month long discounts/deals placed on random items. This particular deal of the month is a discounted sales price for 2015's Here We Go Again!. If you search my archives that year you'll see that I wrote a lot of blog entries surrounding lead-up to the upcoming release, the release itself, and the music contained on the album I wrote in the form of a review. The main song that emerged from the CD was "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me" which appeared as a music video on YouTube prior to the release of the CD. That video eventually racked up millions of unique views throughout 2015 and the following years. Ray performed several songs from the CD on his CabaRay Nashville television program, including the one referring to Taylor Swift. On an episode of his television show that aired last night on a local PBS station he performed "Walkin' the Dog", a song from this 2015 CD. There are episodes of his show where he also performed "Pickin' on the Chicken", "Little By Little", and "There Must Be a Pill For This".
If you don't yet have a CD copy of this don't miss your chance at purchasing it for the discounted price. As you see on the video screen there is no shipping and handling fee. If you already have a digital Mp3 of this album why not get the CD counterpart. I love having CD copies because of the art work, the information, and sometimes you'll receive on a CD some sort of exclusive content by way of images or even liner notes that aren't reprinted a CD's product page in an on-line music store. This particular CD features a fold-out booklet containing the lyrics of every song, who wrote them, and the music publisher credits. There's also a message from Ray in the fold-out booklet. So while it might make sense to purchase music as Mp3's instead of purchasing a physical CD of music, chances are you're missing out on some of the perks of having an actual CD instead of just having digitally transmitted audio tracks from an on-line store to your on-line device.
Hello all fans of Ray Stevens!! It's the start of a new week and as you all should know we'll close out this week celebrating the birthday of the one and only Ray Stevens on January 24th. I don't want to post too much about that today due to my desire to save my commentary for this coming Friday and so I'll get to the topic of this blog entry...the fifth anniversary of Here We Go Again!. I'm a couple months early (the CD was released March 23, 2015) but I decided to go ahead and spotlight the anniversary of it's release now so that it doesn't interfere with blog entries I'll be writing that month surrounding the third season of his CabaRay showroom getting underway the same month. Who knows? Perhaps by the time we reach March there will have been a new Ray Stevens CD hit the market or at least a new on-line music video? I sound like a broken record, of course, but I am anxious to hear whatever new recordings are forthcoming from recently inducted Country Music Hall of Fame member, Ray Stevens. When this CD was issued in the spring of 2015 the music video, "Taylor Swift is Stalking Me", had already taken off on social media. The video was released on February 24, 2015 a month and one day ahead of the CD. The video had gotten nearly half a million unique views on YouTube by the time the CD became available. As of this writing the unique view total is 2.5 million. The specifics in numbers are 2,543,458.
I wrote a review of the CD on this fan created blog page as well as on Amazon. Now, according to the product details over on AMAZON, there are 14 copies of the CD left in stock. You can also purchase a CD copy from Ray's on-line web-store, of course. I was reading my review prior to composing this blog entry and I noticed there are a couple of typo's as well as a sentence where I left out some words. I don't know if other people deal with this but a lot of time I find myself typing words that I'm saying to myself and in my mind I think I've typed them but sometimes when I go and re-read what I've written I'll notice a word or two had been left out. I don't know if it's a case of the mind being quicker than the hands or not. I'm going to paste my 2015 review below with the corrected typo's and odd sentence. I'm not going to edit the review over on Amazon, though, but I've copied and pasted my review below with the corrections... ***This review contains spoilers***
After
taking a detour, of sorts, over the last 5+ years and releasing some
hilarious political songs on a couple of CD's, plus issuing a 9-CD box
set called "The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music" (containing his
versions of novelty songs of the last 50+ years), a majestic gospel CD
last year called "Gospel Collection, Volume One", and a memoir titled
"Ray Stevens' Nashville"...after those projects, Ray Stevens returns to
country comedy on his latest CD.
The cover art, as you can see,
takes place in an airport setting. In a touch of silliness, a gorilla
plays the part of the chauffeur. On the back of the CD the songs are
listed as if they're flights posted on the Arrival board. The CD's first
single release arrived in music video form a month ago...titled "Taylor
Swift is Stalkin' Me" it's a story of a man that's obsessed with the
belief that he's being stalked by the pop-country singer because,
according to him, he sees her everywhere and given that her likeness
appears everywhere he happens to think she's stalking him. The
song has a comical twist ending, though. Throughout the song he insists
that Taylor's up in a tree looking at him with binoculars.
After
the bouncy opening track about Taylor we're treated to Ray covering one
of his musical idols, Ray Charles. I pretty much know that the purists
that'll hear the Ray Stevens rendition of the Ray Charles classic
"What'd I Say" aren't gong to like it. After all, they may ask, how can
you top a Ray Charles recording?
I don't necessarily believe Ray
Stevens set out to try and top the classic rendition from Ray Charles,
though. I think that Ray Stevens simply wanted to record the song and so
he did. I happen to love the rendition. Even if some may groan about
the idea of someone other than the late Ray Charles performing that song
at least it gives Ray Stevens an opportunity to display his obvious
love for classic Rhythm and Blues music.
Aside from the song
about Taylor Swift, one of my other favorites from this CD is "There
Must Be a Pill For This". This one is vintage Ray Stevens...it tells the
story of pills...and the enormous quantity of pills that are on the
market for everything under the sun. Pills to help thick people lose
weight, and pills to help frail people gain weight. It's a satire on
pills...miracle pills, specifically...and as an added pleasure there's a
parody of those lengthy disclaimers that appear as voice-overs on
healthcare commercials.
The tempo changes for the next song,
"Walkin' the Dog". In this one Ray sings of constantly bickering with
his wife. Instead of moping around the house he simply goes outside,
gets Rover, and walks the dog. He reckons that once he starts to take
the dog for a walk he may run into a woman putting on the dog
(presumably to be a possible new love interest). Track Five is
thrilling...a cover of "Hearts Made of Stone". I looked up the song's
title and found out that it had been a Rhythm and Blues hit in 1954 for a
group called The Charms. I had heard a brief audio clip of Ray's recording on Amazon and since that time I had been wondering the reason for the 1950's-style
of audio (complete with echo!) but I eventually found out the reason for the distinctive arrangement when discovering it had originally been recorded in the 1950s by The Charms as previously mentioned.
It's clearly the stand-out song on the CD if only for it not vocally
sounding like anything else. I love the over-dubbed do-wah harmonies
heard throughout.
The most country sounding recording on the
entire CD is "Pickin' on the Chicken". This one, too, is one of my
favorites. In the song Ray sings from a chicken's point of view and he
demands to know the reason so many negative expressions are associated
with chickens, hens, and eggs. Throughout the song we're treated to a
list of expressions and sayings that put the chicken in a bad
light...expressions like 'madder than a wet hen'; 'that's chicken feed';
'He's got egg on his face'; 'One flew the coop'; etc. Ray also manages
to get in a reference to Willie Nelson, too, in a laugh out loud funny
one-liner.
The second-most country sounding recording is "The
Baptism of Stumpy Brown". The song is about an atheist that suddenly
finds religion in his 90s and insists on being baptized as a result. The
frail body in a raging river is bound to cause some incidents...and Ray
tells of those in this story. Inspiration surfaces in the song "Little
by Little". There is a song on here called "You Didn't Build
That"...let's just say I find it hilarious...but it's something that
more than likely is not going to go over too well with, say, fans of the
President. That song is followed by a contemporary classic in the form
of the illegal immigration anthem "Come to the U.S.A." (a song from
2010). Illegal immigration is a hot topic and one that's consistently
controversial. Although I'm reviewing the CD there's an Mp3 copy for
sale, too, and that means customers can pick and choose the songs they
want to purchase from Here We Go Again!. I prefer having a physical copy
of the CD.
Along the lines of manhood and masculinity comes "A
Handshake Will Do", track 11. The lyrics cry foul on guys hugging other
guys unless it's called for and Ray gives examples for when it's okay.
Ironically, on the day this CD went on sale, a picture of Larry Gatlin
attempting to hug Ray appeared on Ray's social media sites. There's no
reference to this song as far as the picture is concerned, though. I
call it just one of those ironic coincidences.
Ray had appeared as a guest artist on the Grand Ole Opry on March 21st on a segment hosted by Larry Gatlin.
The
CD's closing track, "Knock Him Out John", is another one of my
favorites. I call it a tribute to the late Jerry Clower. It's a recap of
Jerry's story of the time he and some of his friends went hunting for raccoons and ended up having an encounter with a lynx. Ray's recording is
the story set to music. Ray does his rendition of Jerry's holler and it
appears at various moments during the song's chorus.
I thoroughly enjoyed the CD...his restless energy and incredible vocals are on full display on this CD!
***End of CD Review***
Yes, that's me displaying my economy sized pill box as a visual tie-in with one of the songs found on the 2015 CD, "There Must Be a Pill For This". The song is from the pen of Don Cusic and if you're a more dedicated fan of Ray Stevens then you're fully aware of Don Cusic or at least should be. He's written a couple of songs that Ray's recorded within the last 6 years. He wrote an essay within the pages of an accompanying booklet of Ray's 9-CD box set, The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music, in 2012. If you have Ray's 2014 memoir, Ray Stevens' Nashville, you'll see Don's name credited as the book's editor. Don wrote a gospel song that Ray recorded called "If Jesus is a Stranger" which can be found on Ray's CD, Gospel Collection, Volume One. I looked up his history and career at the time and discovered that he happened to be a college professor and had authored numerous books and is often referred to as a Professor of Music. Don wrote "There Must Be a Pill For This", by the way. When Ray's television series, CabaRay Nashville, debuted in the fall of 2015 Don Cusic appeared in several early episodes dressed in a graduate gown for a segment spotlighting a song featured in Ray's 9-CD box set. Don would give a brief history of the song prior to Ray's performance of it on the show. If you visit the Amazon link I provided for his 2015 comedy CD you'll notice there isn't credit listed for the songwriters. The CD comes with a fold-out mini booklet which contains the lyrics of all the songs, the writers, and the publishing company. It also features commentary from Ray on the back of the booklet.
Here is the track list and the songwriters: 1. Taylor Swift is Stalking Me (Ray Stevens, Chuck Redden, and Buddy Kalb) 2. What'd I Say (Ray Charles) 3. There Must Be a Pill For This (Don Cusic) 4. Walkin' the Dog (Jim Ferguson) 5. Hearts Made of Stone (Eddie Ray and Rudy Jackson) 6. Pickin' on the Chicken (Buddy Kalb) 7. The Baptism of Stumpy Brown (Buddy Kalb and Allison Speer) 8. Little By Little (Buddy Kalb) 9. You Didn't Build That (Ray Stevens, Chuck Redden, and Buddy Kalb) 10. Come to the U.S.A. (Buddy Kalb and Matt Cline) 11. A Handshake Will Do (Matt Cline and Max T. Barnes) 12. Knock Him Out, John (Buddy Kalb) Excluding a Christmas CD release in 2016 the Here We Go Again! CD, to date, is the last studio album that Ray has issued. Yes, even though the 2016 Christmas release is technically his last studio album to date, I'm excluding it because it's a seasonal album. Since the release of the 2015 we've had the 2016 Christmas CD in addition to a couple of DVD releases featuring Season One and Season Two episodes of his CabaRay Nashville television series. In interviews since 2016/2017 Ray has often mentioned that he has a backlog of recordings awaiting release. He's been so busy, though...first off with the production of his television program...and then with the grand opening of the CabaRay showroom in 2018. So, as mentioned at the top of this blog entry, I'm hoping some new projects come along during the first half of 2020. Here's some trivia...it was on this date in 1962 that Ray recorded "Ahab the Arab". I usually don't have recording dates memorized but I was reading various websites during the writing of this blog entry and I came across that tidbit of information in a post on social media from Where Have All the Pop Stars Gone?. It's a Facebook page and I often write commentary whenever there's a post about Ray Stevens. I'll more than likely wait until this coming Friday to write another blog entry...on Ray's birthday...unless some major news is issued concerning the release of new music.
