Hello one and all...we've made it to Episode 10, Season 2 of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. In this episode the special guest is Sylvia. If you're not very familiar with country music from the 1980s then you're probably not very familiar with Sylvia. She had numerous pop-tinged country hits throughout the 1980s. Her name is Sylvia Hutton but she went by Sylvia...the only country music artist, that I can think of, that deliberately marketed herself with only a first name.
Ray opens the show singing "Love Potion Number Nine", a song that he recorded for his 2012 box set The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. It was a rousing performance like practically all of his performances are...but this one is especially rousing and I like to think it's due to the song's rhythm and blues origins. Ray grew up loving all kinds of music...particularly early rhythm and blues songs by vocal groups that largely went under the radar on pop radio but were treated like royalty on rhythm and blues radio stations throughout the South. I'm sure Ray first heard "Love Potion Number Nine" by The Clovers, a group he sometimes cites as a favorite of his. Their recording hit in 1959...and you may ask yourselves "wasn't Ray already in the music business in 1959??". Well, yes...but just because you're in the music business it doesn't mean you become an ostrich. Several years later another group, The Searchers, recorded a version of the song and their rendition in 1964 became the bigger pop hit. Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber wrote the song and they're well known as being the writers for a majority of novelty songs by The Coasters as well.
Ray introduces Sylvia by saying that her family was so poor they couldn't afford to give her a last name. She speaks of her entrance into the music industry. She was born in Indiana and moved to Nashville...she worked in a music publishing company for several years. Ray mentioned that she was a former model...and she laughed and said it was a super short-lived career in that she only had one modeling session. She posed for an advertisement for "You're My Jamaica" when Ray's brother, John Ragsdale, released his recording of the song. Charley Pride would later record the song and have a gigantic hit with it. Sylvia sings "Nobody", her signature song.
Ray plays the sketch that he and Sylvia did together in 1991, "Making Cookies". The song is a spoof of the song, "Making Whoopie". The sketch is part of a VHS from 1992 that Ray released called Amazing Rolling Revue. It was a pilot for an unsold television series. The series would take place on a tour bus, as it's moving down the highway, and feature performances from Ray and insertions of comedy sketches. The concept was apparently way too unconventional for television and so only the pilot episode exists. Ironically, though, decades later he would revisit the concept with the sketch filled Rayality TV series. It had several runs both online and on cable television.
Sylvia's second song of the episode is titled "Right Turn". In the 1980's she racked up dozens of hit songs...most of them reached the Top-10. It's reported that she also sold nearly 5 million albums. She was a labelmate of Ray Stevens in the early 1980s as both were on RCA at the time. Ray closes the show singing "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills".
