Hello all...no doubt when you're browsing the internet and looking for Ray Stevens images you've come across the album cover of this 1990 release, Lend Me Your Ears. It's a comedy album from Ray Stevens, as if you couldn't tell from the photo, and it turns 30 this year. The photo session took place in Nashville's Centennial Park where there's something of a tourist attraction located there...a large replica of the Parthenon. Ray in Shakespeare attire is seen in front of the Parthenon replica and firmly taking hold of a rabbit. The album's title has various meanings. The most obvious is the request for music consumers to take a listen to the album but another reason for the album's title is tied into the photo and it's recreation of Marc Antony from the Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar. It is in that play where the phrase "...lend me your ears..." comes from. There's probably some people out there that looked at the album's title and seen the photo and thought that Ray was being literal and asking the rabbit to lend him his ears...completely missing the point of the album's photo design and title...but yet that's another interpretation one could take away when looking at the art work and album title. This comedy album was not only his first in a brand new decade (the '90s) but it was his first studio album for Curb Records who, at the time of this album's summer 1990 release, were in a distribution partnership with Capitol Records. This is why this particular studio album from Ray is credited to Curb/Capitol Records. Ironically another 1990 release was credited solely to Curb Records, the Gold selling His All Time Greatest Comic Hits. The new decade and his move to Curb Records after a 5-year stay at MCA (1984-1989) also ushered in new directions for Ray that were bubbling under the surface.
As promotion for Lend Me Your Ears there were two music videos taped. "Sittin' Up With the Dead" is the lead off song from the album and it became a music video. The album's third track was Ray's comical rendition of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and it was performed very much in the vein of one of Ray's music influences, Spike Jones...the recording featured heavy use of sound effects and vocal mayhem but it remained tightly controlled in the execution of it's music. In television appearances that year he promoted the existence of the music videos and how fans could see them on the various music video programs airing on The Nashville Network. Ray's video for "Help Me Make it Through the Night" became a hit and landed on the network's most-played music video list. In addition to those two notable recordings Ray was also performing "Barbecue" and there's an appearance on Hee Haw where Ray performs "Where Do My Socks Go?". There were promotional vinyl singles issued to radio stations of "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night". They were never sold in retail stores but every once in awhile copies of those vinyl promo singles come up for sale on eBay. They're really obscure and would be of value to Ray Stevens fans given how the quantity is limited. The 1990 album contains ten comedy songs:
1. Sittin' Up With the Dead (live action music video)
2. Jack Daniels, You Lied To Me Again
3. Help Me Make It Through the Night (live action music video)
4. Used Cars
5. Bwana and the Jungle Girl
6. Barbecue (animated music video)
7. Where Do My Socks Go
8. This Ain't Exactly What I Hand In Mind (animated music video)
9. This is Your Daddy's Oldsmobile
10. Cletus McHicks and His Band from the Sticks
Tracks six and eight were turned into limited animation music videos more than 15 years later. The live action music videos were released in 1990. Now, bubbling under the surface right around the time Lend Me Your Ears hit the market, Ray was in the planning/development stages of building a theater in Branson, Missouri. This theater had it's grand opening in 1991 and Ray performed there for three seasons (1991, 1992, and 1993). The concept of a music video being seen as something of a commercial product, rather than a marketing tool, combined with the proliferation of a commercially viable VHS market in the early '90s enabled Ray's career to take on dramatically different directions as the decade continued...yet the decade started off with Lend Me Your Ears in 1990...and several years later one could say the public was lending their eyes to Ray Stevens, too, during the heyday of televised VHS mail-order advertisements.
Hello once more...I just finished watching episode 13, Season Six of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. The special guest happened to be Lee Roy Parnell. This episode originally aired in local syndication on PBS stations the weekend of June 30th and it's since been uploaded to Ray's video site, raystevens.tv.
Ray opened this episode performing "Barbecue"...and it was the first time I'd seen him perform the song on any television appearance since 1990. He performed it on an episode of Nashville Now when the album it originally appeared on, Lend Me Your Ears, was relatively brand new. He released an official music video produced with limited animation in the mid 2000s as one of a handful of music videos he issued direct-to-DVD prior to the launch of his YouTube channel several years later. The "Barbecue" music video can be found on YouTube. If you pay close attention to the band during the performance you'll see a certain figure playing prominent guitar...and it would be the special guest, Lee Roy Parnell...
Ray calls Lee Roy over to the piano after the performance. Lee Roy had played on Ray's Lend Me Your Ears album in 1990. I knew this but during the performance of "Barbecue" and even with seeing Lee Roy standing among Ray's house band it never hit me until Ray and Lee Roy began talking. In the studio recording the main instrument is the harmonica. The first bit of conversation that Ray brings up is Lee Roy being a member of the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame. Ray asks how he got from Texas to Nashville. Lee Roy describes his trek to Music City and how one of his first jobs came in a publishing house for Polygram. His first commercial recordings arrived in 1990 after having signed with Arista's relatively new country music imprint. The label had a lengthy history in pop music but in the early '90s the company branched out and in country music they benefited from the enormous sales and radio popularity of Lee Roy Parnell, Alan Jackson, the Brooks and Dunn duo, Pam Tillis, and Diamond Rio just to name several.
After Lee Roy spoke of his songwriting work at Polygram Ray brought up Tim Dubois and Arista Records. Lee Roy mentioned his record producer at the time, Barry Beckett. Lee Roy also mentioned that many of his own demo recordings winded up being placed on his albums. Ray brings up Merle Haggard and how inspirational, both musically and vocally, he happened to be for Lee Roy. This leads into a conversation about the mid '90s Merle Haggard tribute album; the title isn't given but it's Mama's Hungry Eyes: A Tribute to Merle Haggard; in which Lee Roy recorded "Workin' Man Blues" with Steve Wariner and Diamond Rio. The recording was credited to Jed Zeppelin (a pun on the rock band, Led Zeppelin) and in 1995 it received a CMA Award as Music Event of the Year. Ray and Lee Roy perform a really loose rendition of "Workin' Man Blues" where the music is front and center and high emphasis on the blues is in order. At various moments in the performance Lee Roy blends a number of verses but it doesn't take away from the overall performance. Ray does several piano solo's and Lee Roy counters these with his slide guitar solo's. It's such a loose interpretation with heightened music emphasis that the actual lyrics become secondary.
After the rousing duet concludes Lee Roy performs "Love Without Mercy", his sixth single release (and second Top-10), from 1992. Prior to the performance, though, he introduced an addition to the harmony singers. Lisa Stewart appeared along side Ray's trio of harmony singers for this performance as well as the next, "On the Road". After achieving considerable success in country music during the 1990s Lee Roy did an about face and traveled back to his earlier music influences and spent years outside the mainstream country music scene performing bluesy songs heavy with his famed slide guitar style. His proficiency on the guitar, especially the slide guitar, resulted in the famed Gibson guitar company manufacturing a line of Lee Roy Parnell guitars. Given the years spent performing in a bluesy fashion it impacted the way he performs the country music hits he had in the 1990s. This means that his performances of those two songs are dramatically different, vocally, in their execution compared to how they sounded in the early '90s.
After the performance from Lee Roy and the wild applause died down Ray closed the show performing "Abilene", a monster hit by the late George Hamilton, IV. Prior to the performance Ray took the time to show some pictures from the CabaRay interior which included an image of George Hamilton, IV along side several others.
And so with that Season Six comes to a close...keep in mind there are only 13 episodes in each of the CabaRay Nashville seasons. There hasn't been any information on Season Seven or when recording sessions will get underway. As soon as I find out anything about a Season Seven I'll blog about it, of course! Season Six began airing on April 7th...exactly three months ago. Since there isn't any concrete information about the future of the series I suspect Season's Six and Five will rerun on local PBS stations or air for the first time on newly added PBS stations. It's possible that the show won't be back with new episodes this calendar year. Again...if I find out anything I'll blog about it.
The last couple of blog entries I published were by design, actually. I knew the current season of Ray's television show was coming to a close and so I wanted to get back into the habit of blogging about other aspects of Ray's career since there won't be anymore episode recaps of his television program for awhile [~something that I love doing and something that's become a habit, actually~]; but anyway, it's going to be a little strange not having that rush of excitement I get each time I go to Ray's video site to see the latest episode of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. I'm already planning my next blog entry, though, so it isn't like I'm at a loss for things to spotlight in this fan created blog page. I make notes on paper (yes, even in the age of internet and keypads I still use pen and paper when I choose to) but I make notes about whatever aspect of Ray's career I'll be blogging about so that when I decide to get started on a blog entry all that's left for me to do is simply create the text of the blog entry and add images if I so desire.
Now, either in my next blog entry or in one that follows, I hope to have a link to audio footage of Ray's recent guest appearance at the Opry. Last week (July 3rd) Ray guest starred on the Tuesday Night Opry. WSM radio puts archive performances of each Opry broadcast onto their website. At last look (this morning) the most recent archive performance was the June 26th broadcast of the Opry which was a week before Ray's guest appearance. I'm thinking that the first Opry broadcasts for the month of July will appear on-line later this week after tonight's airing of the Grand Ole Opry but that's just my guess. Once the audio becomes available I'll provide a link.
In the summer of 1990 Ray Stevens emerged with his twenty-seventh studio album, Lend Me Your Ears. This was his second project for his newest home, Curb Records, but it was his first studio album for the label. The project features the standard 10 song program and musically it's a bit more adventurous. There were several songs pushed as "singles" but only one actually became available on a 45 rpm but that was a promo single sent to radio stations and jukebox operators. The two songs pushed the most from this collection were also available in music video format: "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night". The first music video received a fair amount of airplay on The Nashville Network and the second received even more. Ray had turned the classic slow ballad, "Help Me Make It Through the Night", into a frenetic and wild sing-a-long filled with all kinds of sound effects and comical quips that commented on the lyrics. The music video was just as zany with Ray playing dozens of characters with the aid of lightning quick editing. Ray appears on the cover photo as a well known Shakespearian character looking as if he's trying to make a deal with the rabbit...perhaps explaining that the loss of the rabbit's ears is for the good of mankind!? Although rabbit stew or fried rabbit isn't sang about we do have a song that offers a passionate plea for tasty "Barbecue". In it, Ray sings like a man possessed as he can't hold back his passion for this delicious dish. Consider yourself lucky if you've ever seen him perform the song...I saw him perform it just once and it was on an episode of Nashville Now and it was stunning.
In answering one of my questions from a previous blog entry, this debut studio album from Ray Stevens for Curb Records doesn't contain any non-comical ballads...all 10 songs are comical. Earlier I mentioned that the music was more adventurous and by that I mean the arrangements...these songs sound as though they specifically exist for this project only. It's hard to imagine hearing any of the songs from this 1990 album side by side with songs from his 1989 or 1991 projects. My way of explaining it is as follows: the arrangements and the overall music exist in a here and now universe whereas song lyrics are much more flexible and can be adapted to almost any musical arrangement or format. Ray is often quoted as saying that he wants a song's music to tell the story as much as the lyrics do and this is probably the reason why so many of his albums feature the most ambitious of musical sounds.
What else did Ray offer on Lend Me Your Ears? He takes us on a Safari in a musical spoof with Stanley and Livingstone in "This Ain't Exactly What I Had In Mind" and he revisits a jungle theme with "Bwana and the Jungle Girl", the closest thing to a ballad on the collection, but it's more of a whimsical love song than a deep love ballad. "Used Cars" is one of the good ol' country boy kind of songs that often make it to his albums...it's the story of the used car generation and the misadventures we all have as used car motorists. One of the hooks of the song is his vocal imitation of a car attempting to start and it's sputtering reaction. Another song that fits well with the everyday man theme is "Jack Daniels, You Lied To Me Again" about a guy who continues to strike out with women while under the guidance and influence of alcohol. The timeless tale of teenagers learning to drive and their desire to have their own car is the main focal point in "This Is Your Daddy's Oldsmobile". Instead of being poignant and saccharine, this song takes the opposite approach as Ray portrays a father whose overly protective of his car and come hell or high water he's going to make sure his son is mature, gets good grades, and is completely responsible in everyday life before he even considers allowing the boy to take daddy's car for a spin.
"Where Do My Socks Go?" is a bizarre novelty song about the disappearance of socks during their time in the dryer. Ray performed this song on an episode of Hee Haw and at the end of the performance the audience members all threw rolled up socks at him. The album's closing number, "Cletus McHicks and His Band From the Sticks", is a southern fried adaptation of the jazzy "Freddie Feelgood and His Funky Little Five Piece Band" combo from 1966. In the McHicks song, the jazz/R&B instrumentation and scat singing is replaced by a much more countrified backwoods delivery. There is a form of scat singing on the McHicks song as the leader plays the guitar, enabling Ray to vocally emulate a Johnny Cash style of guitar playing.
The thing that overshadowed this studio album was the music video popularity of "Help Me Make It Through the Night". People reading this will probably wonder how in the world could a music video overshadow the album from which it came? Stranger things have happened in the world of music. How is it that a single can sell more than a million copies and yet the album from which it came doesn't even make the Top-40 on any album chart? How can a single reach the Top-20 and yet the album not even make the charts at all? There are a lot of strange facts that defy logic within the music industry. The fact is "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was one of the most talked about music videos of 1990 among viewers of The Nashville Network and it was a foreshadowing of things to come!
