I touched on this compilation album in the closing of Part Fifteen. This was the first project released on Ray Stevens by Curb Records in 1990. It eventually went Gold (sales of 500,000) and it introduced the classics from Ray Stevens to the new decade and newer fans. Ray's first studio album for the label arrived in July of 1990 by the name of
Lend Me Your Ears. On the album's cover we see Ray in classic attire from the Shakespeare play,
Julius Cesar, holding a rabbit in front of Nashville's replica of the Parthenon. The album title is an obvious reference to the phrase heard in the play but it also doubles as a request to take a listen to this album. The comedy album features several songs that were turned into live action music videos including a couple that were, years later, turned into limited animation music videos. A very large life-size poster advertising the album accompanied Ray on several television appearances on The Nashville Network. The two brand new music videos were "
Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "
Sittin' Up With the Dead". In the case of "
Help Me Make It Through the Night" he turned the song into a manic parody...similar in style of one of his music heroes, Spike Jones. The fast-paced music video became a hit on The Nashville Network's two television programs centered on music videos:
Video Morning and
Video PM. It was the second time in Ray's career where he recorded a song from the pen of Kris Kristofferson...the first happened to be in 1969 with "
Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". The record label represented a merger between Curb Records and Capitol Records...professionally
Lend Me Your Ears marked Ray's 'return' to the Capitol Records roster...after having recorded a few songs for the label in 1958...but technically the album is credited to the merged label of Curb/Capitol.
The label had issued a promo single for disc jockeys of "
Help Me Make It Through the Night" along with "
Sittin' Up With the Dead", which you see off to the right. A promo single almost always featured the same song on both the A and B side. The latter song dealt with a legendary Southern tradition of taking care of the recently departed until an undertaker was able to take over and or the local funeral home shown up to take over. The story takes place in the past...with a lot of the music video intentionally shot in black and white to mirror the nostalgic overtone of the song. The music video was a hit as well...not necessarily in the same stratosphere as "
Help Me Make It Through the Night"...but it had a visual impact on television viewers of The Nashville Network all the same. The year, 1990, marked not only the start of a new decade but it also represented one of those crossroads in his professional career. It also signaled a major shift in the marketing of country music. The business end of country music saw the ultimate change when record labels began decreasing the availability of vinyl albums and vinyl singles in favor of cassette and CD. Music consumers rarely had the opportunity to purchase a single anymore...the labels began increasingly supplying retail stores with full length albums rather than also offering single releases. The single releases remained available to disc jockeys and those in the music industry but they were rapidly disappearing from retail stores. The music video had become, since the mid to late 1980s, an important promotional item for the sales of albums. Ray, by the end of 1990, had released four music videos in his career to that point. Earlier in the year he won his fifth straight
Comedian of the Year honor from the readers of
Music City News magazine and viewers of The Nashville Network.
Ray's association with direct marketing...also referred to as telemarketing and direct mail...as you know goes back to the late 1980s. He tapped into a television audience in 1987 when MCA and company issued
Get The Best of Ray Stevens. The album sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was rewarded a Gold album. The sales of albums advertised through television or print advertisements, rather than retail store sales, had lower thresholds. A Gold album for a direct mail project is indicative of more than 50,000 copies sold...and Platinum represents 100,000. Ray arranged and produced this project on Boots Randolph in 1990...a collection simply titled
Boots...and it was released on Ray's Clyde Records label. The television commercial features Ray and others seated in an intimate venue...re-creating the image of a nightclub...as they offer testimonials while Boots is on stage performing. The television commercial, I think, is still available to view on YouTube.
Ray's second studio album for Curb/Capitol arrived in 1991 titled
Number One with a Bullet. Ray appeared on the album cover wearing his familiar CAT hat and holding a very large bullet. The comedy songs range from the absurd to the demented to the sophistication of social commentary. Some of the song titles from the album are: "
Tabloid News", "
You Gotta Have a Hat", "
Teenage Mutant Kung Fu Chickens", and "
The Sheik of R and B". The latter recording is a pun on the title of a 1920's pop song called "
The Sheik of Araby"...but for comical purposes the song's concept was completely changed and it's about a modern-day Sheik consumed with rhythm and blues. Buddy Kalb is credited as the writer or the co-writer on nine of the ten songs. Ray and Buddy had pretty much co-authored Ray's 1989 album,
Beside Myself. Ray was a co-writer on nine of the ten songs on that 1989 album, by the way.
The year, 1991, marked the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack (that coming December 7th) and so it was probably not a coincidence that the Japanese are referred to in a couple of comedy songs. "
A Little Blue Haired Lady", a comedy song about slow drivers, features a brief impression by Ray of a Japanese Ambassador casually mentioning that he tried to get a message to the United States warning of the upcoming Pearl Harbor attack but he was stuck in traffic behind "
A Little Blue Haired Lady"...or in the vocalization provided by Ray: 'a rittle brue haired rady'. The centerpiece of Japanese culture, though, arrives in the album's closing song...the social comment of "
Working for the Japanese". The song was issued as a CD single by Curb/Capitol in 1991 and was on it's way at becoming something of a hit but political correctness and cold feet within the country music industry, as a whole, caused the untimely fate of the single and it stalled in the middle of the Country singles chart. It was his first appearance on the Country singles chart since 1988.
It was around this point in time that Ray was becoming actively involved in Branson, Missouri. He had appeared in Branson in the past...including many appearances at The Roy Clark Celebrity Theater...and it led to Ray's decision to build his own theater and it opened to the public in 1991. He had attempted to sell the idea of operating a theater in Nashville to the local business community but he later commented in his memoir that there wasn't any enthusiasm for a venue that could perhaps draw people away from the already established tourist destinations.
The Ray Stevens Theatre in Branson, Missouri ushered in a new wave of popularity for the singer. Oh, he was as popular as before, winning his sixth consecutive
Comedian of the Year trophy from
Music City News during the June 1991 awards show and he even co-hosted that year's edition of the
Music City News Songwriter awards...but the theater down in Branson gave the locals and the region a chance to catch a Las Vegas-style concert performance at affordable prices and just his naturally gifted talents as an entertainer quickly led to his show becoming the most popular attraction in the small Ozark's town packed with more than two dozen theaters on a two lane highway. When Ray opened up the theater in 1991 the longest running venue's were still there and still being headlined by their originators. Boxcar Willie and Roy Clark were the first two major country music artists to open theaters...Roy's theater opened in 1983. Eventually theaters from the likes of Mel Tillis, Moe Bandy, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Jim Stafford, and Shoji Tabuchi just to name a few, would make their grand opening. The audits for attendance shown that Ray's two show a day, six days a week grind schedule enabled him to get the most opportunity for sell-outs with concert goers in the afternoon and traditional concert goers in the late evening. The town relied heavily on tourism...and so it was natural that the town was packed during summer months when adults usually took vacation from work. The overall age bracket for the concert seekers, I'd guess, was 35 and older...a lot of the venues received heavy flow of retirees and those more affluent...and it also didn't hurt that the headliners for almost every attraction had considerable longevity in the music industry. This meant that Branson received it's share of flack and criticism from music industry journalists and critics as a haven for the traditional and a mecca of old-fashioned entertainment. The Branson market successfully, for a brief period of time in the early to late '90s, rivaled Nashville as a premier live music destination. Branson's Highway 76 from a bird's eye view looked like Las Vegas...especially images captured at night...Branson was a sprawling big money machine and
The Ray Stevens Theatre was the top destination. It is during his run in Branson that the concept of the music video became permanently linked to his career and how he had the idea of selling music videos to the public whereas, prior to this, a music video was not considered profit generating on their own and were treated simply as a marketing tool to promote the sales of an album. Ray felt that music videos could sell and his gamble paid off enormously during his second season of concerts at his theater in 1992. Ray's become a mogul of the VHS home video world...and we'll take a look at this unexpected but phenomenal phase of Ray's career in Part Seventeen!!
