One of the many fabulous albums from Ray Stevens over the years is 1969's Have a Little Talk With Myself. The album was an artistic showcase for Ray's music arranging skills. The album's co-producer, Jim Malloy, praised Ray on the back of album. Jim remarked that Ray not only arranged the music on every song but also sang all the background harmonies, played piano and organ, and played the trumpet solo in the recording of "Spinning Wheel". Jim Malloy's son, David, would become a hugely popular record producer and co-writer of many hit songs for Eddie Rabbitt. Ray Stevens and Jim Malloy produced this 1969 album and the two of them appear in a photo on the back of the album. Jim was also the co-engineer along with Tommy Strong. The album's first single release happened to be "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" from a brand new songwriter named Kris Kristofferson. Ray had a minor hit with the song...reaching the Pop charts both here in America and in Canada. Ray also crossed over and reached the Country chart with this song. It marked Ray's first appearance on the country chart. Ray recorded the album in the Monument Records studio. He had been signed to Monument Records since 1963...first as a session musician, music arranger, and jack-of-all-trades in the recording studio...and this relationship evolved into recordings beginning late in 1965. He was under contract with Mercury Records as a recording artist (since 1961) while simultaneously (beginning in 1963) working behind the scenes at Monument Records as a session musician and music arranger. Once his recording contract for Mercury ended he was then allowed to begin recording for Monument Records.
Have a Little Talk With Myself was Ray's third and final studio album for Monument Records. Monument released the title track as the second single release from the album. "Have a Little Talk With Myself" became the second single of his career to appear on the Country chart and it happened in the final month of 1969...more specifically the final week of 1969. The single didn't appear on the Pop Hot 100 but it did make an appearance on Bubbling Under the Hot 100...a chart extension of the main Hot 100 which kept track of single releases that hadn't sold enough to break into the main Hot 100 but were big regional sellers. The third single release arrived early in 1970, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight", from the pen of Bob Dylan. This song has also been uploaded onto Ray's YouTube channel. One of the interesting aspects of the recording is Ray's over-dubbed vocals. He verbally mimics a harmonica in various harmonies and has the effect playing alongside actual instruments. The album features the largest collection of studio musicians of any Ray Stevens album before or since. The "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" single never appeared on the Hot 100 or the Country chart...selling regionally enabling it to make an appearance on the Bubbling Under the Hot 100 list. Ironically, it charted higher on the Bubbling Under chart than "Have a Little Talk With Myself" did. Now then...here's the audio track of 1969's "Have a Little Talk With Myself"...
Hello all the Ray Stevens fans out there...as all of you know the music world lost a legendary figure, Kenny Rogers. He passed away at age 81 on March 20th but the news wasn't released until Saturday and a flurry of on-line articles flooded social media sites from all over the world. Ray was quoted as saying: "Kenny was a nice man and a great entertainer who had a way of making a song his own. He will be missed.".
1969
Ray Stevens was recording for Monument Records in the late 1960s. The label had issued a series of single releases on Ray during 1966-1967...his first LP for the label didn't arrive until 1968, titled Even Stevens. The following year he issued two albums for Monument. One of those albums was the comical Gitarzan and the other album was this one, Have a Little Talk with Myself. It is on this latter album where Ray demonstrates his mastery of music arrangement. He had produced and arranged a lot of recordings for a whole host of recording acts on Monument Records and other labels...he was also the arranger of his own recordings while production credits were given to Shelby Singleton (Mercury Records) and later on, Fred Foster (Monument Records). The two albums that were issued on Ray in 1969 credit Fred Foster, Jim Malloy, and Ray Stevens as producers on Gitarzan while Ray and Jim Malloy are the credited record producers on Have a Little Talk with Myself. On both albums Ray continued his role as music arranger. The recordings on this 1969 album are mostly cover songs of contemporary pop music hits for other artists...all done with Ray Stevens arrangements. There are several songs that were originals at the time and those were the title track, "Have a Little Talk with Myself", as well as "The Little Woman" and "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down"...the remainder of the album were his versions of a wide range of pop songs, among them were: "Aquarius", "Help", "Hair", "Spinning Wheel", and this song...
"But You Know I Love You" comes from the pen of Mike Settle who, at the time, was a member of the pop/rock group, The First Edition, whose lead singer happened to be Kenny Rogers. Their recording of the song was issued late in 1968 and it hit the Top-20 on the pop chart in the first half of 1969...also hitting the Top-10 in Canada. In this time period most recording artists filled out their albums with cover songs and once this song had become a hit then it was recorded by a lot of artists in various formats. Bill Anderson had a huge hit with it on the country chart in 1969...Dolly Parton hit number one on the country chart with her rendition in 1981. A bit of trivia is Dolly's rendition of "But You Know I Love You" took over the number one spot on the country chart from a Kenny Rogers and Dottie West duet, "What Are We Doing In Love?". Kenny and Dottie hit number one the week ending June 13, 1981 and the very next week Dolly was at number one with "But You Know I Love You" on June 20, 1981. That trivial tidbit is made even more ironic given that several years after Dolly's recording hit number one she and Kenny would become frequent duet partners.
In between 1969 and 1981 it was covered by numerous artists, as mentioned, and Ray Stevens was no exception as you can hear when you play the embedded audio clip above. A couple of decades later Ray performed "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" on an episode of his CabaRay Nashville television show. In the context of this performance it was as a salute to the song's writer, Mel Tillis. Ray's performance is on the episode, Tribute Show. In this episode Ray performs songs made famous by others and tells stories behind the songs and the artists that recorded them. The song was a huge hit for Kenny and The First Edition in 1969 but the first commercially successful rendition arrived in 1967 on the country chart by recording artist Johnny Darrell...a singer that recorded a number of songs first which eventually became iconic or country music standards by other artists that were more well known. He was the first to record "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" in addition to being the first to record "The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp" and "Green, Green Grass of Home"...the latter becoming more well known as a Porter Waggoner classic. Ray Stevens, for example, was the first to commercially release "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" and it's on his 1969 album shown near the top of this blog entry...but the song itself is more well known as a Johnny Cash hit.
Here's Ray performing "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"...a song closely identified with Kenny Rogers and the First Edition...
One of the things that I personally feel that any Ray Stevens fan should possess is some sort of understanding of the many styles of music he's recorded throughout his career. If you consider yourself a dedicated/devoted fan or a student of his career then you should be aware of this 1969 album. If you've never heard of it then let this be your introduction. The Have a Little Talk With Myself album was his fifth studio album as well as his third and final LP for Monument Records following Gitarzan earlier in the year and Even Stevens in 1968. The Have a Little Talk With Myself vinyl album hit in the latter half of 1969. The LP's first single, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", had been released a couple of months prior to the LP. There have been a lot of things written regarding Ray's recording of that particular song...it's almost always referenced to whenever journalists, bloggers, or historians write about the career of songwriter-singer Kris Kristofferson or Johnny Cash. Monument Records issued Ray's recording of the song in September 1969. It made the charts...peaking in the lower regions of the Hot 100 in addition to it appearing on the country music chart (his debut appearance in that format). It's highest charted performance, which is strangely overlooked by historians, happened to be it's showing in Australia where it reached that country's Top-40 pop chart, but it's performance there is never cited. In that time period Ray had quite a following in specific international markets although he was never mainstreamed by the local music media. The album's title track was issued as a single in November of 1969 followed by the single release in February 1970 of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" with his version of "The Fool on the Hill" as it's B-side. Ray uploaded an audio of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" on YouTube this past Friday, Valentine's Day. The song was written by Bob Dylan and had been recorded by him previously. The 1969 album contains 12 songs...10 of them are cover songs of contemporary pop songs whereas only two of the recordings come from the pen of Ray Stevens: "Have a Little Talk with Myself" and "The Little Woman". Those two recordings were released as A-side and B-side when Monument issued the single release of the LP's title track in November 1969. In February 1970 Monument issued Ray's recording of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" which you can hear below...
In the meantime Ray was in the process of switching to a different
record label. He began making popular guest appearances on the weekly
television series, The Andy Williams Show. Andy's brother,
Don, had become Ray's manager and was responsible for getting Ray onto
Andy's show, as well as other television shows of the era, and one thing
led to another. Ray ended his lengthy run with Monument Records and signed to Andy's label, Barnaby Records, and within weeks of his signing Ray emerged with his debut single for Barnaby, "Everything is Beautiful"...and another chapter of Ray's career was well underway.
Well, hello all of you fans of Ray Stevens!! I have a feeling you all have heard the news that Ray's two television programs have returned to the RFD-TV airwaves. I found out last weekend when the station aired episode three of Season Three (guest starring gospel artist Michael W. Smith). The cable channel had aired the first two episodes of Season Three in the middle part of December before abruptly removing both programs from their line-up. I speculated several reasons for it's sudden departure in one of my final blog entries of 2018 (the one I wrote on Christmas Day) but in that blog entry I kept an open mind and wondered if the cable channel would return either series, or both, to the line-up in 2019 and sure enough both Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville and Rayality TV made their return to the weekend prime-time line-up on RFD-TV last weekend (January 5th/January 6th) but I never made mention of this in my January 6th or January 8th blog posts because I wasn't too sure if either show had returned on a permanent basis or if it was another false alarm but it looks as if both programs will be part of the RFD-TV line-up for the foreseeable future given that I looked ahead to next weekend's schedule on their webpage and RFD has the fifth episode of Season Three (guest starring Rhonda Vincent) scheduled to air next Saturday night (January 19th)...and this will make three consecutive weekends that the cable channel will have aired the two programs...and so I'm cautiously optimistic that, as I mentioned, each show will be on the weekend line-up on RFD-TV for the foreseeable future with no abrupt removal. Last night's episode guest starred B.J. Thomas.
On January 10th several video clips were uploaded onto YouTube promoting Ray's return to the RFD-TV airwaves. One clip features Ray at the piano inside the CabaRay discussing each series and then there are several video clips that promote a specific episode of Rayality TV. The clip-filled Rayality series features not only a mixture of music videos and live performances but clips from various programs from his extensive library of video footage are also inserted...each episode has a recurring theme...if an episode is titled 'chickens', just as an example, then pretty much all of the clips shown will center around the subject matter of chickens. The first video clip is the one featuring Ray discussing both television programs...
There have been four video clips uploaded to promote the first four episodes of Raylity TV. Seen below is clip one and clip four...
In my previous blog entry I focused on the single release of "Gitarzan" and how last week marked the 50th anniversary of it's chart debut (hitting the weekly music charts on January 6, 1969). I remarked that at some point this year I'll be posting blog entries focusing on the Gitarzan album as well as his second studio album from 1969, Have a Little Talk with Myself. At the moment I'm going to focus on the single release of "Have a Little Talk with Myself". Ray wrote it and it became the title track of his second studio album of 1969...and Monument released it as a single in the latter half of the year and it entered the charts early in 1970. There isn't any video clip of Ray performing the song on camera from the era in which it was recorded but you can find audio clips on YouTube of the 1969 recording. He re-recorded the song more than 40 years later with a different arrangement, and in abbreviated form, for a medley titled "Have a Little Talk with Myself/Just a Little Talk with Jesus" on his Gospel Collection CD. An audio clip of that particular 2014 recording can also be found on YouTube. The song originally appeared on the country charts early in 1970 (his second entry on the country music charts following "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" late in 1969).
On the pop chart "Have a Little Talk with Myself", strangely enough, didn't crack the Hot 100 at all...it Bubbled Under the Hot 100...meaning that the single never managed to even make it past the promotional stage. The unique chart is an extension of the Hot 100: for example...if a single hits number one on the Bubbling Under chart but doesn't make it onto the Hot 100 then it's official chart position is number 101. The chart consists of songs that are speculated to become hits on the Hot 100, specifically, but there have been a lot of instances where singles appear on the Bubbling Under chart but then go on to have chart runs in other music formats (such as country, rhythm and blues, soul). "Have a Little Talk with Myself" peaked in the lower half of the Bubbling Under chart (it consisted of 35 positions at the time) and so it's pop music peak position would have a triple digit number because of it peaking on the Bubbling Under chart. In the country music market the single managed to make it into the Top 100 but it peaked outside of the radio heavy Top-40 rankings. If you search the internet you'll find that several recording artists have recorded the song...including the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr. (just to name the most notable) but there have been other recordings of the song. It's an inspirational song and therefore it's often found on the gospel albums released on Ray Stevens...there have only been three gospel albums recorded by Ray anyhow...the gospel songs from his Turn Your Radio On album (from 1972) are the ones that had been reissued several times by a variety of different record labels and on many compilation albums you're usually going to find "Have a Little Talk with Myself" and "Turn Your Radio On" featured in the track lists. The Have a Little Talk with Myself studio album has never been issued in CD or Mp3 format. You can listen to the songs from that album on YouTube...but as a fan I'd love to see the studio album get the CD reissue treatment complete with liner notes and perhaps personal recollections/quotes from Ray Stevens himself...one can always wish. Later on this year I'll highlight the studio album since it, like the Gitarzan album, both turn 50 this year.
This is the image of Ray that appears on the Have a Little Talk With Myself album. Here it's used as a picture sleeve for an overseas release of "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", one of the singles from the 1969 album. The b-side, "The Minority", comes from Ray's 1968 album, Even Stevens. As most of Ray's fans are aware, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" was the first single to reach the country music charts for Ray. Ray was not being marketed as a country singer at that time but starting with this single and moving forward he'd frequently have songs cross over to the country charts. It wouldn't be until the late '70s that there was ever a concentrated effort to market Ray's music to country audiences. The Have a Little Talk With Myself album features Ray's interpretations of contemporary pop songs with a few all-new songs thrown into the mix. It is on the 1969 album where Ray covers songs made popular by The Beatles, for instance, as well as songs associated with Blood, Sweat, and Tears as well as the Hair stage play. The only songs on the album that weren't cover songs are "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", "The Little Woman", and the title track, "Have a Little Talk With Myself". Johnny Cash recorded "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" a year after Ray and that's why it's technically not a cover song for those who may assume that Johnny recorded the song first. The album has never been re-issued on CD or Mp3 but selections from the album often appeared on many low-budget releases and compilations throughout the '70s and much of the '80s.
Ray, 42 years later, continues to make music and tour. As I write this I assume he and his crew are already in Canada or at least on their way. Ray appears tonight and tomorrow in Niagara Falls up in Ontario, Canada at the Scotia Bank Convention Center. He's appearing there in the Winter Festival of Lights series. The concert today will be at 2pm and then on Tuesday November 29th the concert will start at 7pm. I'll be on the look out for any reaction from those who attended the show. I don't know if he'll perform Christmas songs or his classic songs considering that the political comedy he's currently doing has what I'd consider a largely American identity and therefore an audience in Canada perhaps may not be able to relate to it or appreciate it...but for those up near that venue here's the information:
Later this year a certain 45 single from Ray Stevens hits 41. The image of the single is off to the left...this particular image is the United Kingdom release of "Have a Little Talk With Myself". The single was released late in 1969 and it serves as a title track to one of Ray's most under-rated albums. The single in fact hit the country chart during the final week of 1969 and it reached it's peak during the first week of 1970. Yes, you read that correctly...this majestic, exquisite single about self-reflection, ego, and introspection was on the country music charts for just two weeks. The fact that it was on the country music chart in 1969 was a foreshadowing of Ray's eventual switch to the country music market. Prior to this single's release he had made his debut earlier in 1969 on the country chart with "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". It's just my opinion but I feel as if those two appearances on the country charts were a fluke...none of my research indicates that Monument Records sought out country radio support. The telling thing about Ray's future singles, though, were the cross genre flip-flopping that would occur. In a period of about 5 and a half to 6 years Ray Stevens singles would consistently chart pop, country, and Adult-Contemporary. Some of his singles would even cross the oceans and chart internationally during this 1969-1975 time period. Adult-Contemporary at the time was referred to as Easy-Listening or Middle of the Road. It was music aimed at adults who considered themselves fans of "pop music" but weren't necessarily fans of the younger, teenage-driven "Top-40" pop music.
As a Ray Stevens fan and nostalgia nut, looking back, I noticed that Ray's success relied almost entirely on the older, adult-driven market...but some of his songs would appeal to the mostly younger Top-40 set. A single released by Ray 40 years ago, namely "America, Communicate With Me", is a perfect example of the discrepancy between the various age groups and what one age group thought was great and what one age group didn't embrace as much. Among the Top-40 listeners the single did moderately well...almost reaching Top-40 status...but over in the radio formats aimed at the adults 35 and older the single reached the Top-15. Going by that statistic it goes a long way at explaining Ray's long-standing appeal and why it wasn't so difficult to market him as a country singer as time went on.
The Have a Little Talk With Myself album featured a couple of new songs but the bulk of the material was Ray's versions of contemporary pop hits by other artists. I wrote about this album in a previous blog entry called Have a Little Talk...about Ray!. You all can find it by exploring the archives on the right hand side of the screen.
A couple years ago Ray issued a CD where he covered the songs of Frank Sinatra. The CD was originally released in 2008 on his own label and sold exclusively through his own web-site and during concert stops. The actual title is Ray Stevens Sings Sinatra...Say What??. I purchased by copy at a merchandise table at one of his concerts. When I saw the CD I was stunned because at the time it wasn't being sold on his web-site and I'd wondered why...I then assumed that it must be an exclusive to concert goers but then it became available at his web-site store. Anyway, in 2009 the CD was released nationally but without any fanfare or promotion...I think it's a great CD salute. In an attempt, perhaps, to create a mood or an ambiance, Ray has the music come off like it's from a small, intimate session at some all-night lounge...complete with audience cheers and applause. Ray doesn't keep the same arrangements on every song, though, and the musical accompaniment is more along the jazz/R&B side than big band and swing. A couple of the songs are shortened, as well. The CD contains the following songs made famous by Sinatra...
I’ve Got You Under My Skin Night and Day I Get A Kick Out Of You All The Way High Hopes Witchcraft The Tender Trap Young At Heart Strangers In The Night That’s Life
