Ray Stevens: The Shriners Coffee Cup...

Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! In this first blog entry for the month of June I thought I'd share an image of me and the Shriners coffee cup...it's a new item in the webstore at the Ray Stevens webpage. There are several coffee mugs and T-shirts that are new but I picked the cup with the image of the Shriners Convention album cover on it. There's also some lyrical quotes on the other side of the cup. Now, of course, the image off to the left is of the 1980 Shriners Convention album so just picture that image on a coffee cup and you'll have the idea of what one of the newest items looks like. I'll be posting a picture of myself and the coffee cup at the end of the blog entry. The song, "Shriner's Convention", was introduced by Ray several months prior to the single's release early in 1980. There is footage of him singing a portion of the song in a made-for-TV crime drama from 1979 called Concrete Cowboys. The TV movie starred Jerry Reed and Tom Selleck. There's a couple of scenes within the movie where Jerry and Tom's characters visit a club and in performance is Ray Stevens. In one visit he's singing a piece of his 1975 song, "Sunshine", and in another scene he's singing "Shriner's Convention". The movie aired October 17, 1979. The "Shriner's Convention" single made it's debut on the various music industry charts in February 1980. One of the publications, Record World, had the single debuting February 9, 1980 which indicated that it had been commercially available starting sometime in January 1980. It was his debut performance for RCA Records. The first half of 1980 was more or less dominated by the "Shriner's Convention" single and the Shriners Convention album. His time at RCA was brief but, to my ears, the recordings he did in that three year period (1980, 1981, and 1982) are absolutely wonderful. 

In the photo below we see legendary Ray Stevens at work at the recording console. One could imagine he's intently listening to a snippet of a music track and deciding where to place the bass or the horns in the arrangement or he's listening to the playback of a recording and deciding that electric guitar is too loud in that portion of the song. I love this photo...well, I love all the photos of Ray that I've seen...but this one captures the serious, production minded side of Ray Stevens...the one that's usually kept behind the scenes inside his recording studio where only a lucky handful get to witness.  

Ray Stevens in Studio; 1981

There are, as I said, several new items in the Ray Stevens webstore and there are coffee cups sold featuring imagery related to "The Streak", "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", "Everything Is Beautiful", and then there's some of the older items related to the CabaRay showroom and some of Ray's other recordings. There's a wide selection of clothing, hats, music, and trinkets at his webstore. You can visit the webstore when you click HERE. Here's me and the Ray Stevens Shriners coffee cup. I didn't check my mailbox on Tuesday (May 30th) but I did check my post office box the next day and saw that the item had arrived. So, technically, I don't know if it arrived in the mail on a Tuesday or if it arrived on a Wednesday. No matter, though...I have it now and it's part of my personal Ray Stevens collection. 

June 2, 2023

I'm discussing Ray Stevens on RCA!

The seldom seen back cover of 1983's Greatest Hits. The front shows Ray in a black shirt with flower designs. There's video of him wearing this shirt in an episode of The Fall Guy called The Pirates of Nashville. In the episode Ray plays a character named Webb Covington. Charlie Daniels and Dottie West appear in the episode as well. Toward the end of the episode Ray performs "Piece of Paradise Called Tennessee", a song found on his 1983 Me album for Mercury Records. This collection came into my possession at some point in 1991 or 1992. I'd found it sitting amongst a rack of cassettes at a shopping store and at the time it was the only collection of Ray's that had "The Moonlight Special" on it. At that time I hadn't heard the song before and so it's inclusion on this 1983 collection was the impetus for my wanting it. The vinyl version of this Greatest Hits release features "The Dooright Family" as track 1 and "Shriner's Convention" as track 2. I don't know exactly why RCA would place the biggest hit single Ray had with the label as track 10 but yet that's what they did.

The cassette version of Greatest Hits switched the opening and closing tracks. In the cassette, "Shriner's Convention" leads off the collection while "The Dooright Family" closes out the collection. As I've remarked several times on this blog page I have no idea why RCA decided to showcase just two recordings Ray did for the label and fill the rest of the album with material readily available on other collections. The opening and closing tracks on this compilation come from Ray's RCA debut album in 1980 titled appropriately, Shriner's Convention. He had four more hit singles for RCA, in addition to "Shriner's Convention", that didn't make this collection: "Night Games", "One More Last Chance", "Written Down In My Heart", and the quasi-novelty song "Where the Sun Don't Shine". A couple years after this compilation came along in 1983 RCA issued an artist-by-artist series called Collector's Series. The compilation projects would all feature 8 recordings...the one for Ray came along in 1985. At the time of it's release Ray was by then on the MCA label. He had left RCA in 1983, signed with Mercury that same year, released one album for Mercury late in 1983 titled Me, left Mercury in mid 1984, then joined MCA later in 1984 for a hugely successful 5 year stay.

The Collector's Series release featured exclusively RCA recorded material...of the 8 recordings on the collection only three were chart hits: "Shriner's Convention", "One More Last Chance", and "Where the Sun Don't Shine". It didn't feature "Night Games" or "Written Down In My Heart". Nevertheless, the Collector's Series still remains the only compilation release to showcase RCA material exclusively. The compilation, released in 1985, was issued in cassette format in 1987, and re-issued in CD format in 1992. The peculiar thing about the two re-issues is RCA replaced the 1981 love ballad, "One More Last Chance", with the 1980 novelty "Put It In Your Ear". As a result, "Put It In Your Ear" appears on both the 1987 and 1992 re-issues while the original 1985 release features 1981's "One More Last Chance". "The Dooright Family" appeared on Collector's Series as well as 1983's Greatest Hits.

"The Dooright Family", while hysterical, was never an officially charted song. Over the course of time, through word of mouth and the like, the song became a popular recording amongst the Ray Stevens fans. Today it's treated as if it were a hit song in the traditional sense of the word...even having a music video made of it in 1995. The music videos for both "The Dooright Family" and "Shriner's Convention" debuted in Ray's 1995 movie, Get Serious! The music video of "Shriner's Convention" is available on You Tube...and here it is...

Ray Stevens...Critical Reaction, Part 5...

One of my scans is this image of Ray Stevens. It's from my cassette copy of Collector's Series which was released in 1985. As most dedicated/hard-core fans of Ray Stevens are aware the Collector's Series features 8 songs that Ray recorded during his brief stay at RCA in the early '80s. This title resurfaced in 1987 with a slightly different appearance and a song switch. 1985's release features Ray's 1981 love ballad, "One More Last Chance", while the 1987 re-issue replaces that ballad with a comical song Ray recorded in 1980, "Put It In Your Ear". The 1987 re-issue was re-issued once again in 1992 but this time around in CD form. The 1985 original release was available on vinyl and cassette, as was the 1987 re-issue. Only the 1992 re-issue emerged in CD format. As I've touched upon in previous blog entries this collection continues to remain the only commercial release featuring exclusively RCA material outside of the original studio album releases in 1980, 1981, 1982. Whether it's a copyright issue or contractual issues...it's always been a mystery as to why in the modern era his RCA recordings have yet to receive a proper showing on CD or Mp3. I'd love to see his RCA studio albums remastered and re-issued on CD...complete with liner notes or something like that...perhaps personal reflections from Ray himself!?!

1985 track-list:
1. Shriner's Convention; 1980
2. You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me; 1980
3. Country Boy, Country Club Girl; 1982
4. Where the Sun Don't Shine; 1982
5. The Dooright Family; 1980
6. Let's Do It Right This Time; 1981
7. One More Last Chance; 1981
8. Why Don't We Go Somewhere and Make Love; 1982

1987 track-list:
1. Shriner's Convention; 1980
2. You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me; 1980
3. Country Boy, Country Club Girl; 1982
4. Where the Sun Don't Shine; 1982
5. The Dooright Family; 1980
6. Let's Do It Right This Time; 1981
7. Why Don't We Go Somewhere and Make Love; 1982
8. Put It In Your Ear; 1980

Meanwhile, the recent music video release from Ray Stevens about the TSA and airport security, "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", has risen to 18,006 hits on You Tube. The video, as I've touched upon before, gets more hits than the numbers indicate due to the simple fact that it takes time to update play totals when video's are consistently getting played somewhere all over the world. As of now You Tube shows 18,006 as the play total for the video...and I'm sure thousands have watched it since that number was posted...so there's never going to be an exact play total because when it comes to tracking a viral music video the numbers are constantly going to be rising (much like the debt, deficit, and fuel prices).

Ray Stevens and the Shriners Convention...

The Shriner's Convention, as performed by Ray Stevens in 1979. (Don't tell me the blogger is writing about this song again!!). Yes, I'm writing about this song once again! 2010 continues to be the 30th anniversary of this song's commercial release and so as we draw closer to the end of this year I decided to once again spotlight this recording. The commercial single was issued in January of 1980. The above performance of Ray is from 1979 and it may very well be the first time he'd performed the song on television. Sharp eared listeners/fans are well aware of the full-length version and the radio version of this song. As I touched upon in previous blogs there's the slower, ballad-paced recording which runs 5 minutes, 33 seconds. There is also another version issued which has a much more urgent, quicker vocal delivery and it leaves out some of the lyrics, specifically the reference to The Knights of Columbus. This performance, even though it's the longer version, also leaves out the Knights of Columbus reference. RCA issued both versions as promo singles...distinguishing between the two simply as Long Version and Short Version. The "short version" runs 4 minutes, 10 seconds...which was still relatively long for a country single at the time. Each version was issued as A-side and B-side on red vinyl and sometimes come up for sale on-line. The general public commercial single featured the long version as the A-side and "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me" as the B-side. The song takes place inside a fictional hotel in Hahira, Georgia where two members of a local Shrine are having a phone conversation during a convention. The humor of the song stems from the outrageous behavior of a renegade Shriner named Coy and the stern, straight-laced Shriner named Bubba. Their lodge names are Noble Lumpkin and the Illustrious Potentate, respectively, though they're only referenced as such at the beginning of the performance.

Random Ray Stevens conversation...

While searching through eBay earlier I came across a seller offering an LP version of Shriner's Convention for an opening bid of ninety-nine cents. This price, of course, wouldn't include the shipping and handling for anyone who wins the album. Given that Ray's RCA material has yet to really be properly showcased in CD or Mp3 format it would be wise for those seeking out his 1980 album to seriously think about either purchasing the LP or keep track of it in your watch list. Those who are familiar with eBay will know what I'm referring to. I already have the LP version of Shriner's Convention and it was on eBay where I bought the equally scarce cassette version when it came up for sale a couple of years ago. The cassette version has a catalog number of AYK1-4253 while the LP's catalog number is AHK1-3574. 15 years later Ray made a music video of the song and included it in his direct-to-video movie, Get Serious!. Ray later uploaded the 1995 music video onto You Tube back in July of 2009. I've written about Ray's 1995 movie several times. It's available in home video format and can often be found on eBay. If you do an internet search for "Ray Stevens + Get Serious" you're bound to come across web-sites that give information about the movie.

The movie's length is 1 hour, 50 minutes and the home video went on to become another sales success for Ray...charting in the Top-10 on Billboard's Video chart throughout much of 1997. It was released to retail stores late in 1996 following it's nearly year-long exclusive direct-mail offer as to why it didn't reach the Billboard charts until January 1997. One of the rules of Billboard magazine for the longest time was an item had to be available in retail stores in order for the product to appear on the weekly charts...those rules aren't currently in place given the on-line digital age we live in...but back in 1997 those rules were still enforced and so Ray's movie wasn't eligible to enter the charts until it became available at retail stores. This same chart policy about retail availability is what caused his 1992 and 1993 direct-mail home video releases to become chart eligible in 1993 and 1994 respectively. But anyway...enjoy the 1995 music video of "Shriner's Convention"...



As I mentioned in a previous blog entry this cassette version has two songs that appear in different sequence than how they appear on the LP version. In the cassette version "Coin Machine" appears as track number two while "The Last Laugh" appears as track number nine. On the LP version "The Last Laugh" is track number two and "Coin Machine" closes out the album as track number nine. Yes, you read that correctly, the comedy album only features 9 songs but a couple of the songs are rather lengthy and so it plays out like an 11 or 12 track collection as far as overall length of time is concerned. The title track, "Shriner's Convention", clocks in at around 5 minutes, 33 seconds while "The Dooright Family" clocks in at just over 5 minutes in length. "Rita's Letter", a comical love story, is easily 3 and a half minutes long but I don't know the official length of that particular recording. "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me" is 3 minutes, 50 seconds.

Ray Stevens: Pop Goes the Country follow-up...

It doesn't appear that I can contain my excitement over receiving these DVD's in the mail today. I sent away for them this past Saturday...I wasn't expecting them to arrive this soon after the disclaimer alerted me it would take 5-7 days for delivery. Anyway, they arrived in the mail today and I watched the Ray Stevens sections of the DVD's which were the main reason why I purchased them. I'll no doubt watch other sections of the DVD, too, because I like watching old/vintage/classic country music programs. Although this program was designed to tie in with the pop influences in country music the show still gave a national spotlight to well-established country music acts. On Volume 15, Ray is incredible in my opinion. He walks out and immediately launches into "You Are So Beautiful", his Top-20 country hit from 1976. After the performance he has his interview segment with Ralph where Dolly Parton is brought up. Ray talks about once being Dolly's record producer and how he envisioned her as an R&B singer, saying the vibrato effect of her voice in the mid '60s sounded closer to R&B than to what country audiences were used to at the time. This can also be said about Willie Nelson, too, who himself had a voice that didn't become marketable in country music until the 1970's. Ray's next song was "Save Me From Myself", in which he sang the first verse and the chorus. The song originated from 1977. Later, Ralph highlights various groups that Ray has sang about in various songs and then tells the audience that Shriners can now be added to that list.

Ray explains the idea behind the song and then performs "Shriner's Convention" in it's entirety. This episode I believe was taped in 1979 because the first two songs that he performed were both recorded for Warner Brothers, the label he was on during 1976-1979, while "Shriner's Convention" would become his debut single on RCA Records in February of 1980. This very well could be the first time he performed the song on television. An interesting fact about that song is there were two recordings of it cut relatively close to one another...one recording credits 1979 as the copyright year and another recording credits 1980 as the copyright year. The 1979 recording can be found on MCA's Greatest Hits from 1987 and CURB Records His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits from 1990. Most of the other albums that feature that song use the 1980 recording.

Toward the end of the show Ralph asks Ray about his idols and about piano players. Ray does a few lines of "Hallelujah, I Love You So", a Ray Charles hit. Ralph brings up Floyd Cramer and Ray performs "Last Date".

Moving on to Volume 17...this episode was hosted by Tom T Hall. Ray opens the show singing a much different take on "You've Got the Music Inside" complete with hand-claps and an up-tempo arrangement. Midway through this hand-clapping frenzy he slows the song down but then goes back into the up-tempo sing-a-long style. For those familiar with the song it was written and recorded by Ray as a slow ballad. Tom later has Ray perform "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". Ray sings the first verse and the chorus. Later, Ray and Tom play a game where audience members call out their favorite Ray Stevens and Tom T Hall songs and the object of the game was to sing a line or two from the songs. Ray performed a couple of lines from "The Streak" and "Everything is Beautiful". Tom sang a few lines of "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine" and "Harper Valley, PTA". Ray and Tom sing a duet together, "It's Hard To be Humble", which I first heard by Mac Davis. The duet is hilarious, I think, with the two of them intentionally belting out a lot of the words. The instrumentation behind the song is like a polka almost...maybe it is a polka.

On Volume 15 the other guest of the show was a singer known as Dottsy. On Volume 17 the other guest of the show was teenager Wendy Holcombe who performed several banjo numbers and sang "Rocky Top".

Pop! Goes the Country was a half hour show and so a lot of times the guests would sing one or two songs in their entirety and then sing a shortened version of another song. The show moved along quickly, too, and there was hardly ever more than 3 guests per show...most episodes featured 2 guests. Some critics say this program was sort of like country music's version of The Midnight Special and Solid Gold rolled into one.

Ray Stevens: 30 years ago in Hahira, Georgia

30 years ago Ray Stevens told us a funny story about a couple of Shriner's inside a hotel in Hahira, Georgia. The story was filled with satire and innuendo as one of the most intriguing facets of the song at the time was that most of it took place during a one-sided phone conversation...meaning the listener was only hearing the reactions of one person instead of the voice of two. The music video was filmed in 1995 and the song itself was released in early 1980. At the time of the song's release, of course, there wasn't such a thing as widespread use of cell-phones, pagers, and other devices and so a lot of the charm of the song is in the use of a land-line phone...with a cord...and this was visually depicted on the music video. In my opinion a lot of the charm of the song deals with the gentle satire that's heard throughout as the names of fraternities are spoofed and the "rules" of such organizations are also spoofed as Bubba is depicted as the strict Shriner behaving himself.

Coy, on the other hand, is seen as the goofball who just wants to have fun. The concept of satirizing organizational self-importance can be interpreted as well due to Bubba threatening to throw Coy out of the Shrine if he continues to act up...going as far as saying Coy could face public shunning as a result. Although the Shriner's are who get the focus in this song you can apply these same set of beliefs of all-importance to just about any social club. Prior to the song's 1980 release it's been reported that Ray had the local Shriner's in and around Nashville, Tennessee listen to the song before he released it. Ray got the okay sign that the satire wasn't offensive or harsh and it was released in early 1980 on the RCA label. The single reached the Top-10 on the country music charts proving that the country music audiences across the nation accepted the song and found it hysterical. The album of the same name also placed in the Top-10 on the country music album charts. Check my blog entry called "Ray Stevens: 45 at 30" for detailed information about the song and album.

Ray Stevens: motorcycles, hotels, shriners...

Shriner's Convention is a 1980 single from Ray Stevens that told the story of a couple of shriner's who were staying at a hotel. The recording is a one-sided phone conversation between straight-laced shriner, Bubba, and the happy-go-lucky shriner, Coy. The inspiration for the song according to Ray came about when he spent a sleepless night at a hotel and the shriner's happened to be there partying into the night. This was the debut single and album for Ray on RCA Records. This was also Ray's first full-blown comedy album in six years, his last being Boogity-Boogity in 1974.

The album consisted of nine comedy songs...why nine? I suppose it's because two of the songs on the album are over 5 minutes in length and as a result took up too much space on the vinyl album. "Shriner's Convention" hit the country Top-10 as did the album. The back of the album had a collection of comic strip panels depicting the song's antics. A cartoon drawing of Ray appeared on the back talking to Bubba. The woman on the motorcycle doesn't have a name. In the song, Coy is discovered to have been at the hotel's swimming pool in nothing but his underwear with a bunch of waitresses from the lounge. As an added note, Coy has a tendency to rev up his motorcycle engine during his phone calls with Bubba. Ray had a motorcycle put together to resemble the one that appears on this album cover. There are many instances where he'd ride the motorcycle onto the stage at the start of this song. Although it happened years after the single's release, Ray did a music video of this song in 1995.

The rest of the album is your typical comedy from Ray Stevens. The other song of long duration in addition to the title track is "The Dooright Family". This particular recording is a hilarious story about a traveling gospel family. There's Daddy Dooright, Mama Dooright, Brother Therman, Sister Doris and Dewdrop, and Brother Virgil. The song is a satire of Sunday morning gospel radio shows but I don't believe any religious radio show was ever quite like this. Brother Therman's a fire and brimstone Orel Roberts-type shouting and carrying on about the sins and evils of disco's. Brother Virgil's the bass singer in the family group. Mama is the piano player. The sister's are the harmony singers. Daddy Dooright tries to keep everything together, running smoothly. He is the one who has to keep track of Mama, who can become rather giddy...prone to having fits of laughter...the solution to stop the laughing is for Daddy to simply command Brother Virgil to punch her. Upon Daddy's command, we hear a piano firing squad, making it sound like Virgil's knocked Mama face forward into the piano. This was re-created in the 1995 music video as well...with the camera panning into the shocked audience.

"The Last Laugh" is a song about a man who insists on getting the better of a relationship and tells the woman that no matter what, he'll have the last laugh on her for the way she's treated him. The humor comes from the bizarre ways he'll have the last laugh. For example, one of his idea's is to go to the Hollywood sign and jump off of it...proclaiming that he'll have the last laugh, never realizing the his own death will result in all of his idea's at getting even. A hook of the song is Ray's "ha ha ha HA" laugh.

There is a rather bizarre comedy song on this album. "Put It In Your Ear" is performed as a soft love ballad at first...but then it blends into a funny recitation from Ray in his exaggerated German accent. Another song that could fit into the bizarre category is "Hey There"...but this one is utterly bizarre...when you have bizarre and utterly bizarre on the same comedy album then it becomes a bona-fide novelty music lover's delight. "Hey There" is a spoof of a love ballad from the 1950's if i'm not mistaken. Ray's version features the sounds of Lips Liblonski crooning the romantic lyrics. To give the song an added touch, Ray starts the song out talking in a soft voice mimicking any number of DJ's heard on easy-listening radio.

"The Watch Song" and "Coin Machine" probably are for certain listeners who will understand the humor. On "The Watch Song" we hear the story of a man who loves his watch and couldn't stand to part with it...but conflict ensues and a fight breaks out and the man's watch is destroyed by a drunk cowboy. This causes the man to go berzerk and he ends up killing the cowboy. There's some jokes about Timex watches in here and of course Timex's spokesman, John Cameron Swayze, features in the song prominently as he is the man who has the ear of the watch lover who's on death row. "Coin Machine" carries an up-tempo delivery and it tells the story of a man who's at his wit's end with vending machines and proceeds to tell about his misadventures with them.

Florida figures a great deal in "You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me", a love song/comedy song that finds Ray trying to hook up with women during spring break. The concept of the song has to do with the southern accent on the women he encounters and how they tell him that "you're never going to tamper with me", but in a southern accent it comes out as "you're never goin' to tampa with me". I think it's a clever song, using cities of Florida within the lyrics. One of the more subdued recordings on the album is "Rita's Letter" which tells the story of a woman who gets a letter from a former boyfriend who's ran off and apparently joined up with a commune of sorts...changing his name to Nirvana from Beauregard.

1. Shriner's Convention
2. The Last Laugh
3. Rita's Letter
4. The Watch Song
5. The Dooright Family
6. Hey There
7. Put It In Your Ear
8. You're Never Goin' To Tampa With Me
9. Coin Machine

In the cassette version of the album, track #2 and track #9 were switched and "The Last Laugh" closed out the cassette version.