Ray Stevens: If You Like Your Plan (music video)

Hello to all the fans of Ray Stevens! I hope you all have purchased Ray's Nashville book and his Gospel Collection, Volume One CD. If you haven't I'd suggest you do so. The paperback of Nashville is sold-out on Amazon at the moment. The Kindle, of course, is still available as is a hardback book...it's available at Ray's on-line store. The Gospel Collection, Volume One is a near sell-out on Amazon. As of this writing the CD's product page states that there's only 3 CD's in stock but more on the way.

The main focus of this blog entry is on the most recent offering from Ray Stevens...a brand new music video called "If You Like Your Plan". If you're a political junkie or follow current events you should be familiar with that phrase. It's an infamous phrase uttered by Obama during his national sales pitch for Obama Care (the one size fits all Government run health care system). As the scholars and critics had long since complained...people aren't necessarily going to be keeping their current health care plan...Obama Care's burden on private insurance companies places those organizations in a bind and in order to economically survive they'll have to raise their monthly/yearly rates.

So, yes, a lot of private health insurance companies are dumping a lot of their policy holders into the Federally run Obama Care out of economic necessity rather than by choice. Obama and those that dreamed up this health care monstrosity had always knew this sort of thing would happen (private insurance companies dumping their policy holders into the Government-run health care) and that's the reason a lot of people in 2010 could see this coming years in advance but only the informed paid any attention to the out-cry. A true capitalist could see the dangers of Obama Care...obviously that leaves Obama out.

And so, with that being said, have a look and a laugh at the latest Ray Stevens music video, "If You Like Your Plan". You'll like...LOVE...this video a lot!!!

Ray Stevens: Patriots and Politics DVD...

As is typical with so many other blog pages and other web-pages when it gets to be Christmas time, and the days after, as the country coasts into a new year I tend to slow down my blog entries until the following year as well. The Ray Stevens Year-in-Review for 2012 can be easily summarized as the year of the Encyclopedia but yet there were other things happening as well. The Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music hit the market in late February 2012 and in the days leading up to it's release and the days after you could catch Ray on a number of radio programs and see interviews with Ray promoting the Encyclopedia's release. If you Google the name of the 9-CD collection you're more than likely to find all of the print interviews as well as websites that may still offer audio clips from the various interviews he gave on radio programs during that February-March 2012 time period. Of course you'd have to look in the archive sections of those radio station websites and use the name, 'Ray Stevens', as the key word. One of the things that Ray did for publicity was tape a series of commercials in addition to this behind-the-scenes video clip showing him in the recording studio. There were two commercials taped in addition to the studio clip. One of the commercials ran rather long, almost like a mini infomercial at 4 minutes, while a second commercial had a standard running length of a little over 1 minute. The shorter commercial was later edited down to 45 seconds.

I decided to embed the studio clip which you can see below...



In May of 2012 a local television station in Tennessee showcased the Encyclopedia and included footage of Ray discussing the collection...



On the political side of things Ray offered a music video of "Obama Nation" in July of 2012, a searing look into the priorities and visions of the current White House dweller. The video, ironically, didn't come from his 2011 CD, Spirit of '76, but rather 2010's We the People CD. The video's gotten more than 765,000 on-line views since it's release.

Elsewhere in the political arena, Ray's You Tube channel provided two concert performances taped at the Welk Theatre in 2010. First up is the concert performance of "We The People" and then there's "If 10% Is Good Enough for Jesus". These two performances were soon to be included in a DVD release titled Patriots and Politics which you see in the picture at the start of this blog entry.

The DVD features one of the concerts that he did during his series of concerts at The Welk Theatre in October 2010 at the height of the mid-term election cycle. The DVD begins with a short documentary about famous figures in American history. Ray narrates the segment. This leads into a Yankee Doodle/Dixie Medley which features Ray and several of his band members. Ray takes the stage all by himself beginning with the third selection, "Dear Andy Griffith". Throughout the concert, for those not aware, Ray tells jokes and one-liners and often tells comical stories that are primarily used as lead-in's to the songs he'll be singing. Large applause is heard throughout "If 10% Is Good Enough for Jesus" and then we get to see Ray perform his illegal immigration smash hit, "Come to the U.S.A.". A few of the performances are aided by video snippets played on a large screen above the stage. Dedicated to Bernie Madoff is "Mr. Businessman" while a rousing performance and roaring applause greets his performance of the anti-Obamacare song, "We The People". "Safe at Home" follows...it's a nostalgia laced song that Ray's performed at his concerts for quite a few years even though it was never officially released as a single or music video. The military anthem, "Thank You", is up next. Scenes from the music video play above the performance. One of the members of Ray's stage show, Janice Copeland, sings "God Bless America" accompanied by Ray and the others. This is immediately followed by "Grand Old Flag" which is where the image of the DVD's cover shot was lifted. Ironically there isn't a performance of "Throw the Bums Out!" but overall the concert was fast-paced and extremely lighthearted considering the enormous political and social weight that the issues being sung about can carry.

If you ever happen to come across any review of this particular DVD and all you read is contempt and anger from the reviewer then chances are the criticism comes from political differences and nothing more.

This political concert was part of a longer show. The other half of the concert featured Ray performing his classic recordings like "The Streak", "Gitarzan", "Everything Is Beautiful", "It's Me Again, Margaret", etc. These non-political performances are available on DVD, too, in a release called Such a Night: 50 Years of Hits and Hilarity.

Fast-forward to November 2012...Ray releases a music video to "Grandpa Voted Democrat", a song found on Spirit of '76. The video came just days before the 2012 elections so there wasn't a whole lot of time for the video to reach hundreds of thousands of people. The song is about voter fraud and the video's gotten more than 170,000 views so far. It's not a big disappointment but I can't help but think of how many more hundreds of thousands of views it could've had if released perhaps a couple weeks earlier as the Election was growing closer. I'm sure the video will gain even more views as the next election cycle rolls around. In the meantime, Ray closed out 2012 on a kind of music video roll...

A few weeks ago Ray unveiled his video to "White Christmas". This turned out to be Ray's third Christmas music video following "Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Santa Claus Is Watching You". The video shows Ray and three of his harmony singers in Christmas attire crooning "White Christmas". The song can be found on the 2009 CD, Ray Stevens Christmas. To date, "White Christmas" has 11,424 views. This video was followed by not one, not two, but three more Christmas music videos! "Blue Christmas", done in stuttering pig style, has more than 6,000 views. "Redneck Christmas", a novelty from Ray's 1997 CD, Christmas Through a Different Window, has more than 14,500 views. A fourth music video release in December 2012, "Merry Christmas", out-performed the other three. "Merry Christmas", a song supporting the right of people to say 'Merry Christmas' rather than 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings', has already moved beyond the 100,000 mark and now sits with 113,631 views at the moment. So far "Merry Christmas" is only available as a You Tube video.

What will 2013 have in store for Ray Stevens? Well, in January 2013 Ray will have a birthday...this is something we already know. There is talk of a bluegrass CD...Ray performed a couple of songs at a Grand Ole Opry appearance from this future release. I assume this will be one of the first projects released by Ray in the new year...but we will see what happens as it happens!

Ray Stevens: Obama Nation, Part 8...

Here we are...an early Sunday morning on August 12, 2012...looking at the numbers for "Obama Nation" I see that it's gained more than 60,000 additional views since my previous blog entry. The total number of views as of now are 372,579! The "Obama Nation" Mp3 can be purchased Here.

The song comes from Ray's album, We The People, which to date has gotten 26 reviews on Amazon...23 of those reviews give the project 4 stars or better. 20 of those 23 gave the project 5 stars. This leaves us with a difference of 3. One customer gave the project 3 stars while 2 customers rated it a 1 star.

Polarizing responses are quite commonplace when it comes to projects with a political overtone. Those who love the messages being championed and praised in the songs are going to love the project while those of an opposing point of view are going to trash and rip apart the songs and the artist.

The video's gotten more than 300 comments...and it's sad but true that there's plenty of people who still rush to Obama's defense in spite of everything that's went on since January 2009. Those people, for a lack of a better word, are mostly ignorant about the things the President has done. If not ignorance then it's total agreement with the policies of Obama, or, people simply don't care how the President wants to run the country...and that's more worse.  



In other news, this is the day after the announcement was made by Mitt Romney that his running mate will be Paul Ryan.

I, like a lot of people, applaud the decision...for some people the choice came out of left field but for a lot of other people it makes perfect sense. I was watching, on and off, the coverage on Fox News most of yesterday afternoon and evening and couldn't believe the things I was hearing from the Democrat personalities...for they were setting up a storyline for the next three months to focus on non-issues that fail to really address the problems of the day.

Obama speaks to the envious, jealous, and covetous...when he stated that he wants to level the playing field, what he really meant is he wants to take from the wealthy and take from the successful and give it to those who didn't earn it. He's also counting on people being ignorant about the relevant issues, specifically his failings and the all too true bloated expansion of the Federal Government, and he hopes to have voters focusing on class envy, societal values, and a Utopian fantasy land.

Now with the announcement of Paul Ryan as a running mate...a no-nonsense fiscal hawk...Romney has an even better chance of beating Obama in November. The economy will be a driving force in the 2012 election and who better to have as a running mate than a Congressman with a strong track record in economic legislation. In November voters will have a clear choice on how the country will be ran for the next four years. Do we want more of Obama/Biden and the overbearing Federal Government having their hands all over our personal lives or do we want a hands-off Federal Government that doesn't seek to control and dictate how we live our lives. I think the choice is pretty obvious...if you want the latter then vote Romney/Ryan in November. In all honesty I don't understand how anybody could want massive regulations and a controlling Federal Government...unless, as mentioned, some people out there are simply ignorant and don't understand what Obama's really doing and how the personal liberties we all have are threatened by his Administration.

"Obama Nation" speaks to this...watch it, listen to it, and enjoy it.

In the Ray Stevens Mood...

Here we are on Good Friday...and In the Ray Stevens Mood...there are several new items up for sale at Ray's web-site store and I'm sure you all will probably want to add any of the items to your own collection. First off there's a new T-shirt promoting the Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music. It's a black T-shirt that reads Ray Stevens on top, with the gold comedy mask underneath, and the words Recorded Comedy Music below. Secondly there is a new hat with the gold comedy mask on it. Next we have a golden nugget from the past...a songbook that I hadn't seen for sale since the days that I was a member of Ray's FFFOL fan club. The songbook features a familiar publicity photo of Ray. That's not all...there is something that I call a Tea Party Extravaganza being offered, too. It consists of the 22-song, 4 music video project from 2010 called We The People that I've written extensively about, the American flag lapel pin, the 2011 project titled Spirit of '76 that I've also written about, PLUS a brand new booklet containing the lyrics to all the songs with commentary/opinion from both Ray Stevens and his songwriting partner-in-rhyme, Buddy Kalb. The booklet is titled Let's Get Political. For those who already have the 2010 and 2011 CD's you can purchase the Let's Get Political booklet separately for $9.95 which is what I did earlier this morning. Here are the links to the T-shirt and the booklet: 

Ray Stevens T-Shirt

Let's Get Political booklet

Now, of course, once you visit any of those links you can navigate to other parts of his site and other parts of the store for information about other products.

The Branson, Missouri performance of "We The People" from Ray Stevens that I posted the other day has risen to nearly 2,000 views on You Tube. Oh yes, I'm going to embed the video once again...

Ray Stevens: We The People in Concert...

A quick blog entry tonight...here's a brand new video of Ray performing "We The People" at a Branson, Missouri concert. My guess is this was taped during his previous slate of shows at the Welk Theater. It's gotten over 300 views at the moment.

Ray Stevens In Concert...

Hello all...as a reminder...Ray Stevens will be out on the concert trail for several dates starting in October 2011. He'll get things started with an upcoming concert at the Alabama Theatre in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The show will be on Saturday October 8th at 7pm and all of the information can be found by clicking the theatre's link in the previous sentence. He'll close out October by appearing at the Country Tonite Theatre in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It'll be this concert, which takes place on Friday October 21st, that Ray will do two shows. There will be a 3pm show and an 8pm show. Ray will then do three shows in November. The first one will take place in Biloxi, Mississippi on November 19th at the Imperial Palace Resort Spa. This show will start at 8pm and it'll be in what the venue calls Studio A on the second floor (for those familiar with the venue!). Ray will then be appearing in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada on November 28th and 29th at the Scotiabank Convention Center. He's appearing during what the venue is billing as a Winter Festival of Lights and you can read all about it here. As you'll see, the venue's web-site has him paired up with Lorrie Morgan but there's no indication of which artist will perform first or if Lorrie appears just on the 28th or if Ray only appears on the 29th. It indicates that the November 28th appearance will be at 2pm while the November 29th appearance will be at 7pm. Ray's web-page states that he'll appear at this venue on both days so it's safe to say that Lorrie will also be appearing on those two days as well. Once you visit the Scotiabank Convention Centre's web-page with the link I provided you'll be able to examine the venue's site and call for information. Lastly, in February 2012, Ray will be appearing at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach, Florida. The exact date is February 21, 2012 and the show starts at 7pm. This venue is the only one to feature a press release that promotes his current success with political on-line music videos. You can buy tickets well in advance at their web-site. Meanwhile, according to a tweet posted on his Twitter page, Ray will soon be releasing a brand new on-line music video for "Mr. President - Mr. President", a song from his current Spirit of '76 CD. A lot of us have been hoping for a music video of this particular song and I can't wait to see it once it gets uploaded in the not too distant future.

Ray Stevens discusses Obama and other issues...

Good Tuesday morning all you Ray Stevens fans!! I came home from work to find that at some point yesterday Ray submitted an opinion/commentary to Fox News and it was published in their opinion section. To read Ray's commentary on Obama all you have to do is click here and read it for yourselves. I was thrilled to read the commentary and enjoyed it greatly. It will no doubt make it's way onto the liberal blogs and afterward will predictably become maligned and trashed and called everything you can think of. I was surprised to find that Ray wrote an opinion piece since it's something that I never would've thought he'd do considering his songs and videos speak for themselves but it was great seeing him enter the commentary realm in this sort of way, too. Who knows if he'll do this regularly or not?! In the meantime his current music video, "Obama Budget Plan", has enjoyed 592,445 on-line views so far!

Expressing the Ray Stevens fandom, Part 2...

Good Wednesday morning all the Ray Stevens fans out there! This time around we mostly focus on a new video upload of Ray having a great ol' time at a Tea Party rally.

Uploaded on You Tube yesterday by a member named BransonRadioLive comes this video clip of Ray Stevens from the Tea Party rally that was held in Branson, Missouri this past Saturday. The actual date was October 23, 2010. This was also the day that he wrapped up his concert series at the Welk Theater.



Wasn't that great??? I liked the way he addressed the song, "Throw the Bums Out!", by making it clear that there's good and bad politicians...and that the song is dedicated to those bad ones. I liked the joke about the word "politics". I liked the video, of course, and here's hoping Ray continues to appear at various Tea Party-themed rallies for quite some time to come.

The mid-term elections are inching ever so close...next Tuesday will be here before anyone knows it: November 2, 2010. In my opinion We The People, the CD that Ray issued back in the early part of this year, would make a great Christmas gift for the politically-oriented in your family. Actually, one doesn't really have to be a political junkie to be entertained by the songs. Many of the songs on the CD state common sense solutions and it's this "common sense/everyday man" approach that allows the CD to be entertaining and political/patriotic at the same time.

But, I will say that hard-core leftists, liberals, and or progressives probably won't be too happy after giving this CD a listen...I'll go further and say the liberal-progressives probably won't even listen to the CD's opening track all the way through before they start seeing red. So it's best if given to somebody that leans center-right politically. In other words it's the perfect gift for the conservative and Tea Partier in your family.

Let's back up 49 years...yes...that's not a typo! It was 49 years ago that Ray Stevens hit the national Hot 100 for the very first time. 1961 saw the release of a comical song with a rather strange title. We come to call it simply "Jeremiah Peabody" or "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills". The full, complete, official title is "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills". Ray had been issuing singles since 1957 but this is the first one that hit the Hot 100...even reaching Top-40 status. Next year the single, of course, will celebrate it's Golden Anniversary...50 years of Jeremiah Peabody! The single was released in July of 1961 and reached it's Top-40 peak in September. And so, next year around July 2011, I'll throw a party for the single's Golden Anniversary.

Ray Stevens: Congressional Comedy...

As most of you Ray Stevens fans are aware of, he took part in the April 15th Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. The event ran nearly 4 hours and from all indications it was a success. I caught most of it...I was away from home earlier in the afternoon and I made it home to catch the live video stream mid-way through. An on-line friend of mine informed me that Ray had already performed "If 10% Is Good Enough for Jesus" and "Safe at Home". Ray would also perform "Thank You" and "The Star Spangled Banner"...and then perform an abbreviated version of "Throw the Bums Out!" while holding the lyrics in his hand. He remarked that the song was so new and that he'd never performed it in concert yet. The music video of the song has gotten 83,480 hits on You Tube so far. "Caribou Barbie" has gotten 69,041 hits, "Thank You" has gotten 106,149 hits, while the video that I refer to as the big one, "We The People", is at 2,955,457 hits.

A commercial for Ray's new project, We The People, is available at You Tube as well...and the commercial as of now has gotten 2,443 hits. The unique thing about the commercial is that it runs much longer...and if it were ever adapted for television it would have to be edited down considerably. The commercial runs two minutes...the average commercial I think runs less than 50 seconds. However, back in the 1990's when he was selling his home videos on television, the commercials were like a minute and a half.

Just some of the speakers at the event were Victoria Jackson, Tucker Carlson, Ron Paul, Andrew Breitbart, and a whole host of others. In hindsight there were no vicious reports in the media...although the usual snickering and mocking took place by those in the liberal blogosphere who, for whatever reason, feel compelled to make fun of people who simply want limited Government and fiscal responsibility from those in Congress. As I've written about before...Ray isn't immune from the same kinds of insults that are thrown at the Tea Party in general. However, to single out any blogs that have insulting comments directed at Ray would be like giving those remarks credibility which is what I don't want to do. Here's hoping no other fans of Ray's out there lash out at criticism because it only pleases those who make the insulting comments. They want a reaction...and sometimes it's hard to resist...but if you ignore those kinds of hateful comments you'll find that the tormentors will give up because they're not having any fun.

Ray Stevens: Caribou Barbie, Part Four

Ray Stevens and the Caribou Barbie continue to obtain strong hits on video hosting sites across the internet. You Tube, of course, is where the music video originates and it's the You Tube video that's embedded across the internet in blogs and web-sites. To date there have been 35,690 hits. I decided to embed the music video once again in this blog. In the previous blog entry I copied the URL code. In essence, Ray has three video hits happening at the same time and each three have their own audience pretty much. Starting with the current one, "Caribou Barbie", and the big one, "We The People", and then there's the military tribute of "Thank You". In the latter's case, that particular song originates from 2004 but Ray never uploaded the actual music video onto You Tube until January 4, 2010. As of this writing the hit totals for those three music videos are as follows...the date on the left of each video title is it's upload date:

3/11/2010: Caribou Barbie: 35,690
1/4/2010: Thank You: 89,936
12/11/2009: We The People: 2,802,478



"We The People" as you can see from the hit count has passed the 2.7 million mark and it's into 2.8 million hits. It will more than likely reach 3 million hits and this coming Sunday March 21, 2010 there is suppose to be one last major vote on ObamaCare. It's a convoluted legislation and political mess that will no doubt surface at some point on Sunday when Democrat leaders in Congress are going to maneuver and sneak in ObamaCare without actually having an up or down vote. Afterward, the Democrats in favor of ObamaCare will proclaim that ObamaCare has passed even though there wouldn't have been a vote on the actual bill. It's a trick called "deem and pass" where, I think, the Senate bill will have been "deemed" to have passed in the House and then the Senate will certify it's so-called "passage" and send it to Obama for him to sign into law. I'll stop while I'm ahead because it's starting to sound confusing even to me! ObamaCare, for some who still don't know, is a socialist program centered around health care that lays the foundation for more and more Government expansion over private enterprise. The goal isn't to offer health care to those who don't have it.

The goal of ObamaCare is to slowly but surely destroy private enterprise because those private sector companies are not going to have the power to compete with Government run health care. The Government is going to entice free health care and what will that do to insurance companies across the country? Consumers are going to say to themselves "hey, why am I paying for insurance when I can get it for free through the Government??". The other side of the equation are the insurance companies...they'll no doubt lower premiums and costs, etc etc in order to keep customers from fleeing them and hooking up with ObamaCare, but, ultimately, the private insurance companies are not going to be able to make a profit and they'll go out of business. There are even sound-bytes of Obama declaring his visions of private industry health care being eliminated. Now do you see where I'm heading with this? ObamaCare is much more than health care...it's a path to socialism as we've said all along.

Edit 3/21/2010: The House has decided not to vote on ObamaCare using the 'deem and pass' tactic and will instead have a conventional yes or no vote.

Ray Stevens: The O'Reilly Interview

Click the link below to see the interview between O'Reilly and Ray Stevens...if the link doesn't work and a video doesn't start playing you can always visit the Fox News web-page and do a search for "Ray Stevens" and the video will come up.

Opposing Obamacare

Hello all you Ray Stevens fans out there!! Isn't it interesting that when "We The People" was beginning it's phenomenal rise on You Tube that you didn't hardly see much concentrated opposition to the song AND Ray Stevens as you do now. What a difference an interview with O'Reilly makes. WOW! Now you have the usual parasites who trash O'Reilly on a daily basis going after Ray Stevens, too! The interview, straight from the Fox web-site, is also on You Tube uploaded by someone not affiliated with Fox News. That video upload is of lesser sound quality and the replies are mostly comments from the far-left, which is ironic, seeing the "We The People" has a broad spectrum of beliefs from all political ideologies.

So, as a response, I've decided to upload the better quality video from Fox's own web-site. The site allows visitors to embed their videos onto blogs and so I'm taking advantage of that opportunity. I feel the comments and insults thrown at Ray Stevens, specifically after his O'Reilly interview, are uncalled for. It doesn't help matters when the Messiah of the mundane, Keith Olbermann, decides to single out the interview and in his own way egg on the harsh criticisms directed at the song. He'll never be Steve Allen so he should stop while he's ahead. I shouldn't let it bother me because his show gets trounced in the cable ratings day after day because everyone's watching Fox News since people want to know what's going on and not hear the latest liberal wisecrack. The reason things like that get to me sometimes is because of the arrogance in which the criticisms are delivered. Those who oppose Fox News and all of that have a touch of arrogance to them which I've yet to understand, not that I'd want to. So, enjoy the video.

Ray Stevens: Tea'd Off...

Forgive the comical title of this blog entry when dealing with a serious subject but about an hour ago I came across a news article focusing on "We The People", the on-line smash hit from Ray Stevens. I loved the article as anyone could probably guess. The quotes and the write-up can be found at the CNSNews.com site. The author of the write-up is Pete Winn so if you visit that web-page and search for 'Ray Stevens' you should be able to locate the write-up very easily. You can also find a few other write-up's about the song in blog sites about current events, one in particular is a page called politicalthinker.blogs.cnn.com which starts off with a reference to 1990. I suppose the author wanted to highlight the 20 year passage of time because this is a new decade?

If my comment gets approved you'll see that I commented on Ray's sales achievements because the author of the blog, in my opinion anyway, made it appear that Ray only had a couple of big selling albums prior to 1990 and that it wasn't until "We The People" came along in December 2009 and it's subsequent 1.4 million plays on You Tube that he re-gained popularity. In my comment I wrote that Ray had always been a singles seller rather than an albums seller and that in the 1990's his biggest success was music video projects. Given that the comment wasn't directly about the song/music video it might not get approved...but if it does it'll be there for all to see. Ray's own web-page of course features a similar write-up in their news section.

The actual commercial single of the song is dancing around the Amazon Top-100. The highest position it's obtained is #42 on the comedy MP3 list. In country music it ranked earlier at #67. The totals are updated hourly so it isn't a weekly tally like other charts.

The name of this blog entry, of course, comes from Tea Party. The tea party movement and those who supported it are viewed in the mainstream media as a "fringe element" of society and one that shouldn't be taken seriously. In one of my previous blog entries I wrote about the whole concept of marginalization. The tea party crowds were marginalized in the mainstream media because the reporters who covered them sought out the most extreme participants in an attempt to label the entire thing as nothing more than "extremist ideologues spewing their venom". Of course that was a completely false representation of the whole tea party movement by those afraid that the crowds would inspire more and more questions aimed at Government. Time will only tell what happens from here on out, though...but now onto the lighter side of things to wrap up this blog entry...

Always on the hunt for anything about Ray Stevens that I didn't know comes this portion of the blog entry. I didn't know this little tidbit until late last night while browsing the internet...Ray Stevens co-wrote a Brook Benton single called "My True Confession". The co-writer of the song is Margie Singleton. I looked up the statistics for the single and it hit the Pop Top-30, the R&B Top-10 and the Adult-Contemporary Top-10 in 1963. I had known that Ray worked on the sessions of Brook Benton but I had assumed it was only as a session musician or music arranger. It's always fun/exciting to find out things about a singer that you feel you know just about everything. The troubling thing for me is why is Ray's songwriting contributions for other artists rarely, if ever, highlighted? You can watch a video upload of the song on You Tube.