Ray Stevens sings "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" in 1988...

Hello Ray Stevens fans!! We're at the beginning of a new month and I plan on writing another blog entry later tonight following this one. In this blog entry to open up the month of May I'm going to embed Ray's 1988 performance on The Tonight Show. The episode originally aired February 3, 1988. The headlining guest on that episode was Betty White. The music guests in the episode almost always appeared in the final segment of the show and they typically weren't interviewed...some recording artists got to sit on the interview couch and banter with Johnny Carson...but those were reserved for a very small circle of recording artists. Anyway...in the video clip Johnny mentions that Ray is clever and humorous and has made several previous appearances on the show. Johnny promotes Ray's current album at the time, Crackin' Up. I took a screen-cap of that and saved it in my photo archives. Ray then performs "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", which was nominated for a Grammy at that year's Grammy Awards. The song was a much bigger hit than chart numbers will show...not only did Ray get to sing it on Johnny Carson's late-night show where the song reached audiences outside of country music but in a couple of newspaper columns and radio commentaries the song was mentioned a number of times by none other than Paul Harvey. The song struck a chord for several reasons...one is it dealt with a couple of emotional subjects: religion and money. It also hit a nerve, others may may say it caused shame among the religious community, because it cast a dim view and suspicion on television preachers (televangelists) and all preachers, in general, and it caused members practically every preacher or religious figure to be on the defensive and stress that there's still good, decent preachers out there and to not get caught up in all of the negative press of a few high-profile stories.   

Televangelists were under a microscope, heavily, at this point in time and while Ray had recorded the song within the first half of 1987 and then released it as a single shortly afterward, the subject matter of the song kept the recording not far from conversation...and the longer that the relatively low but high-profile televangelist "scandals" remained in the headlines the more "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" become something of a magnet for skeptics. I think the song, whether anyone will admit it or not, did a lot of good during that time period by shining a spotlight on excessive greed within televangelism and the fact that a lot of clean-up happened shows just how spot-on the song truly happened to be. You'll probably come across websites that'll feature commentary from people who are outraged that such a song was ever written, much less recorded, and try and say it's an anti-religious song...but once you educate yourself on what the song's addressing you'll quickly realize it's a song meant to call out preachers who misuse/abuse their influence and profit off the worshipers/followers/congregation/flock, whichever description that fits. Here now is the February 3, 1988 performance from Ray Stevens of the Grammy nominated "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" followed by an abbreviated rendition of "Everything is Beautiful" so make sure you continue watching the video for the second song...

Ray Stevens: 1987 Nashville Now performance and Interview...

Hello all!! It's been awhile since I've posted a fan created Ray Stevens blog entry but here I am with a video embed of a 1987 Ray Stevens performance and interview! The performance comes from an October 1987 appearance on Nashville Now, the show that Ralph Emery hosted for 10 years (1983-1993). The set was light colored and lit up and I believe 1987 was the year that this Nashville Now set was introduced. The prior set contained a sort of dark brown as well as light brown paneling and Ralph himself had a beard in those earlier years of the show. In this 1987 appearance, as mentioned, the set is different but not only that the beard is gone and Ralph has just a mustache. This set and Ralph's mustache would remain the look for several years until another set was constructed (a light blue background, grey chairs, and a grey desk) and in those last few years of the series Ralph was clean shaven and began dying his hair. The photo of Ralph on his 1991 Memories memoir is what I'm referring to. However, the series had one final set change before ending it's run in 1993, and that set design returned to a brown/darker color scheme but it wasn't identical to the early '80s design.

Ray Stevens and Ralph Emery, 1987

In this video clip Ray performs "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" and in the interview segment that follows he speaks about the song. Ralph asks how the song came about...and this leads to one of the song's writers, Margaret Archer, coming onto the set to meet/wave at the studio audience and to those at home watching. Margaret co-wrote the song with Chet Atkins and it was a very popular song for Ray throughout the spring/summer of 1987 while televangelist scandals were popping up left and right in the news cycle. Ralph promotes two of Ray's current releases, Crackin' Up and Greatest Hits, Volume Two. Ralph reads off song titles on the hits album but asks about "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis". Ray tells the story of the song and even recites the first verse and chorus in the interview. I had long thought that Ray put the song on there as an exclusive but according to Ray's interview there was suppose to be a single available in stores of "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis" when that LP was released but "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" had something of a more extended life than anticipated and it continued to be in-demand and popular in various pockets of the country that it perhaps wouldn't have made sense to move on too early while a current single is still having impact. Ray remarked that, by now, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" has reached it's peak as far as single sales go but the album, Crackin' Up, he says continues to sell. That's just a very brief overview of the video clip but, of course, it's a whole lot better to see the video clip for yourselves.

Ray Stevens: Golden LP Series Follow-up Extra...1987...

In this special follow-up Extra I'm spotlighting two 1987 compilation albums from Ray Stevens. Get The Best of Ray Stevens is a 2-LP compilation release advertised on television and in print ads. The project was released on vinyl and cassette as well as CD. The collection features 10 songs and it was released between Greatest Hits and Crackin' Up. Most of the songs on this LP were previously released on Greatest Hits while much of the rest were released on the forthcoming Greatest Hits, Volume Two the same year. As I've written previously, I saw the television commercial for Get The Best of Ray Stevens twice and it was always midway through...I never saw the commercial all the way through. Ironically, in this age of You Tube, the commercial hadn't found it's way on-line yet. I'd love to see it again...all the way through. Considering that this was a 2-LP release, each side of the vinyl is labeled accordingly: Side 1, Side 2, Side 3, and Side 4. I assume the LP is titled as such because of it's direct marketing approach. Rather than titling it Greatest Hits or 20 Hits, I assume it's named for what was most likely heard throughout the commercial by whoever did the voice-over.

Greatest Hits, Volume Two came along after the release of Crackin' Up. This particular Volume Two collection took much of what was left over on Get The Best of Ray Stevens (songs that didn't get spotlighted on the first Greatest Hits release from earlier in 1987) but to make Volume Two enticing the label added his current single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", as the opening track and a brand new recording, "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", as track five. These two 1987 recordings weren't featured on Greatest Hits or Get The Best of Ray Stevens. The first Greatest Hits of 1987 was on the Country Album chart for more than 20 weeks and it would eventually become a Gold and later, Platinum, seller. Get The Best of Ray Stevens, a direct-market release, was ineligible to chart due to it's lack of retail availability. Greatest Hits, Volume Two charted far more modestly than it's predecessor and had a chart run of a couple of months starting in the fall of 1987, reaching it's peak early in 1988. This Volume Two features the edited radio version of "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone" as well as the single version of "The Haircut Song" which cuts out the visit to the second barber. The unedited versions of both songs can be found on Ray's 1985 album, I Have Returned.

Ray's never recorded a song that there isn't something about it I like. He's never made a record that I didn't like, either, which sort of leads up to the next studio album from Ray Stevens. I'll be writing/commenting about the 1988 LP soon so be practicing your rope tricks in the meantime.

Ray Stevens: Golden LP Series, Part 24...

We're now up to what I called the super-hot controversial album from Ray Stevens that hit the market in 1987. The twenty-fourth studio album from Ray was titled Crackin' Up. Now, for those who read Part 23 and didn't go searching for what I'd be writing about, I'll fill the blanks in this blog entry.

Crackin' Up hit amidst a nationwide scandal that was going on in the religious community. A number of televangelists, a name for preachers who used television broadcasts to reach millions of people, were embroiled in various scandals throughout the latter half of the '80s. Some of the scandals made national headlines while some remained locally driven. The studio album was released in June 1987 while it's first single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", initially hit in the spring of the year but experienced the bulk of it's commercial success throughout May and June. The single itself wasn't a commentary on any sex scandal or other tabloid-style item but it did question the ethics and motivation behind a lot of televangelists who shamelessly behaved vastly different from their sermons. Several of the lines in the song point to the overall attire seen on many famous televangelists whereas the bulk of the song asks a lot of questions about how would Jesus conduct himself in a modern world given the hypocrisy of those preaching his words and the expensive jewelry dripping from religious leaders, both nationally and locally. When the various religious sex scandals were breaking all over the country, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" suddenly found itself roped into that controversial story even though the basic message of the song had more to do with hypocrisy than any specific sex scandal. The song was being discussed by syndicated newspaper columnists and Ray appeared twice on The Tonight Show and performed the song. The columnists that were name dropping the song were tying the song's message of televangelist material wealth hypocrisy to that of hypocrisy in general. The song's writers are Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer. Chet often commented that the song was written long before the televangelist scandals but yet it would be those very scandals that inevitably caused the song to become a hit. "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" would reach the Top-50 on Canada's Country Singles list and in America it came ever so close to reaching the Top-40 on the Country chart. The single did become a Top-20 Sales hit, though!

Crackin' Up would go on and reach the Top-30 on the Country Album chart more or less on the strength of "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" since the two follow-up singles didn't reach the charts. "Three Legged Man", from the pen of Shel Silverstein, was one of the follow-up releases. This recording is a comical tale about a woman who is stolen away from a man who wears a peg leg. I could go into more details but it would spoil the hilarity for those who haven't heard the song before. I will say it contains a trio of laugh out loud sound effects as we hear of the misadventures of the chase that ensues. A third single release, the much more satirical "Sex Symbols", is a parody of the unlikely duo of Willie Nelson and Julio a few years earlier. Although Ray doesn't do a Willie Nelson impression he instead offers a Julio impression. The song is performed as a 'duet' between Ray and Julio as they sing and talk about the high life and how it feels to be sexy and popular with the women. In the song a recurring gag is the listing of celebrity sex symbols...Julio refers to legitimate sex symbols while Ray offers a list of celebrities not necessarily thought of as 'sex symbols'. It's a cute recording, I think, and one that he used to perform in concert a lot in a parody of a ventriloquist act. He performed the song on a later home video release that I'll write about in a couple of blog entries from now. As mentioned, neither single release reached the Country charts.

Remember in Part 23 of this Golden LP Series I mentioned that a critic or two called this an R-rated album and that it was unsuitable for children? That statement refers to a review I came across a few years ago while scouring the internet for vintage stories on Ray Stevens. I was looking through 1987 news archives and came across a review that commented that Crackin' Up had adult humor and lyrics saturated with double-entendre and wasn't a safe album for the entire family. Basically the critic was lamenting that Ray chose to use a more broader style of comedy on this LP and aside from a couple of zany recordings the overall flavor of the LP was, in the opinion of that critic, not suitable for the entire family (emphasis on children). This is a very funny album in a long list of funny albums from Ray Stevens and I obviously disagree with anyone who labels this as an R-rated, adults only kind of LP. "Cool Down Willard" has some fun with the former weatherman on The Today Show, Willard Scott. Ray sings about the women in his family having huge crushes on Willard to the point where the Grandmother adopts a wild new look in the hopes that Willard will come knocking on the door.

Ray covers "I'm My Own Grandpaw" and it's funnier than the original by Lonzo and Oscar in my opinion. If you've ever heard the original it's performed, to my ears at least, as a run on sentence with hardly any pause for musical accompaniment or comic effect. I assume this was done on purpose so a listener wouldn't actually be able to have much time to sit and think about the lyrics. Ray's version includes pauses, music interludes, and a much more lively vocalization. I think the original became a huge hit due to the clever writing and the convoluted story where, I imagine, listeners in the late '40s continued to request the song over and over just so they could attempt to comprehend the family tree being described. The song, as mentioned, was performed originally as a run-on sentence and maybe by deliberately performing the song that way the artists and label knew it would cause repeated requests from radio listeners or repeated plays on jukeboxes to understand the lyrics completely. In those days jukebox plays, single sales, and radio requests factored in more heavily than actual radio airplay when it came to determining the popularity of a song.

"Doctor, Doctor Have Mercy on Me" is a satirical comment on the medical profession as Ray sings about the notorious experiences many people have when visiting their local doctor's office. It's uncommon for a patient to arrive and see their doctor within the span of 10 minutes. Even if you show up early, the doctor is still running late. "The Ballad of Cactus Pete and Lefty" is a comical tale about a gruff voiced homeless drifter and his pet sidewinder, Lefty, who travel the Southwestern portion of America in search for wealth. Cactus tells various comical stories of his adventures with Lefty, all with an obvious comical punch line. Lefty is 'heard' through a series of rattler effects, reacting to many of the tall tales that Cactus spins. I'd only seen Ray perform this song once and it was on an episode of The Riders Radio Theater, a show that used to air on The Nashville Network hosted by the cowboy group, The Riders in the Sky, based on their public radio show. Woody Paul, if my memory is right, operated Lefty on the TV show.

Elsewhere on the LP we have "The Flies of Texas Are Upon You" which, as you can tell, has a title based on another phrase, 'The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You'. In Ray's recording we hear about a guy who falls in love with a woman whom he thinks has a lot of money based upon the way the woman described her father's business. To Ray's horror he ends up being a garbage collector rather than a rich businessman. "Gourmet Restaurant" is a satirical comment on just about any upper-scale, fine dining experience when it's happening to someone clearly out of place there. Ray's character takes things literally and is surprised when he's given food that's on fire and raw. The album's closing track, "The Day That Clancy Drowned", is a none too subtle account of a worker in a brewery who slips into a vat of alcohol and eventually drowns...but not before having the time of his life in one of the most hilarious send-offs a worker could have.

Coming up next in the Golden LP Series we take a look at a second compilation project released on Ray in 1987. This time around the song selections were more contemporary but there were still classics being represented as well.

Ray Stevens and Televangelists, A Silver Anniversary...

The year, 1987, 25 years ago...a Silver Anniversary for a certain single from Ray Stevens. "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" came about in 1987 amidst the various scandals going on in the world of televangelism. One of the song's writers, Chet Atkins, often remarked that the song was written long before televangelists became embroiled in scandals. Obviously, though, the single's release was perfect timing as it's content spoke to a lot of people. The song's writers are Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer and it appears on a variety of Ray Stevens albums. It's home album, as I like to call it, arrived in 1987 and titled Crackin' Up. This particular album from Ray was filled with a lot of nutty comedy...as the title suggests...and "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" leads off the collection. One of the things that's noticeable about the album now, and was probably just as noticeable in 1987, is that "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" comes off as more serious than the other tracks even though it's as comical as everything else on the album. Some of the other tracks on this album include songs with titles such as "The Flies of Texas Are Upon You", "Cool Down Willard", "Sex Symbols", and "Three Legged Man". "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" found it's way onto the 1991 Greatest Hits release from Curb Records in 1991. On the collection it was track 9 while the album's final track was a newly recorded alternate take on "There's a Star Spangled Banner", a song Ray originally recorded with almost entirely different lyrics barely two years earlier in 1989. The original is on Beside Myself. The 1991 version uses the same title, melody, and chorus of the 1989 original but the verses are entirely different. The Curb collection below spotlights almost exclusively on the non-comical recordings with the exception being 1969's "Along Came Jones" and 1987's "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?". A rare inclusion on this collection is his 1975 take on "Indian Love Call", a hit single from Ray that didn't get quite the attention it should've gotten in the ensuing years.

Get The Best of Ray Stevens was the third hits album released on Ray in 1987. The first, of course, was Greatest Hits and the sequel, Greatest Hits, Volume Two, shown below. This Get The Best of Ray Stevens was sold on television and it contains 2 vinyl albums worth of material. The commercial for the collection ran a little more than a minute and I saw it a few times but wish I could see the commercial again. Amazingly, though, in this era of You Tube it hasn't resurfaced. "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" isn't featured on this collection due to the fact that this album was issued earlier in 1987 prior to the single's release. Nevertheless this 20 song collection is a wonderful stroll through musical lane. The collection features his bluesy, slow tempo version of "Furthermore" from 1984 instead of the uptempo version he did in 1962.

Greatest Hits, Volume Two pulled 8 songs from Get The Best of Ray Stevens and added then current single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", as track 1 and a newly recorded song, "Mama's in the Sky With Elvis", as track 5. For the longest time this was one of the only collections in print that featured his 1979 hit "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" as all of his Warner Brothers recordings (with the exception of "In The Mood") had long been out of circulation by 1987. "In The Mood", recorded as a band of chickens and released as the Henhouse Five Plus Too in 1976, is on this Volume Two release. In fact, that recording and "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" are the only recordings Ray did for Warner Brothers that appear on compilation albums in spite of the fact that he had quite a few more hit singles with the label than just two recordings. As I've often said, if you don't own the original vinyl albums that Ray released on Warner Brothers in the late '70s as I do and if you still haven't purchased the digital downloads of a trio of 1995 releases spotlighting his Warner Brothers material then you're going to be out of luck at hearing the material because there's always the possibility that one day the songs will become unavailable all over again. Two of those 1995 releases, currently available as Mp3 digital downloads at Amazon, are: Do You Wanna Dance? and The Serious Side of Ray Stevens. A third release from Warner Brothers in 1995, Cornball, for whatever reason has never been released as a digital download.

One of the things that the internet allows is to travel back in time and read vintage news articles. I often do this sort of thing in my never ending research about Ray Stevens, his music, and his career. Here's a Google item, a reprint of a 1987 news article from the Gainesville Sun that appeared in their May 31, 1987 issue. The article was written by Joe Edwards and is one of those syndicated articles that are often printed in multiple newspapers. The article is a write-up of "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" and it includes quoted commentary from Ray about the song, religion, and televangelists. The song can be found on the 1993 collection below which is simply titled, Collection.

This CD was a little bit more ambitious in that it features 14 tracks instead of the standard 10-11 songs per release. The project features "Surfin' U.S.S.R." and "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O.", from 1988 and 1989 respectively. Neither single reached the country charts but over the course of time both songs have become popular recordings in his career due to their exposure on You Tube and in the case of "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O." the exposure it got at his Branson, Missouri theater in the early '90s. "Santa Claus Is Watching You" is featured on this collection, too. This recording, from 1985, became popular by way of music video exposure and the fact that it was featured on his #1 Gold album, I Have Returned. "Surfin' U.S.S.R." became a music video, too, and was seen by the millions of people who purchased Comedy Video Classics in 1992 and 1993. On Ray Stevens Live!, the 1993 home video, it includes a performance of "I Saw Elvis In a U.F.O.". The performance explains why the song became such a fan favorite in concert. The last time I saw Ray in concert he performed "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?" and it was great! The song was nominated for a Grammy in 1988 and he performed it on several non-country music oriented television shows in addition to the obvious country programs on The Nashville Network and the syndicated Hee-Haw series. The song also managed to get mentioned on Paul Harvey's radio program and in his columns during the televangelist scandals of the late '80s.

A few more words about Ray Stevens...

In a small write-up in the October 14, 1988 issue of The Palm Beach Post there was mention of an upcoming Ray Stevens concert being held at West Palm Beach Auditorium which was located on the intersection of Congress Avenue and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. The small write-up offered a small mistake...the writer suggested that Ray's single, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?", was still being talked about after nearly two years on the market. In reality, the single hit late in April of 1987 and this write-up occurred in mid October of 1988. Yes, technically, it was almost two years...April of 1989 marked that occasion. I think I know why the writer wrote it the way she did...to give more emphasis on how long of a shelf life the single had enjoyed. The song did indeed have a much longer life span than your typical comedy/novelty single...and three albums, all released in 1987, showcased the single: Crackin' Up, Greatest Hits Volume Two, and Get The Best of Ray Stevens. The song also appears on Curb Records His All-Time Greatest Comic Hits, MCA's The Collection and Millennium Collection. The song was nominated for a Grammy award in 1988...in the category of Best Comedy Recording. It was up against recordings from Robin Williams, Weird Al, Bob and Ray, as well as Jackie Mason. The winner was Robin Williams for A Night at the Met. The full name of the Grammy category was Best Comedy Performance: Single or Album, Spoken or Musical. The 1986 album from Williams apparently was released late in 1986 as to why it won a 1988 Grammy. There's an eligibility period and material has to be released prior to a cut-off date. If the Williams album would have been released earlier in 1986 it would've surely been nominated in the 1987 Grammy awards and maybe it would've given Ray a better chance of winning a Grammy in 1988...but who knows??