Hello Ray Stevens fans!! 2022 marks the Silver Anniversary of a comedy album from Ray Stevens and I'm here to spotlight it. It was 25 years ago, in 1997, that Ray released the Hum It comedy album. If you recall that particular year Ray was in his 40th year as a singer...having released his first singles in 1957...and several publicity pieces and interviewers made note of that fact. The record company, Rhino, issued a CD titled The Best of Ray Stevens. It featured a mini-booklet of liner notes by Dr. Demento and several photo's of Ray through the years. I played the CD so frequently that at one point it started to skip. I still have the CD, though. I'm not one for tossing out music that I've purchased unless I have a replacement standing by to take it's place.
Hum It, the comedy album you see off to the left, got it's name based on a hypothetical joke about the Whistler's Mother painting. In an interview Ray once said that in naming the album they wondered what might've happened if Whistler's mother got tired of hearing the sound of whistling...would she tell her son to simply Hum It, instead? The joke based on the notion that her son went around whistling all the time. Get it? So, that's the story behind the album title. On the cover Ray is dressed as the Whistler's Mother painting and in the picture frame is Ray as a basketball referee, blowing a whistle. The comedy, for the most part, is just as cerebral as the backstory of the album's cover art. The album closer is the satirical "How Much Does It Cost To Fly To Albuquerque?" where we find Ray speaking to a fictional travel agent over the phone discussing ticket rates, frequent flyer rewards, and the overall quality of the airlines. Ray delivers a tale of lament and anguish in the song "My Neighbor" as he tells us what it's like for him and the wife living next door to the obnoxious. "I'll Be In Atlanta" is one of my all-time favorite Ray Stevens songs...an ode to Dixieland, the South, and an homage to the classic film, Gone With the Wind. The album opens up with "R.V.", a comedy song about a retired worker who purchases one but driving it isn't exactly what he'd had in mind. There's plenty of sound effects of crashes and glass shattering as Ray sings about having no room to turn onto different streets and that the height of the "R.V." was incorrectly marked...they crash into a canopy and then they come upon the inevitable overpass.
"Mama Sang Bass", one of the songs that Ray performed on television in the early months of Hum It, features J.D. Sumner as the bass voiced Mama while Ray plays the part of tenor voiced Daddy. The song is about a married couple that work in a pharmaceutical factory. Mama works in the department that makes body building steroids while Daddy works in the department that manufactures birth control pills. As previously mentioned Ray and J.D. performed the song together on television in 1997...on an episode of Prime Time Country. J.D. wore a long, curly blond wig. The parody song was never released as an official single nor did it become a music video but it got a lot of notice back then given it's use of J.D. Sumner as 'Mama' and the fact it was a re-interpretation and parody of the Johnny Cash single, "Daddy Sang Bass".
The two songs from the album that became music videos were "Virgil and the Moonshot", a novelty about a southern simpleton who works at NASA as a janitor who breaks company rules and enters the space capsule to play the role of an astronaut...unaware that it's an un-manned test capsule and it'll soon be launched into orbit. The song was written as a response to the 1995 blockbuster movie, Apollo 13. NASA and their Space Program saw a resurgence thanks in part to that movie. Virgil, at various moments in the song, utters the catchphrase from the movie in which over the radio we hear Houston being called and the astronaut says "we got a problem". Buddy Kalb appears in the video as the head of Mission Control.
The second song that became a music video from Hum It happens to be "Too Drunk To Fish". In this song Ray sings about a fishing trip...with Harold bringing along enough beer to open up a small store. In the music video Ray plays himself and Harold. Ray's frequent songwriting partner, Buddy Kalb, appears in the video sitting in a boat at the beginning and end...in addition to appearing at various moments during the group scenes. The official music video hasn't been uploaded onto Ray's YouTube channel but he did upload his performance of the song, which features snippets from the music video, from his guest appearance on The George Jones Show in 1997. You can listen to the audio tracks from Hum It on YouTube. Simply search for Ray Stevens and the album title and you'll be able to listen to the entire comedy album.
Hello all...I was going through the acres of archives here on my fan created Ray Stevens blog page and I was skimming through some of my blog titles from 2012. I was refreshing my memory as to what I was writing back then and that's the year I did a series of blog entries called The Golden LP series. The blog entries under that title spotlighted a different Ray Stevens album from every year beginning in 1962 up through the then-current year of 2012. That particular year happened to be the 50th anniversary of Ray's move to Nashville in 1962 and the eventual recording and release of "Ahab the Arab"...and so I decided to create a series of blog entries to honor that 50th year golden milestone. 2012 also marked the 15th anniversary of a particular Ray Stevens studio album titled Hum It which was released in early 1997 on MCA.
The comedy album features 10 recordings...two of which were turned into music videos: "Virgil and the Moonshot" and "Too Drunk To Fish". Those two songs, given their music video treatment, have become classics on the internet. When Ray and his associates created various social media pages (YouTube, specifically) those two music videos became just as viral as the earlier music videos from the 1992 Comedy Video Classics VHS (which had also been uploaded onto YouTube). Ray uploaded the 1997 music video of "Virgil and the Moonshot" onto YouTube in 2012 and since then it's received over 120,000 unique views. "Too Drunk to Fish", on the other hand, was uploaded onto YouTube the same year and it's gotten more than 2,000,000 unique views. Those were the only songs on Hum It that were turned into music videos even though several other songs would have made great music videos, too. "R.V." paints the picture of a couple seeing the country from the comforts of their brand new "R.V."...but things don't go as smoothly as they had hoped...look out for those overpasses!! The wonderful and clever "I'll Be In Atlanta" is so good...it has a catchy Dixieland sound playing along in the background as Ray sings about the part of the country where he was raised. Lyrical cleverness is abundant during the song where names and locales from the classic movie, Gone With the Wind, are mentioned. A couple more songs on Hum It could also have made good music videos: The album's closing number is very funny and satirical even though a lot of people may not relate to it personally. "How Much Does it Cost To Fly To Albuquerque?" is the fictional story of Ray calling up an airline and asking that simple question but the travel agent on the other end of the phone gives Ray a lot of grief and headache inquiring about all kinds of promotional coupons, inquiring if it's Coach, if a rental car is needed, how much luggage is expected, etc. even though all Ray was wanting to know is how much a ticket costs. "Mama Sang Bass" is a parody of "Daddy Sang Bass", a classic from Johnny Cash. Ray's recording, however, examines a role reversal and what might happen if Mama and Daddy both work at a pharmaceutical factory but over the course of time the two slowly experience emotional chaos based on where they've been assigned at the factory. In the song Mama works on body building steroids while Daddy helps manufacture birth control pills. Mama's been exposed to so many steroid fumes and chemicals while Daddy's been breathing in chemicals from birth control pills that it caused each other to change slightly...and now when they're in church Mama sings bass while Daddy sings tenor. It's hysterical...the famed bass, J.D. Sumner, sang the part of Mama...and I always wish it would have been made into a music video.
The ten songs on the album are: "R.V.", "I'll Be In Atlanta", "Virgil and the Moonshot", "She Loves Elvis Better Than Me", "Sunday Morning", "Too Drunk To Fish", "Mama Sang Bass", "My Neighbor", "It Ain't Over Till It's Over", "How Much Does It Cost to Fly to Albuquerque?".
Curb Records re-issued Hum It in 2009...peculiar given that the album had been recorded for MCA and previously released by them in 1997. It's a rare occurrence when a record label re-issues an album that had been recorded and previously released on another label...but yet that's what happened. The graphics and coloring were the only thing different between the 1997 and 2009 Hum It releases. The Curb release has a darker background with Ray's name and the album title underneath the photo. Ray is dressed as a basketball referee whistling in the photo...and he's dressed as Whistler's Mother...in the foreground. The idea behind the album's title was the mother tired of hearing her son 'whistling' all the time and for him to just Hum It instead. Ray explained the album cover during appearances on several television shows in 1997 which is how I know the backstory of the cover art. Ray explained the cover art in a lot of his television appearances and in interviews because a lot of people mistakenly thought he was dressed up as Norman's mother from the Psycho movies.
Happy New Year to all of you fans of Ray Stevens!! Much like in year's past I usually start off each new year with a blog entry centering around the past, present, and future in the career of Ray Stevens. Of course I don't spend too much on the future due to the fact that you can't predict the future...especially when it concerns the unpredictable Ray Stevens...so, let's take a look at some songs celebrating anniversary milestones...
The milestone that I want to focus on the most in this specific blog entry centers around 2017 marking the 60th anniversary of Ray's debut on records. Oh yes...you read that correctly...2017 marks Ray's Diamond Anniversary in the music business. Admittedly those early recordings (1957-1960) carry a regional/local flavor without the later polished production values that became synonymous with his recordings but everyone has a starting point...but in saying that it doesn't mean that those early recordings are no good or not entertaining...they just happen to be recordings without a whole lot of production put into them.
The recording that's singled out as his first commercial release arrived in 1957 on the Prep label, a subsidiary of Capitol Records. Given my weakness for wordplay Ray's Diamond Anniversary revolves around a song called "Silver Bracelet". The song, penned by Ray, is all about a trinket that high school kids carried around with the name of their boyfriend/girlfriend listed on it. In the recording you'll hear the heavy use of rhythm and blues and backup singers that dominated a lot of Ray's single releases in the late '50s. Although the song is all about a "Silver Bracelet", something positive and uplifting in a young relationship of the time, you can't help but sense that there's a hidden concern of upcoming break-up due to the line "oh, don't ever lose my bracelet...my Silver Bracelet...". A fellow fan of Ray Stevens that I've known of, on-line, for 10 years or longer posted a video montage clip of "Silver Bracelet" on YouTube back in April of 2011. I've been on-line since 2002...back then I happened to be on a Web-TV...I didn't get onto a personal computer until sometime in 2005 or 2006. So it's hard to tell exactly at what point I first interacted, on-line, with this person but it's been nearly 10 years. Here's the video he put together of "Silver Bracelet" in 2011...
The B-side of "Silver Bracelet", for those curious, is a novelty recording. Although not necessarily laugh out loud funny or bizarre it's an offbeat recording...and in those days music critics and radio DJ's collectively referred to those kinds of recordings as being 'novelty' rather than 'serious' or 'thought provoking'. The B-side is "Rang Tang Ding Dong (I'm the Japanese Sandman)". As mentioned Ray's early recordings featured a heavy dose of rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and frenetic arrangements and vocalizations indicative of the era in pop music overall. Ray's early recordings can be found on a CD titled Ahab, Jeremiah, Sgt. Preston and more... The Early Ray Stevens on Jasmine Records. I gave a lot of space to that particular CD during the lead-up to release and on release day back in 2014. You can find that CD at Amazon and other on-line retail outlets.
Having a year marking your Diamond Anniversary as a professional recording artist is amazing enough but 2017 will also mark the re-launch of Ray's television program. Previously airing on RFD-TV as Ray Stevens' Nashville the program is being re-launched on PBS this month as Ray Stevens' CabaRay Nashville. As mentioned in a couple of previous blog entries there's a PBS affiliate in my area that has Ray's television series listed on their site but there's not been any information posted on it's debut date. The publicity for the program states that it's to start airing on PBS, nationally, starting in January 2017. I'm anxiously awaiting for the moment to arrive in which his television program begins to air. He produced more than a season's worth of television programs for RFD-TV. His production cycle happened to be all his own, too. Rather than taping 26 episodes a season and then having those episodes rerun to fill a 52 week calendar year, as is the norm all across commercial television, Ray's series would air first-run episodes for 13 weeks. This would then be followed by 13 weeks of repeats. Then, at week 27 in the television season, when almost all of the television programs would be entering their 26 week long rerun period, Ray would emerge with 13 first-run episodes...and those episodes would then repeat to fill out a 52 week calendar year.
Returning to the past again...2017 marks anniversary number 55 for good ol' "Ahab the Arab"...the 1962 hit from Ray Stevens in which he built a much bigger career. For Ahab not only became a Top-10 pop and Rhythm and Blues hit it would eventually lead to logo's and career trademarks for Ray over the next 5 decades. "Ahab the Arab" is the song that made Ray Stevens 'a star overnight' as the saying goes. Although Ahab wasn't his first comical or first novelty recording it became the song that at long last created national awareness for Ray and sent him to places outside the regional areas of the South (Ray was born in Clarkdale, Georgia as Harold Ragsdale on January 24, 1939). The Ahab recording became a million selling hit and his second Top-40 pop hit for Mercury Records following 1961's "Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills".
An album turning 20 this year, Hum It, from 1997 features 9 comical recordings and one seriously infectious homage to the Old South...notable among those recordings happen to be "Too Drunk To Fish", the official music video from 1997 became a hit on YouTube more than 10 years later...November 2009 marks it's YouTube debut; "Virgil and the Moonshot", a send-up of NASA and coinciding with all the hype and celebration surrounding the Apollo-13 movie...the 1997 music video hit YouTube in May 2011; "Mama Sang Bass" is a parody of the Johnny Cash country music classic "Daddy Sang Bass". Ray's recording features J.D. Sumner in the vocal role of Mama. The song is about hormonal imbalances. The non-comical but still upbeat recording found on Hum It is "I'll Be in Atlanta". It paints a picture with words concerning a fictional but modern-day twist on the lives of Rhett, Scarlett, Ashley, Prissy, Melanie, Frank and all the rest as it's as much a salute to the classic film, Gone with the Wind, as is it a salute to the Dixieland music sounds of the South. The music arrangement is definitely Dixieland inspired.
Later this month Ray Stevens reaches 78...on January 24th. As time gets closer to that date I'll be posting a birthday blog entry...and perhaps by then we'll have more detailed information about his re-launched television series and it's PBS airing. As always I'm looking forward to what the new year holds in store in the career of Ray Stevens. Perhaps a much anticipated CD, one that's to feature a specific music genre that he spoke about nearly 5 years ago, is to be forthcoming this year!?! He spoke of a CD in the works a couple of years ago and even issued a music video of one of the songs from this forthcoming CD as a teaser but so far a full-length CD of music hasn't emerged. Is 2017 going to be the year it arrives?? Stay tuned...
A comical twist on Apollo-13 plays out in "Virgil and the Moonshot". The music video was put together in 1997 as one of two videos taken from Hum It, the comedy album Ray Stevens issued that year. Long time fans of Ray Stevens are familiar with the music video but for those who've discovered Ray by way of You Tube you'll no doubt get a kick out of the video. Ray plays himself, of course, in addition to Virgil. Ray uploaded the music video to You Tube exactly a month ago on May 25th. The second music video from the Hum It CD is "Too Drunk To Fish" which is available on-line, too. Buddy Kalb, longtime friend of Ray's and a songwriter, portrays the head of Mission Control in the Moonshot video. In "Too Drunk To Fish" Kalb is seen as Ray's fishing buddy at the start of the video.
On the same day, May 25, "Gitarzan" was officially uploaded onto You Tube. The video's been uploaded before by other people...but now Ray's company has uploaded the video and therefore this upload has become the official You Tube release. It was made in 1995 and was the opening music video on Ray's movie, Get Serious!, a movie that I've written about before (plenty of times!!).
For those curious here is the track list for the 1997 Hum It CD:
1. R.V. 2. I'll Be In Atlanta 3. Virgil and the Moonshot 4. She Loves Elvis Better Than Me 5. Sunday Morning 6. Too Drunk To Fish 7. Mama Sang Bass (featuring J.D. Sumner as "Mama") 8. My Neighbor 9. It Ain't Over Till It's Over 10. How Much Does It Cost To Fly To Albuquerque?
Ray's Get Serious! movie from 1995 features the following music videos:
1. Gitarzan 2. The Woogie Boogie 3. Shriner's Convention 4. Dudley Dorite of the Highway Patrol 5. We Don't Take Nuthin' Off Nobody** 6. The Dooright Family 7. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens (duet with Connie Freeman as "Charlene") 8. Can He Love You Half as Much as I? 9. I Used To Be Crazy 10. Ahab the Arab
There was only a performance of the first verse and chorus for "We Don't Take Nuthin' Off Nobody". The full performance is available on the Get Serious! soundtrack which is still available for sale at Ray's web-site store. The product can be found here. In the movie there was also a brief music video of "The Day I Tried To Teach Charlene MacKenzie How To Drive" in which only the first verse was performed. It's anyone's guess why the complete recording was never added to the soundtrack, though. The song originated in 1988 on Ray's comedy album, I Never Made a Record I Didn't Like. There's a possibility that the song was simply used to briefly explain Charlene's history and her deafness...which is played out in the song's first verse. The character was played by Connie Freeman.
I wish I had a chilly steak right about now...or perhaps any variety of soft drinks that Ray mentions in the Dixieland flavored "I'll Be In Atlanta" which is one of the songs that'll have you humming along when you hear it. The song doubles as a clever tribute to Gone With the Wind as Ray name drops several characters from that movie in addition to singing the praises of Atlanta and southern culture in general. It's one of my favorite songs from the Hum It CD...I love the way his voice exudes excitement when he proclaims the area to be the promised land. When he sings the chorus I can picture him in his car driving slow on any number of Atlanta, Georgia streets shouting out how wonderful it is to be there...I think it could make a good music video for tourism in that part of Georgia but I highly doubt such a thing would ever happen. It would be fun to see Ray dressed up in costume as Gone With the Wind characters {males and females} and then see him literally in a car down in Atlanta taking in the scenery.
There are nine other songs on this comedy CD and just about all of them poke fun or skewer some kind of topic or trend. In a rare occurrence, on this CD Ray does a parody. Some may think that all of Ray's songs are parodies but they're actually not. A parody is when one spoofs something that already exists. Song parodies are the most common...movie parodies are also frequent where comedies are built around spoofing a particular genre. Airplane was a spoof of airport disaster films. Get Smart was a spoof on James Bond. In Hum It, Ray spoofs the Johnny Cash hit "Daddy Sang Bass". In Ray's version it's retitled "Mama Sang Bass" and it hilariously tells the story of a couple who bring their work home with them to the extreme. Mama spent her days working on steroids while Daddy worked in a different part of the factory making birth control pills. Somewhere along the way Mama and Daddy began to switch roles through some sort of hormonal breathing and it really started to get embarrassing for the couple while in church sing-a-longs...Mama had developed a deep voice while Daddy sang tenor. Gospel singer, J.D. Sumner, was the guest vocalist portraying Mama. It's one of those songs you have to hear to believe. It's absolutely nuts...in a great way!
I recall when Ray debuted this CD and he performed the song with Sumner...in the performance Sumner was wearing a female wig. Don't quote me but I think the television show they appeared on together was Prime Time Country. That particular program aired from 1996-1999 on The Nashville Network. It had replaced Music City Tonight which had been hosted by stalwarts Crook and Chase since 1993. Tom Wopat and later, Gary Chapman, were the hosts of Prime Time Country.
Ray only performed "Mama Sang Bass" that one time...as well as "Virgil and the Moonshot" but in his other television appearances he'd perform "Too Drunk To Fish" and "My Neighbor". I also recall him performing "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" to close out one of the shows...it has that uptempo sing-a-long feel. "Virgil and the Moonshot" and "Too Drunk To Fish" were made into music videos. The song about Virgil is a spoof of Apollo-13 while the other featured music reminiscent of JAWS at the beginning. "Sunday Morning" is track number five...it, along with the previously mentioned "Mama Sang Bass", currently figures into a new compilation CD from Ray titled A Funny Thing Happened In Church Today which will be released October 12th.
Several people are misinformed about the eye-catching CD cover of Hum It. A lot of people assume that Ray's dressed up as Norman Bates' mother from Psycho. In reality, though, Ray is dressed as Whistler's Mother. The joke is the mother is tired of "whistling" and so she decides to "hum it" instead. The son is pictured as a basketball referee...blowing his whistle. The cover is a spoof of the painting by James McNeill Whistler of his mother while it doubles as a gentle teasing of their last name. Research indicates the painting originated in 1871.
