Revisiting a familiar topic of 45 singles causes me to post images of Ray Stevens singles in no particular order. Some singles are what is known as "promo singles" meaning that at the time of release they were available only at radio stations. Currently these promo singles are available all over eBay, the premiere on-line marketplace. Collectors usually place high value on promo singles due to their rare nature and the fact that the promo single wasn't part of the public domain. One of the distinct characteristics of a promo single verses a commercial single is the label color. Usually a promo single had white paper and the commercial single would have the official design. MCA, for example, their official label was blue with a rainbow design behind the song's title as you see below on 1984's "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" but their promo label was white, as you see on 1985's "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone". In the case of that song, the single I chose to spotlight here is a color vinyl. Those are considered to be even more sought-after because of their extreme obscureness.
"Mississippi Squirrel Revival" as I wrote about several months ago is in it's Silver Anniversary...it was recorded 25 years ago back in 1984. The single hit the Top-20 on the country charts and became one of his most popular that decade. A 1992 music video of the song has since become a staple on-line. For those who still don't know what the song is about it's about a squirrel who runs loose inside a church after it was snuck in by a couple of kids. The squirrel's antics are credited with causing miracles because once the squirrel runs afoul of Harv Newland and Sister Bertha, the two confess their sins amidst the pain. The melody is catchy as it conveys an old-time Dixieland-southern feeling...which is appropriate given that the song takes place in the south where one of the kid's grandmother lives in an Antebellum world.
"Glory Special" is a gospel song from Ray's 1974 gospel album, Turn Your Radio On. It's the b-side of "Love Lifted Me", which didn't make the country or pop music charts. You can click the image for a bigger view. Ray's gospel album was re-issued on CD, paired with the album, Misty, in 2005. "Glory Special" is one of my favorites from his gospel album...it uses the imagery of a train. Ray vocally mimics the train...there isn't a train whistle in the tradition of Boxcar Willie; instead, we have Ray using various harmonies over-dubbing moans and hums to create the sound of the train gaining momentum...other vocal sound effects include the exhaust and the calls from the conductor.
This single comes from 1989...it's a promo copy of "I Saw Elvis In A UFO". The song was a take-off on all of the Elvis sightings that routinely show up on tabloids then and still do today. In this song Elvis not only is alive but is seeing the sights of outer space with the likes of Jimmy Hoffa, Col Tom Parker, Howard Hughes, and Liberace. The song comes from the album, Beside Myself, which is 20 years old this year. Ray has never made a music video of this song, believe it or not, but he's performed the song on his Platinum selling Ray Stevens Live home video. In the performance a large UFO hovers above him as he's decked out in Elvis attire. Pink aliens show up mid-way through the song. This performance at his theater could serve as an unofficial music video.
All-Time Hits is the title of a low-budget cassette/CD release from 1996. The sound is excellent. A lot of times people see "low-budget" and think the sound is terrible but to my ears it's great!! Low-budget in this scenario, I feel, means that the price wasn't as high as other products. It was issued on the Polygram label, which at the time was associated with Mercury Records. Polygram still may be a subsidiary of Mercury...with record labels morphing and attaching onto each other on an almost monthly to semi-monthly basis it's never easy to tell if a subsidiary is still affiliated with a label or if it's been taken over by another label, etc etc. Anyway, at the time of the release, Polygram was associated with Mercury Records and because of this a bulk of the recordings on here come from Ray's tenure with that label. I'm sure I've written about this collection at some point...I've written so many blog entries even I tend to forget what I've written about.
I own both the cassette and CD version. Some may ask why? Well...once upon a time whenever you'd go to a Wal*Mart or a K-Mart music section there would be a section for CD's and a section for cassettes. The CD at the time was way more expensive than the cassette counterpart. This was true for the vinyl album...it became cheaper than the cassette because labels marked up the price on whatever was selling. Each successive technology would be more expensive than the previous product and so when CD's became the dominate music form, cassette's became cheaper. Following me so far? Well, back in 1996 when this collection was released, I didn't want to spend the money for a CD...so instead I bought the cassette. Fast-forward quite a few years...like say 2003...
I came across a CD version of All-Time Hits which featured 3 additional songs that weren't on the cassette copy I have. Cassettes were still being manufactured and in stores but CD's were becoming less expensive. MP3's were eclipsing the physical CD in buyer popularity. So...with the CD becoming less expensive compared to 3 or 4 years earlier, I started buying CD versions of my cassette collections. I also learned during this time that some of my cassettes didn't have a CD version...so I couldn't upgrade to CD with everything...
Anyway...this collection of Ray Stevens material features chart hits chosen at random, pretty much. The cassette, as I mentioned, features 8 songs and the CD adds 3 more to the line-up.
1. Ahab the Arab; 1962 2. Butch Babarian; 1964 {CD only} 3. Funny Man; 1963 4. Harry the Hairy Ape; 1963 5. Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills; 1961 6. My Dad; 1983 7. Santa Claus Is Watching You; 1962 {CD only} 8. Speed Ball; 1963 9. One More Last Chance; 1981 {CD only} 10. Furthermore; 1962 11. Shriner's Convention; 1980
The eight songs that appeared only on the cassette are featured in different sequential order than they appear on the CD. For example, on the cassette version "Shriner's Convention" is song #5 but here on the CD it's song #11. A bulk of the recordings are for Mercury Records with the exception of songs #9 and #11. Those songs were recorded for RCA Records.
Some purists may take exception to the title of this collection because the phrase "All-Time Hits" would indicate that the songs will in fact be an artist's "all-time hits". In that respect the title would be mis-leading because it doesn't include anything he recorded in the late '60s on into the mid '70s, which are considered his biggest years on the pop charts and when he had his biggest hit songs. However, the material that's spotlighted is still top-notch and all but one song made the popularity charts. The only song here that didn't achieve a chart position is "Butch Babarian" but it was issued as a commercial single, even though it didn't chart. Including non-hit singles isn't a pet peeve of mine as it might be to purists out there. In my way of thinking the inclusion of non-hit songs on a "hits" collection gives the song exposure that it otherwise may not receive and I'm all for that. The more exposure Ray's songs get, both the past and present material, the better...you always want to expose your material to each new audience that comes along.
December 1, 2009...a day shy of my thirty-third birthday finds me writing up another blog about Ray Stevens. The social network of Twitter has become a place where Ray has posted audio links to new recordings. Previously there was the comical song "Cooter Brown" from his trucker CD, One for the Road. Then there was the re-recording of "If Ten Percent Is Good Enough For Jesus". These weren't Ray's only journey onto on-line selling. You can go back to mid-decade, around 2005/2006, and learn that Ray is no stranger to promoting music exclusively on-line. The examples being the songs "The New Battle of New Orleans" and "Ruby Falls". Itunes, if I'm not mistaken, were the original homes of those two songs. If you're reading this and thinking "Ruby Falls"?? Never heard of it! Well, check Itunes or some other on-line music store and do a search for Ray and the song title and see what comes up. It's one of those tempo blender songs as I call them...mixing ballad and up-tempo within the same performance.
Several days ago I wrote of "We The People"...I posted a URL link to the audio but this time around I decided to embed the audio link into the blog. It's a whole lot more easier to click the play button than to right click and open a URL link in another window, etc etc. If truth be known I wasn't aware that I could copy and paste the code but I was looking through a long list of other blogger web-pages and saw that they have numerous displays of You Tube, Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter videos and audio links of their favorite singers or TV shows decorating their blogs and so I decided to go ahead and embed the Twitter link. This song is being promoted as the "radio version". The previous URL that I supplied was for the on-line version. The earlier recording that Ray put out according to the Twitter stats has been listened to over 8,000 times.
Obviously Ray's latest recording is centered around the basic principles and fundamental rights of the American citizen as described in the Constitution. It goes farther than this because it incorporates the topical subject of healthcare reform, nick-named Obama-care by those who oppose the extreme ways the reformers are wanting to change things. I gave a more detailed description of the song in a previous blog entry. A phrase not often heard much anymore is "bleeding heart liberal". This phrase can certainly be applied within the context of the healthcare ordeal because of the deception that's taking place among those with "bleeding hearts". In some web-sites and blog sites I've seen commentary making the Republicans out to be the bad guys because they oppose "Obama-care". In truth, Republicans actually want healthcare reform but not at the extreme levels the Democrats are wanting.
I've seen commentary where one asks why it's such a terrible thing for the Government to supply healthcare to "the needy", etc etc. This is where the bleeding heart factor comes into play, though. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book to play on one's sympathies. The thing that Democrats aren't saying is that all of this "compassion" for the needy and all of that requires huge tax hikes and more Government invasion on the private sector. When you break things down into it's simplest form the Republicans want people to be independent, for the most part, from Government, except when it's absolutely necessary for the Government to be called on. The Democrats on the other hand feel that the Government has all the answers and should offer all sorts of assistance and social programs to every Tom, Dick, Jane, and Mary while at the same time keeping it a secret from their constituents that each and every time the Government "helps" that it means more tax increases and more Government spending and more burden on everyone, regardless of political affiliation. I've often felt that you can tell the political leanings of two people based upon a simple situation at hand...for example...Bob, a Democrat, is angry about something beyond his control. Bob would more than likely think that the Government should take care of his problem and insist that they step-in. Frank, a Republican, is angry about something beyond his control. Frank would more than likely realize that the situation is beyond his control and not look toward the Government to fix things and figure out something on his own to try and fix a situation. It doesn't get any simpler than that when breaking down the two political parties.
Enjoy "We The People" and for those who stumble across the site by accident, take a listen to the song as well.
Politically speaking, Ray is about a complete opposite from his views during the early 1970's, this is based on the lyrical content of the songs he wrote/recorded during that time period compared to today. During 1969-1972 you could perhaps describe Ray's political leanings as moderate-Democratic. I always point to the emotionally powerful "Talking", a song he wrote and recorded in 1970 during the Vietnam War period. The song is about the political figures "wasting time" trying to talk and with every delay more people are dying. These feelings resonated with the anti-war protesters and those who just didn't like the war period, those with no political axe to grind. In that same year, 1970, Ray put out "America, Communicate With Me"...both songs are on his Unreal album. In that song Ray comments on the various topical issues of the time and asks the nation to communicate with him so he can understand what in the world is going on. Those fans who cheered his political feelings at that time perhaps scratch their heads now and wonder "what happened?" when listening to songs like "We The People", "If Ten Percent Is Good Enough For Jesus", "The New Battle of New Orleans", and several others with a slightly more Republican point of view. I've never really care one way or the other about the political views of my favorite singers. A good song is a good song...and Ray's knack for making his songs catchy goes a long way.
Revisiting a familiar topic of 45 singles causes me to post images of Ray Stevens singles in no particular order. Some singles are what is known as "promo singles" meaning that at the time of release they were available only at radio stations. Currently these promo singles are available all over eBay, the premiere on-line marketplace. Collectors usually place high value on promo singles due to their rare nature and the fact that the promo single wasn't part of the public domain. One of the distinct characteristics of a promo single verses a commercial single is the label color. Usually a promo single had white paper and the commercial single would have the official design. MCA, for example, their official label was blue with a rainbow design behind the song's title as you see below on 1984's "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" but their promo label was white, as you see on 1985's "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone". In the case of that song, the single I chose to spotlight here is a color vinyl. Those are considered to be even more sought-after because of their extreme obscureness. 
"Mississippi Squirrel Revival" as I wrote about several months ago is in it's Silver Anniversary...it was recorded 25 years ago back in 1984. The single hit the Top-20 on the country charts and became one of his most popular that decade. A 1992 music video of the song has since become a staple on-line. For those who still don't know what the song is about it's about a squirrel who runs loose inside a church after it was snuck in by a couple of kids. The squirrel's antics are credited with causing miracles because once the squirrel runs afoul of Harv Newland and Sister Bertha, the two confess their sins amidst the pain. The melody is catchy as it conveys an old-time Dixieland-southern feeling...which is appropriate given that the song takes place in the south where one of the kid's grandmother lives in an Antebellum world.
"Glory Special" is a gospel song from Ray's 1974 gospel album, Turn Your Radio On. It's the b-side of "Love Lifted Me", which didn't make the country or pop music charts. You can click the image for a bigger view. Ray's gospel album was re-issued on CD, paired with the album, Misty, in 2005. "Glory Special" is one of my favorites from his gospel album...it uses the imagery of a train. Ray vocally mimics the train...there isn't a train whistle in the tradition of Boxcar Willie; instead, we have Ray using various harmonies over-dubbing moans and hums to create the sound of the train gaining momentum...other vocal sound effects include the exhaust and the calls from the conductor. 
This single comes from 1989...it's a promo copy of "I Saw Elvis In A UFO". The song was a take-off on all of the Elvis sightings that routinely show up on tabloids then and still do today. In this song Elvis not only is alive but is seeing the sights of outer space with the likes of Jimmy Hoffa, Col Tom Parker, Howard Hughes, and Liberace. The song comes from the album, Beside Myself, which is 20 years old this year. Ray has never made a music video of this song, believe it or not, but he's performed the song on his Platinum selling Ray Stevens Live home video. In the performance a large UFO hovers above him as he's decked out in Elvis attire. Pink aliens show up mid-way through the song. This performance at his theater could serve as an unofficial music video.
