Beech Tree News Network

Harold Ray Ragsdale, known professionally as Ray Stevens, brought his Here We Go Again tour to SKYPAC Friday night, October 2.  The 76 year-old country-pop singer/songwriter and comedian made audiences howl with performances of his legendary comedy songs such as “The Streak”, “Mississippi Squirrel Revival”, “Guitarzan”,  “Shriner’s Convention” and countless more. 
Ray’s early influences came from the radio and jukebox at the village swimming pool where Ray and most kids spent their summers.  Back then, radio stations were diverse and played all different styles of music.  That, along with the records the jukebox played, exposed Ray to an eclectic selection of music. 
In 1957 while Ray was still in high school he made his first trip to Nashville and recorded his first track, “Silver Bracelet”, at the now historic RCA “B” studio. It was on that trip that he met Chet Atkins, who was the head of A&R for RCA and a lasting friendship was formed. “Silver Bracelet” was a hit in Atlanta, but there were bigger things to come. Shortly thereafter Ray left Prep Records and went to Capitol, its parent label. In 1958 Ray recorded some tracks for Capitol and it was during this time that Bill Lowery formed the National Recording Corporation (NRC). NRC had a little studio that wasn’t state of the art, but was somewhere to play and record. Ray, Jerry Reed and Joe South among several others would show up daily bugging the engineer to let them record.
Ray returned to Atlanta, finished high school and started college at Georgia State University where he studied classical piano and music theory. Ray left school during his junior year and in 1961 recorded a song called “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills.” The song went to #35 on the pop charts. At that point Ray’s wide range of talent landed him a job with Mercury Records in Nashville. He arrived in Music City on January 2, 1962, and worked on countless sessions as a pianist, arranger and vocalist in his first year alone. It was in one of those sessions that he recorded, “Ahab the Arab” which climbed to #5 on the pop charts in 1962.
On occasion Ray used to sing with the Jordanaires. He also played on a session for Elvis Presley. That was the only Elvis session Ray ever played on. He played trumpet with Charlie McCoy and in his own words he explains, “I’m a terrible trumpet player. I played keyboards, of course, and they didn’t need me to play on this particular song. It was a sort of Mexican song, so they asked Charlie and me to get our trumpets and play a little Mexican lick on it, and we did. I’ll never forget that! The only Elvis session I ever played on, I played an instrument that I could barely hold.” Several years later Ray would publish “Way Down”. Elvis’ last hit before he died. At Mercury, Ray also recorded, “Harry the Hairy Ape” and “Santa Claus is Watching You.” After that Ray’s recordings tapered off. He was spending his time in the studio producing and not focusing on his own music.
Soon Ray left Mercury and joined Monument Records as a producer overseeing new artists, one of those being a young Dolly Parton. 1969 would result in a year of phenomenal releases from Ray. As always the music was drawn from all styles of music. The jungle band comedy “Gitarzan” returned him to the pop charts top ten. On the country front he recognized the talent of a young Nashville writer and became the first artist to record Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.”
Later in 1969 he hit the pop charts again with a revival of the old Coaster Pop/R&B hit, “Along Came Jones.” Ray joined Barnaby Records in 1970, a label owned by singer Andy Williams. After he performed on Williams’ television variety show, he became Barnaby’s first contemporary artist. The summer of 1970 gave Ray the opportunity to host the summer replacement for the Andy Williams’ Show on NBC. He needed a hit song for the show and the end result of three days spent in his basement at his piano surrounded by crumpled paper was “Everything is Beautiful.” “Everything is Beautiful” became Ray’s first #1 hit on the pop charts and won him a Grammy for Male Vocalist of the Year. For the next few years he continued to release music from gospel to comedy. In 1974 while flying to Los Angeles, Ray read an article about a new fad among college students called streaking. Inspired, he jotted down a few notes and decided to work on a song about it later. The result was “The Streak.” The album was released five days after Robert Opel a thirty-three year old advertising executive snuck into the 1974 Academy Awards broadcast and streaked across the stage past David Niven. The incident made front page news and the release of “The Streak” was perfect timing. “The Streak” was Ray’s second #1 hit on the pop charts.
In 1975 Ray received his second Grammy Award. It was in the Best Arrangement category for the remake of the Erroll Gardner/Johnny Burke classic, “Misty.” He performed that song on piano at the show.  He can still sing well. One day in the studio while rehearsing his band for an upcoming television appearance they started clowning around with “Misty” using a banjo, fiddle and steel guitar. It sounded good. So good that Ray called his engineer to come down to the studio and the arrangement was recorded. “Misty” was one of his last hits for Barnaby Records. The label was being shut down so Ray signed with Warner Brothers. It was during this time that Ray’s publishing company was enjoying the success of Elvis’ last hit “Way Down.” During his time at Warner Brothers, Ray also recorded “In the Mood” and “I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow.” From 1979 to 1984 Ray was with RCA Records. His major hit during that time was “Shriner’s Convention”, inspired from a real experience in hotel booked full of Shriners. In 1984 Ray signed with MCA Records and had hits with “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” and “It’s Me Again Margaret.” Ray continued to record for MCA until 1990 when he signed with Curb Records. 1991 brought the opening of his two thousand seat Ray Stevens Theatre in Branson, Missouri. From 1991 to 1993 during the tourist season Ray performed twice a day, six days a week for 1,600,000 fans. Several years later in 2004 Ray reopened the show for another season and in 2006 the show closed permanently when Ray sold the theatre. During his time in Branson, Ray made music videos of several of his greatest hits to liven up the stage show. The videos went over so well that they were released through Ray’s own Clyde Records, Inc. in 1992 and made available for purchase through a mail order/television ad campaign. The release of “Comedy Video Classics” proved very successful selling over two million copies. He then released “Ray Stevens Live!” in 1995, a video from the Branson show which sold over a million copies. In 1995 Ray made “Get Serious” a full length movie. It earned platinum status from TV advertising and was released to retail outlets by MCA Records in late 1996.
Also in 1996, Ray returned to the studio and recorded a new comedy album entitled, “Hum It” on MCA Records. Songs on the album included, “Virgil and the Moonshot”, “Too Drunk to Fish”, and “R.V.” Another video collection, “Ray Stevens Latest & Greatest” was released in 1996 as well. It contained four of the songs from the original “Comedy Video Classics” and six songs from the movie, “Get Serious” 1997 brought the release of Ray’s very first Christmas album called, “Ray Stevens –Christmas Through a Different Window”, on MCA Records. The songs, “Bad Little Boy”, “Guilt for Christmas”, and “The Little Drummer Boy-Next Door” are some of the songs included in an album that shows a skewed version of real life. “Ray Stevens Funniest Video Characters” was released in 2000. The collection included some of Ray’s funniest songs including “The Pirate Song”, “The Haircut Song” and “The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone.” Also in 2000 Ray returned to Curb Records. He made yet another video album and this time appeared onscreen with cartoon characters from some of his favorites like “Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues” and “Erik the Awful.” “Ear Candy”, a collection of comedy tunes that managed to find humor in everything from dogs, cats, funerals and having a baby the natural way rounded out Ray’s 2000 releases. “Osama-Yo’ Mama” followed in 2002 and in 2004 “Thank You” was released. Both albums contained a variety of music from comedy, pop to country, every song of course, having the sound that can only be recognized as Ray’s.
In 2007 Ray decided to record exclusively for his own label, Clyde Records, Inc. Changing it from direct market only to a full service label that would make releases available to retail and for download. Ray felt that the time was right, being that independents are enjoying the same success as large corporate labels. It also allows him control of the timeline in which new recordings are released. And the first release on Clyde Records is “New Orleans Moon”, which shares a title with the first single. The CD includes many great standards such as, “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans”, to “Saint James Infirmary” and Randy Newman’s “Louisiana”. It is Ray’s tribute to the music, the culture and the people of New Orleans. Ray Stevens released "We The People" a CD/DVD package in April 2010. The videos include "We the People," which was featured twice on The O'Reilly Factor, "Caribou Barbie," "Throw the Bums Out" and "Thank You" filmed at Nashville's Veteran's Cemetery. "We the People," "Caribou Barbie" and the "Throw the Bums Out" videos have become viral sensations with millions of views. Other songs on the collection include hits like "The Global Warming Song," "Mr. Businessman" which is a special tribute to Bernie Madoff, "Obama Nation" and "If 10% is Good Enough for Jesus it Oughta be Enough for Uncle Sam," among others. There are also stirring patriotic songs including "Stand Up (for what you stand for)," "The Star Spangled Banner," "Safe at Home" and a special "Thank You" to our troops. Due to the popularity of “We the People” Ray recorded and released “Spirit of 76” an 11 song CD of more songs on Patriotic and Politically satirical themes in early 2011 along with a DVD titled “Internet Video Hits” that contains a DVD with 10 videos made especially for the internet that drew over 13,000,000 unique internet views in their first year.
He also published a Book titled “Let’s Get Political” that uses the titles of the songs from the two CDs above to allow him to expand his thoughts on those subjects in 34 essays, some of which have been published in major newspapers and on major websites like Fox News Channel. Ray Stevens’ latest and most ambitious effort is the release in 2012 of what he calls his “Labor of Love” his "Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music". The package contains 8 CDs with 96 of what Ray Stevens considers to be the greatest comedy songs of all-time and who should know better than the greatest and most prolific producer of comedy records of all-time. The effort took him over two years in the studio recording what he says are the songs that made him who he is today. He also researched and wrote extensive liner notes on all of the songs and included those along with a “History of Comedy Music” piece written by Don Cusic as well the writer/publisher credits in what he calls the “owner’s manual” of the project, a very entertaining and informative Encyclopedia-like book, along with a Bonus CD containing 12 more songs that Ray says would have certainly been radio hits during the Golden Era of Recorded Comedy Music. It could well be the crowning achievement of a long and varied career but then Ray Stevens says that he still has more projects in mind. Ray brought us the pop classic “Everything is Beautiful” the insightful “Mr. Businessman” and the Grammy Award winning arrangement of “Misty”. He has memorably spoofed everything from Tarzan movies to trendy crazes and he brought us his very own comedy classics. Ray’s genre of music is one of his own making. It spans from pop, country, rock and comedy and it is truly his own.
For one hour on Friday night, October 2, we were taken back in time for performances of those hilarious songs, along with “Taylor Swift is Stalking Me”, from his latest album, Here We Go Again.  And yes, I do own one of his videos.  This was actually my second time seeing Ray in concert.  I saw him at the old Acuff Theatre at Opryland in 1993.  This is probably the first time there has been a 22 year gap between my first and second time seeing a performer.  One of Ray’s back-up singers, Sherry Copeland, said she’d been travelling with Mr. Stevens since 1993.  So, it’s possible that one of her first gigs was that Opryland show.  I’d heard that Cyrus “Buddy” Kalb, writer of “Mississippi Squirrel Revival”, was there. Several people from Butler County were also in attendance.  What a fun show!