Ray Stevens
When Ray Stevens says he just thinks funny, his key word is thinks. Like many revered American wits—from Charlie Chaplin to Jackie Gleason to Bill Cosby—Stevens’ humor is keenly observant and rich in nuance, yet he puts it across with such an unpretentious, unaffected style that it can be easy to overlook the fertile mind needed to create such guileless entertainment.
For more than 40 years, Ray Stevens has been entertaining us. From his novelty songs like “The Streak,” to his socially aware pieces like ” Mr. Businessman,” to his tender ballads he has touched us. Besides singing and composing, Ray has produced and arranged for some of Nashville’s most legendary performers. As with all outstanding writers, Stevens has a way of creating characters and situations that highlight the humor in everyday life as well as larger issues and lifestyle trends.
Ray Stevens was born Harold Ray Ragsdale in Clarkdale, Georgia in January 1939. Clarkdale was a small cotton mill town 20 miles north of Atlanta. There was no television in 1939 in Clarkdale so the radio was a major influence in Ray’s life. In the village was a swimming pool. Ray, along with most of the kids, lived at the pool every summer. At the pool they had a jukebox, and there were all kinds of records they would play. In those days, radio stations played all styles of music, it was pretty eclectic.
Ray was an average seven-year-old kid taking piano lessons when one day he looked at the keyboard and, in his words, “It all made sense.” From that day forward, music was his life. By the time he was a teenager in Albany, GA., he had absorbed some of the great musical influences of the South, from country to rhythm & blues, and felt at home with any style of music. He started his own high school band at age 15. His band, The Barons, played all over the area for the American Legion, the Elks, private parties, anywhere.
At age 17, he moved to Atlanta where he met radio personality and Georgia Tech football broadcaster, Bill Lowery. “Bill played all kinds of shows. He was on several different radio stations around town, and he had started a music publishing company. He was looking for talent to write songs. I went out to his house, and I said, ‘My name is Ray Ragsdale, and I’m going to learn to write songs for you.’ He said, ‘Okay lad, go to it.’ I borrowed a little tape recorder from a friend. I got the key to the lunch room, which also served as the assembly hall, from the high school principal. The cafeteria had a very high ceiling and a piano up on a little stage. I went there one Sunday by myself and made a demo of a song that I had written called “Silver Bracelet.” I took it to Bill and he liked it. He called Ken Nelson at Capitol Records who was coming to Nashville a lot during those days to produce records. Ken liked the song and signed me to a contract with Prep Records.”
In 1957, Ray went to Nashville and recorded his first record at the old RCA “B” studio. He met Chet Atkins, who was in charge of A&R for RCA, on that first trip and they have been friends ever since. “Silver Bracelet” was a hit in Atlanta but nowhere else. Ray left Prep Records and went to Capitol Records, its parent label, and recorded some tracks. Meanwhile, Bill Lowery formed the National Recording Corporation (NRC) in 1958.
NRC had a little studio that was not state of the art, but it was something to play with. Ray, Jerry Reed, Joe South and all the guys down there, would show up every day and bug the engineer to let them record something.
In 1960 Stevens, released a song called “Sgt. Preston Of The Yukon” that picked up some national air play – until someone at King Features Syndicate took notice. The song was based on their character and Ray had neglected to get permission to use the name. Due to a pending lawsuit they had to pull the record off the market. It never occurred to Ray that he needed permission to use the character in a song.
Ray was attending Georgia State University to study classical piano and music theory, but his classical career was cut short in 1961 when he recorded a novelty song called “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills,” which went to #35 on the pop charts. In the meantime, his 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 more than 300 sessions as a pianist, arranger and vocalist in his first year. One of those sessions was his own “Ahab The Arab,” which went to #5 on the pop charts in 1962.
“I rely on my impressions of things that I read about or see. I keep up with current events and check up on what’s going on. If there’s a topic everybody is talking about, then there’s usually a good comedy song in there somewhere. Usually if it’s something I think is funny then other people probably think it’s funny, too,” says the nine time TNN-Music City News Comedian of the year.
Ray used to sing, occasionally, with the Jordanaires when one of their guys couldn’t make it. One day, Ray even performed with Elvis Presley on a session for the movie Fun In Acapulco.
That was the only Elvis session Ray played on, he played trumpet with Charlie McCoy. “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 us 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. Later on, I published a song that Elvis recorded, his last hit before he died, ‘Way Down’.”
With “Ahab The Arab” rising up the charts, it ended his career as the assistant A&R person at Mercury. He recorded “Harry, The Hairy Ape,” and “Santa Claus Is Watching You.” Then his records tapered off. “It’s my fault, because I didn’t pay enough attention to being a star. I was still enamored with life in the studio and producing.”
Stevens then joined Monument Records as a producer overseeing new artists, such as a young Dolly Parton. At Monument, Ray added songs like “Unwind” and “Mr. Businessman” to his repertoire.
Ray says he did not understand the marketing strategy that dictated you had to stick with one style of music or you would confuse the public, and radio stations didn’t know what to do. “I am first and foremost a musician. I love music, but I do have a sense of humor and I love to do a funny song. But by the same token, I want it to be good musically as well as funny. I not only want the lyric but the production and the sound to tell the story.”
In 1969, Stevens embarked on a phenomenal streak of recordings that drew from all styles of music. The jungle band comedy of “Gitarzan” returned him to the pop Top 10, while on the country front he recognized the talent of a young Nashville writer and became the first artist to record Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Ray actually passed on the chance to record “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” because he was working on the release of “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Later in 1969 he hit the pop charts again with a revival of the old Coasters pop/R&B hit “Along Came Jones.”
In 1970, Ray joined Barnaby Records, which was owned by singer Andy Williams. After Ray performed on Williams’ television variety show, he became Barnaby’s first contemporary signee. During the summer of 1970 Ray hosted the summer replacement show for the Andy Williams’ show on NBC. Ray needed a hit song for the show. He went down to his basement were his piano was and stayed there for three days. He had crumpled paper all over the place when suddenly he hit on “Everything Is Beautiful.” He wrote the song in about 45 minutes and he knew it was a hit.
“Everything Is Beautiful” became Rays’ first #1 pop hit and won him a Grammy Award as Male Vocalist of the Year. Unfortunately, Ray was on tour in Australia at the time and was not able to personally accept the award.
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. He made a few notes and decided he would finish the song later. By the time Ray recorded “The Streak” 15 or 16 other streaking records were already on the market. Ray took the song to the #1 pop station in Nashville and they played it and the phones lit up like they’ve never lit up before. The record was released five days after 33-year-old advertising executive Robert Opel sneaked into the 1974 Academy Awards broadcast and “streaked” across the Oscar stage past David Niven. This made front page news and the release of “The Streak” was perfect timing. Ray’s record beat out all the others to be his second #1 pop hit.
In 1975, Ray received his second Grammy Award. This time is was in the catagory of Best Arrangement for the remake of the Erroll Gardner/Johnny Burke classic “Misty.” He came upon the remake purely by accident one day, in his recording studio, while rehearsing his band for a TV show they were to appear on in a few days. During the break they started clowning around with “Misty” with a banjo and a fiddle and a steel guitar. It sounded great so Ray called the engineer to come down and they recorded the song.
“Misty” was one of the last hits Stevens had for Barnaby Records. Andy Williams wanted to shut the label down so Ray signed with Warner Brothers Records. It was during this time that Ray’s publishing company was also enjoying the success of the song “Way Down” that Elvis had recorded. Ray also recorded “In The Mood” and “I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow” while with Warner Brothers.
From 1979 to 1984, Ray recorded for RCA Records. His major novelty hit during this time was “Shriner’s Convention.” This song came from a real experience in a hotel that was booked full of Shriners.
In 1984, Ray signed with MCA Records and had hits with “Mississippi Squirrel Revival,” and “It’s Me Again Margaret.” Ray says, to this day, he can’t go on stage without several people yelling, “It’s Me Again Margaret!”
When visiting record stores you can find many Ray Stevens Greatest Hits collections. Most of these releases are not under Ray’s control. Former labels like Monument, Barnaby, Warner Brothers, etc. have licensed and relicensed and re-relicensed his hits. It used to concern Ray but he has since realized that he has no control over these releases.
Ray built his own theater in Branson, MO and performed there from 1991 through 1993. It was a 2,000 seat theater with shows six days a week, twice daily, for six months at a time. In the span of 17 months he performed to over 1,600,000 fans. Ray sold the theatre in 1994.
During his time in Branson, Ray made some music videos of some of his greatest hits to spice up his stage show. They worked so well that he decided to sell them through a mail order/television advertising campaign that proved to be successful beyond imagination. The video was released on Ray’s own Clyde Records, Inc. label, named after Clyde the camel from the song “Ahab The Arab.” (Clyde Records, Inc. is a direct marketing label and does not have any in-store availability).
Ray’s video Comedy Video Classics,which was released in 1992, ended up selling over two million copies. He then released his “Live” video from the Branson show in 1993 and it has sold over one million copies. In 1995, Ray made a full-length movie titled Get Serious. 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 to record a new comedy album titled Hum It, on MCA Records. This album contains songs like “Virgil And The Moonshot”, “Too Drunk To Fish” and “R.V.” That same year he also released a video titled “Ray Stevens-Latest & Greatest.” This music video collection contains four of the songs from the original “Comedy Video Classics” and six songs from his movie “Get Serious.”
In 1997, Ray released his very first Christmas album called Ray Stevens – Christmas Through A Different Window, on MCA Records, which is a skewed view of real life with songs like “Bad Little Boy”, “Guilt For Christmas” and “Little Drummer Boy-Next Door.”
In 2000 Ray released a new video album containing eight new comedy music videos titled Ray Stevens Funniest Video Characters. This collection includes such greats as “The Pirate Song”, “The Haircut Song” and “The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone”.
As we enter a new millennium Ray Stevens has returned to Curb Records with his creative juices in full flow. He has recorded yet another Video Album and this time he appears on screen with cartoon characters from some of his favorites like “Erik the Awful” and “Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues”. Also, he has a new CD of what the world might call “straight” songs like “It Won’t Be Easy”, “Come On Home to Baseball”, and “Blue Angel” plus seven more all with a Ray Stevenseque twist. He has a new CD of comedy tunes that manages to find the humor in everything from dogs and cats to funerals and having a baby “the natural way”. But probably the most exciting Ray Stevens project in years is a CD titled “Ray Stevens Sings Frank Sinatra…Say What???”. In this, Stevens presents his non-comedic interpretation of 10 Old Blues Classics but not with big orchestral arrangements. Stevens delivers a unique performance with a rock n roll combo that shows why he so richly deserves that Male Vocalist Grammy that hangs in a treasured place in his home.
Ray brought us the pop classic “Everything is Beautiful”, the insightful “Mr. Businessman” and a grammy winning arrangement of “Misty.” He has memorably spoofed everything from Tarzan movies (“Gitarzan”) to trendy crazes (“The Streak”) to taxes (“If 10% is Good Enough for Jesus – It Oughta be Enough for Uncle Sam”) to tel evangelists (“Would Jesus Wear a Rolex”). He’s even concocted cheerfully absurd classics based on a bumbling prank phone caller (“It’s Me Again Margaret”) and a squirrel that receives credit for causing miracles (“Mississippi Squirrel Revival”).
Ray Stevens is at home with his genre of music, that’s for sure. A genre of his own creating. A Pop, Country, rock and Novelty niche that can only be described as…Ray Stevens Music.
