Ray Stevens

Kurt L Moore

Ray Stevens is just, well, Ray Stevens. While I was watching him perform, I had an itch in the back of my mind that he reminded me of someone else. Then while taking a close-up photo of him, it dawned on me, he reminded me of the satirical comedian, George Carlin. Then as I watched and listened to Ray, I knew that he reminded me of a country-fried George Carlin. George Carlin is fun and so is Ray. Carlin makes fun of life’s absurdities and so does Ray. However, Ray does it just a little bit differently in the fact that he takes life and makes it absurdly funny. The entire show that Ray Stevens has concocted for your pleasure is, with the exception of a couple of serious moments, absurdly funny.

Back in ’99, Ray had cancer and so far has beaten it. I too am a cancer survivor and can truthfully testify that after having such a dreaded disease, you are extremely happy just to be alive and you have a tendency to live every day to it’s fullest extent. One can tell that Ray has a good time on or off stage just being Ray. One other truth associated with living through cancer is; you know the limitations of life, so you will give everything you do your utmost effort, whether it be simply living or, as in Ray’s case, performing for live audiences, and that includes you.

Let me go into Ray Stevens a bit further. Ray is different and probably has been all of his life. Ray Stevens was not born Ray Stevens. As a child, he was christened with the name, Harold Ray Ragsdale in Clarksdale, Georgia. He led pretty much a normal Georgia boy’s life, with the exception that he took an early, and what some would call abnormal, interest in music. As a seven year old, taking piano lessons, Ray looked at the keyboard one day and knew from that life-turning moment on, that it all made sense and that music is what he wanted to do as his life’s station. Ray was definitely hooked on music. It became his life, as he ate, slept and breathed musical lore and knowledge. He went on to enroll in Georgia State University where he majored in classical piano and music theory.

In 1961 Ray, while in college, recorded a song called, “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills.” When that song went to number 35 on the pop charts, Ray’s college days were, for all practical purposes, over. From that moment on, Ray began a career climb that made his name know round the world. During the next 43 years we would be fortunate enough to hear Ray Stevens and life viewed through his multi-colored glasses in such songs as, “Ahab the Arab,” and “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival.” For the past four decades, we have been hooked on Ray Stevens. We like to have fun too.

I, having gone through the first half of my life, have learned quite a few things and one of those truths is that normal is only a setting on my washer or dryer—I forget which one. Ray is certainly not what one would classify as normal in any respect. Ray’s sky is a different color than most would see, he marches to a kazoo player and not a drummer, wanders through the less traveled pastures of life and the rest of the world is out of step with him, not the other way around.

Ray, as a top-flight musician and singer, belongs to an exclusive pickle barrel society of great southern musicians and is the man who generally calls for the gatherings. Others in this clan of gentlemen of the south include, Mickey Gilley, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Swaggart, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings as the purveyor of fine mint juleps. Six pianos, four guitars and a host of heavenly strings comprise the background as their voices cry out the music that we have all come to know and love. Try and imagine the music coming from under the willows, on the large veranda of the greatest plantation of all. It has to be beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination.

Ray paid his dues to this southern gentlemen’s club with success. Ray Stevens was named TNN Comedian of the Year, each year from 1986 through 1994. He also won a triple platinum as a recording artist. In 1993, his video, “Comedy Video Classics” was named the Top Music Video of that year and has since gone on to become the top Comedy Music Video of all time. In 1970 Ray won a Grammy for the Best Contemporary Vocal Performance and again in 1975 he won yet another Grammy for the Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists. Ray also had his record, “The Streak” nominated for CMA Album of the Year and Single of the Year in 1974. In 1980 Ray was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Ray has never rested on his laurels or his achievements. Ray is always looking at and listening to the many colored threads of life. He is always seeing something that the rest of us fail to see. Eventually what he sees or hears will be facing us on the stage at the “Ray Stevens Show.”

One can say that Ray Stevens is off his trolley, and that would be a fact. In 2000, the “Ray Stevens Trolley” was christened in Nashville, Tennessee. One of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s vintage looking trolleys was named in Ray’s honor. So, while Ray is in Branson, he is definitely off his trolley.

Now, about the gorilla, the camel and the opera diva. Nope, I’m not gonna tell you. You are going to have to go see Ray’s show to find out about them. Don’t you just hate it when someone does that?

Branson Critic™

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