Ray Stevens (born Harold Ray Ragsdale; January 24, 1939) is an American country and pop singer-songwriter and comedian, known for his Grammy-winning song “Everything is Beautiful” as well as various comedic hits such as “Gitarzan” and “The Streak”. Over a career spanning multiple decades, he has worked as a background artist, producer, and music arranger for prominent acts, and as a solo artist on his albums, videos and short-lived television show. He has been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and the Christian Music Hall of Fame, and has received Gold Albums for his works. (More from Wikipedia)
It is more difficult for someone to make a career out of novelty records, but there have been a few. Ray Stevens started with “Ahab the Arab” (it hit #5 in 1962) and had a series of other hits later in the 1960’s and into the 1970’s: “Harry the Hairy Ape”, “Gitarzan”, “Santa Claus Is Watching You”, “The Streak”, etc. He did some serious songs also, notably “Everything Is Beautiful”.
(March 2013)
* * *
One of the routines by Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters, “Three German Police Seeing-Eye Dogs and One Yellow Cat” was a Top 20 hit in 1984. Ray Stevens supposedly adapted this monologue for his novelty song, “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival”; the lyrics mention a city just down the road from where I live: “The day the squirrel went berserk, in the First Self-Righteous Church, in the sleepy little town of Pascagoula. It was a fight for survival that broke out in revival. They were jumpin’ pews and shoutin’ ‘Hallelujah!’”
(November 2014)
