Ray Stevens a 6 Decade Country Music Star Who You Will Hear This Holiday Season

Ray Stevens, born Harold Ray Ragsdale on January 24, 1939, is an American country, pop singer-songwriter and comedian. Ray Stevens is best known for his Grammy-winning recordings “Everything Is Beautiful” and “Misty,” as well as novelty hits including “Gitarzan” and “The Streak.” Stevens is perhaps best known for his Christmas cover of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” He has earned gold albums and has worked as a producer, music arranger, and television host. He was also inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the Christian Music Hall of Fame, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Did you know he sang “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer?”

Ray Stevens Biography

Ray Stevens is the older of two sons. His younger brother, John, who died in 2020 at the age of 75, became an actor and writer in his own right. While attending high school, Stevens formed his first band, a rhythm and blues group named The Barons. He began studying business administration at Georgia State College in Atlanta, but switched to become a music major, to our benefit. He left college after completing three of the four years required to obtain a degree, which he felt that he did not need.

When he was 18, Stevens signed to Capitol Records‘ Prep Records division in 1957.
He signed with Mercury Records in 1961. His first hit came later that year, with the novelty song “Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills.” The Song rose to #35 on the pop chart. This began the long string of novelty songs for which he is known, including “Ahab the Arab” (which hit #5 in 1962), “Harry the Hairy Ape” (which hit #17 in 1963), and “Gitarzan” (which hit #8 in 1969).

Ray Stevens has been based in Nashville since 1962. He also worked as a multi-instrumental session musician and songwriter. He played trumpet for an Elvis Presley session and wrote songs for Brook Benton, Skeeter Davis, and Dolly Parton. He also contributed to Waylon Jennings’s classic “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.”

While Stevens was best known for comedy, he had a few straight pop songs as well. The most successful of these in the 1960s was “Mr. Businessman,” which went to #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.

In 1970, Ray Stevens signed with Barnaby Records, which was owned by singer Andy Williams. He hosted an NBC comedy-variety series, Andy Williams Presents Ray Stevens. This led to his biggest hit in the United States, his gospel-inflected single “Everything Is Beautiful” (1970). It won a Grammy Award, was a number-one hit on both the pop and adult contemporary charts, and marked his first time in the top 40 on the country charts, peaking at number 39.

Stevens had a big hit in 1974 with “The Streak”, a novelty song about streaking which reached number one on the American and British singles charts. The following year, he scored another hit with a unique arrangement of Erroll Garner’s jazz-pop standard “Misty,” which went to #3 on the country chart and #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ray Stevens focused mostly on serious material, as he felt that the novelty song was becoming less popular in that era. However, in 1977, he released a cover version of Glenn Miller’s big-band standard “In the Mood,” in which the vocals sounded like chickens clucking, credited to The Henhouse Five Plus Too. He also had an adult contemporary crossover hit in 1979 with “I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow”, a cut from Stevens’ Barry Manilow tribute/parody album The Feeling’s Not Right Again.

Ray Stevens signed with RCA Records in 1980, releasing three albums over the next two years. He briefly returned to Mercury Records for one album in 1983. He developed a political bent. In February 2002, he released Osama—Yo’ Mama. In April 2010, he released We the People, a CD/DVD of political songs. It was in the top five on the Billboard Comedy Album chart. RAY-ality TV ended its digital TV run in January 2014.

In 2015, Stevens began producing and hosting Ray Stevens Nashville, a 30-minute weekly music variety show on cable TV. The show was rebranded as Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville and is filmed on stage at his own CabaRay Showroom, which opened to the public in early 2018. The album Here We Go Again came out on March 24, 2015. It includes the Taylor Swift spoof single “Taylor Swift is Stalking Me.” In 2016, he covered “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.“

Conclusion

Ray Stevens has had a long and storied career. He has had many songs ranked highly in the charts, and even one that hit number one. However, he might be best known for his cover of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” That was a cover he did in 2016, and it is about to be played on the radio over and over again this month.