unclefester wrote:

Hal David and Burt Bacharach knew who they wanted to record their latest composition. So they placed a phone call & invited their preferred artist to fly out to California to join them & listen to their latest pride and joy. Surely the artist would agree to record it.

The three men end up at Burt Bacharach's home in the fall of 1969 & Bacharach plays the song for their guest.

"What do you think of it" they ask? "It's a great tune" he agrees but tells Bacharach and David that he is gong to turn down their offer. He tells them he has a song that he's been working on & is ready to go. He tells them he really wants to release the song entitled Sunday Morning Coming Down. He explains to them that he doesn't want to wait any longer so no other artist can beat him to it. And with that they shake hands & he heads back to Nashville to release the song he just KNOWS is going to be a hit for him.

His "can't miss" hit fell flatter than a pancake while the song Bacharach and David offer him sold in the millions and of course fronted the motion picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

​Rain Drop Keep Falling On My Head could have been a multi million seller for Ray Stevens

If only 
.

 

 that may be. but i'd bet ray's version was every bit as good as kris' original or cash's.hit, pancake or not.

Last edited by gopher (November 24, 2020 8:25 am)

Yes, I was thinking the same thing might have been part of the problem. His version is good, and he had put out such a wide range of material that he may have figured it was ok for him to do something that was different from anything else he had done. But it didn't fit with his image at all. On the other hand, I can see where he might have felt that the song had more depth to it than Raindrops. and this may have made Sunday Morning more appealing to him. He was right in thinking that it could be a big hit, but it needed an artist who was better suited to it and Johnny Cash certainly qualified.

unclefester wrote:

Ray Stevens said reflecting back it was a poor choice by him to record Sunday Morning Coming Down 

He says because he had a squeaky clean wholesome image with the record buying public they just would  not envision him waking up on a Sunday morning hung over & under the influence 

Now on  the other hand a guy like Johnny Cash...

poimt taken, commercially. but that doesn't mean ray didn't nail the song with equal creativity and quality, regardless.
 

aflem wrote:

Ray Stevens certainly has had an odd career. He's the only artist I can think of who had almost as many hit comedy records (Gitarzan, Harry The Hairy Ape, The Streak etc.) as serious work (Everything Is Beautiful, Mr. Businessman.) I can't think of another artist who was able to straddle those two genres. 

But to me, the greatest thing he ever did was a country rock version of the otherwise ploddingly slow "Misty." His version of that song remains one of my all time favorites. How it wasn't a bigger hit is one of the great musical mysteries to me. What a terrific record.

given the diversity of musics he's explored and recorded, generally in the guise of country (or at least marketed that way), i've sort of always seen him as something of a short-haired nashville frank zappa, if you can possibly wrap your head around that..

Last edited by gopher (November 24, 2020 11:29 am)

I think the closest for crazy schizophrenia in a career by comparison might be Roger Miller. All of his hits were off the wall, but some were more normal than others.

"King of the Road," arguably his biggest song, was a smash and semi-serious. "England Swings" was humorous but a catchy tune. So was "Engine, Engine #9" or "Walkin' In The Sunshine." Even "Dang Me," while odd, could be seen as almost normal. 

But there's no mistaking the bizarreness of "You Can't Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd," Chug-A-Lug" or "My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died." And don't get me started on "Do-Wacka-Do!" 

Another interesting hybrid career that veered between the mainstream and the just plain strange. 

I've heard this story before - if you've never heard Ray's version of Sunday Morning Comin Down, you have missed a total masterpiece.  It's really a movie without pictures. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmOEhwGsg0
I suspect there is more to the story than what's being told, I think Monument at the time was distributed by Columbia.  Ralph Emery on WSM was playing it every night, one night I recalled him saying Ray Price was going to record it (which he did but only as an album cut) but Ralph stopped playing it, as if he'd been told to.  And then, from out of nowhere came Johnny Cash.  Johnny Cash was a really big star at the time, and both he and Ray Price were on Columbia.  But after loving this so much, I could never embrace Cash's slightly uptempo sing-songy, unemotional approach to the song.  In fact every time it came on the radio I changed the station.  Definitely some music biz politics involved in there somewhere.  But in the end I guess it worked out OK, everyone involved went on to have long lasting and varied musical careers.

unclefester wrote:

 

not likely.

Just as aside can you imagine locking Ray Stevens and Jim Stafford in a room for the weekend?

Plenty of fireworks I suspect  LOL

no. more likely stafford entertaining stevens with gram parsons stories rather, i'd imagine. teenage fireworks included...
 

Last edited by gopher (November 25, 2020 11:56 am)

Poor timing and poor song selection/judgement

Ray Stevens said he should have recorded either For The Good Times or Me and Bobby McGee, both of which were freely available to him at the same time

He says he simply made a mistake and chose the wrong Kristofferson song