After frequent appearances on The Andy Williams Show, Ray Stevens was granted his own summer show by NBC in 1970. That was the good news. The bad? It ran less than 2 months, from mid-June to early August.
At the time known for novelties such as "Ahab The Arab" and "Guitarzan", the latter of which came out prior to this series, as well as more serious entries such as "Mr. Businessman" and "Everything is Beautiful", Stevens taped his show in Canada, which allowed for one of their best known comics of the period, Billy Van, to be a regular. Van would also be part of the repertory companies for Sonny & Cher and the Hudson Brothers on their shows later in the decade. It just happens that producer Chris Bearde packaged both Williams' & Stevens' shows, along with Sonny & Cher and the Hudsons.
The repertory company here was more eclectic. Singer Lulu, best known for the theme from "To Sir With Love" just three years earlier, was a regular, as was comedy icon Jonathan Winters, who would get another crack at his own series about a year after The Ray Stevens Show signed off. Other familiar faces included Bob Einstein (ex-The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour), usually as Super Dave Osborne, and Steve Martin, who was also a writer and performer with the Smothers Brothers before becoming an icon in his own right.
Thanks to the magic of videotape, we get a triple dose of Stevens in this clip:
Stevens would score some of his biggest novelty success a few years later with "The Streak", but he balanced that with a cover of "Misty". YouTube commentators have noted how Stevens' personal views on politics have changed in recent years.
I barely remember seeing this show (I was 7 at the time), so there's no rating.
2 comments:
Nice. Wikipedia doesn't mention Rays show at all on Rays page.
I searched for Mama Cass, that's how I stumbled upon Ray Stevens
I'm a gigantic fan of Ray Stevens and I've written a personal blog about him for over 10 years. I started my blog in 2008. It's called 'Ray Stevens Music Journey'. The show Ray hosted wasn't meant to be permanent. It was what they called a summer show. When Andy Williams went on vacation in 1970 the producers of the show asked Ray if he would host the summer episodes while Andy was on vacation. Andy also owned the record label Ray recorded for, Barnaby Records. Andy's brother became Ray's manager. Ray's hit songs in 1970 were "Everything is Beautiful" and later in the year, "America, Communicate With Me", which hit the Top-20 on the Easy-Listening chart. That radio format is now called Adult-Contemporary. Late in 1970 he put out "Sunset Strip" and it, too, hit the Easy-Listening Top-20. He closed 1970 with the comedy song, "Bridget the Midget the Queen of the Blues", which hit the Top-10 in the United Kingdom and the Top-50 on the Hot 100 here in America early in 1971.
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