Everything is beautiful in its own way
From Roger Miller (not) to Ray Stevens (not yet, but I thought I had).
From his website:
Like many revered American wits -- from Charlie Chaplin to Jackie Gleason to Bill Cosby -- Stevens' humor is keenly observant and rich in nuance, yet he puts it across with such an unpretentious, unaffected style that it can be easy to overlook the fertile mind needed to create such guileless entertainment....
Ray says he did not understand the marketing strategy that dictated you had to stick with one style of music or you would confuse the public, and radio stations didn't know what to do. "I am first and foremost a musician. I love music, but I do have a sense of humor and I love to do a funny song. But by the same token, I want it to be good musically as well as funny. I not only want the lyric but the production and the sound to tell the story."...
During the summer of 1970 Ray hosted the summer replacement show for the Andy Williams' show on NBC. Ray needed a hit song for the show. He went down to his basement were his piano was and stayed there for three days. He had crumpled paper all over the place when suddenly he hit on "Everything Is Beautiful." He wrote the song in about 45 minutes and he knew it was a hit.
"Everything Is Beautiful" became Rays' first #1 pop hit and won him a Grammy Award as Male Vocalist of the Year. Unfortunately, Ray was on tour in Australia at the time and was not able to personally accept the award.
For the next few years he continued to release music from gospel to comedy....
Ray Stevens is at home with his genre of music, that's for sure. A genre of his own creating. A Pop, Country, rock and Novelty niche that can only be described as...Ray Stevens Music.
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