Ray Stevens Wiki, Age, Bio, Height, Wife, Career, and Net Worth

Ray Stevens is a country and pop singer and songwriter from the United States. Ray Stevens is also a stand-up comedian.

Wiki, Bio, Family, Siblings, Childhood & Education

Ray Stevens was born on January 24, 1939, and his full name is Harold Ray Ragsdale. He is 83 years old and originally from Clarkdale, Georgia, the United States, a little cotton mill town twenty miles north of Atlanta. He attended Georgia State University as a music major after graduating from high school.

His mother’s name is Frances Stephens Ragsdale, and his father’s name is Willis Harold Ragsdale. He also has an actor and writer brother named John Ragsdale.

Ray Stevens’s Profession & Career

His early influences were from the radio and jukebox at the local swimming pool, where he and the majority of the kids spent their summers. Radio stations were highly diverse back then, playing the music of many types. This, combined with the recordings played by the jukebox, exposed him to a diverse range of music.

He discovered his passion for music when he was seven years old and attended piano lessons. He had acquired many of the great Southern musical influences by the time he was a teenager in Albany, Georgia. His musical styles spanned from country to rhythm and blues. He sang and played piano in a band called the Barons when he was fifteen years old, and they performed all over the neighborhood for the American Legion, the Elks, private parties, and anything else.

During adolescence

Similarly, he relocated to Atlanta at the age of seventeen, when he met radio personality and Georgia Tech football broadcaster, Bill Lowery. While still in high school, Johnny made his first trip to Nashville in 1957 and recorded his first single, Silver Bracelet. He did so at the now-legendary RCA “B” studio. On this trip, he met Chet Atkins, RCA’s chief of A&R. The two became buddies for life. His debut single was a smash in Atlanta.

Shortly afterward, he left Prep Records for Capitol. Capitol is its parent company. He recorded some tracks for Capitol in 1958. Bill Lowery founded the National Recording Corporation at this period (NRC). NRC had a small studio that wasn’t quite cutting-edge, but it was a place to play and record. Ray, Jerry Reed, and Joe South, among others, went up every day and bugged the engineer to let them record.

1960-1970

He later returned to Atlanta to finish high school. Ray then enrolled at Georgia State University, where he studied classical piano and music theory. He dropped out of school during his junior year and recorded Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills in 1961. The song peaked at number 35 on the pop charts. At the time, his diverse skill set got him a job at Mercury Records in Nashville.

Furthermore, he arrived in Music City on January 2, 1962, and worked on numerous sessions as a pianist, arranger, and vocalist in his first year. Ahab the Arab was recorded at one of the sessions. In 1962, this song reached number five on the pop charts.

He used to perform with the Jordanaires on various occasions. Ray also played in a session for Elvis Presley, which was his only Elvis session. He also played trumpet with Charlie McCoy. Several years later, he released Way Down, Elvis’ final success before his death.

More information

He also recorded Harry the Hairy Ape and Santa Claus is Watching You at Mercury. After then, his recordings became less frequent. He spent his time in the studio producing rather than concentrating on his music. Ray soon left Mercury to join Monument Records. He was the producer in charge of new acts at the time. Dolly Parton was one of those new artists.

Gitarzan, a jungle band comedy, restored him to the top ten of the music charts in 1969. On the country front, he spotted a young Nashville writer’s ability and became the first musician to record Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. Later that year, he returned to the pop charts with a remake of the old Coaster Pop/R&B song, Along Came Jones.

In addition, he signed with Barnaby Records in 1970. Andy Williams is the owner of the label. He became Barnaby’s first contemporary artist after appearing on Williams’ television variety show. In the summer of 1970, he was given the opportunity to succeed Andy Williams on NBC.

Furthermore, he wanted a popular song for the concert, and Everything is Beautiful fit the bill. Everything is Beautiful was the culmination of three days spent in his basement, surrounded by crumpled paper, at his piano. This song was also his first number-one success on the mainstream charts, and it earned him a Grammy for Male Vocalist of the Year.

1970-1980

He proceeded to create music ranging from church to humor throughout the next five years. Then, on a flight to Los Angeles in 1974, he read an article on streaking, a new fad among college students. He felt motivated, so he wrote down some notes. Later, he decided to write a song about it. This culminated in The Streak, his second number-one smash on the pop charts.

He got his second Grammy Award in 1975. It was for the remake of the Erroll Gardner/Johnny Burke classic Misty in the Best Arrangement category. His band for an impending television appearance started clowning around with Misty using a banjo, fiddle, and steel guitar one day while rehearsing in the studio. It sounded good, so he requested that his engineer record the arrangement.

This was one of his final Barnaby Records hits. As Barnaby was about to close, he signed with Warner Brothers. He recorded In the Mood and I Need Your Help, by Barry Manilow while at Warner Brothers.

1980-2000

He was signed to RCA Records from 1979 through 1984. Shriner’s Convention, inspired by a real-life encounter in a hotel packed with Shriners, was his biggest hit at the time. The Mississippi Squirrel Revival and It’s Me Again Margaret were hits for him after signing with MCA Records in 1984. He also kept recording for MCA until 1990. He then signed with Curb Records.

Later, in 1991, he opened the 2,000-seat Ray Stevens Theatre in Branson, Missouri. Then, from 1991 to 1993, he performed twice a day, six days a week for 1,600,000 fans during the tourist season. Moving forward to 2004, he relaunched the show for a second season. The show was then permanently closed in 2006 when he sold the venue.

During his tenure at Branson, he created music videos for several of his biggest hits in order to spice up the stage presentation. Those tapes were so well received that they were produced in 1992 by his own Clyde Records, Inc. and made available for purchase through a mail-order and television ad campaign.

Furthermore, Comedy Video Classics sold well over two million copies. Ray Stevens Live! was released in 1995. It’s a video from Branson’s concert that has sold more than a million copies. Later the same year, in 1995, he released Get Serious, a feature-length film. MCA Records released the film to retail channels in late 1996, earning it platinum status from TV promotion.

From 2000 onwards

In 2007, he made the decision to record only for his label, Clyde Records, Inc. He transformed the label from a direct-market-only operation to a full-service one that would make releases available for retail and download. It also enables control over when fresh recordings are released. Clyde Records’ debut release is New Orleans Moon. Many excellent songs are included on the CD, including Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, Saint James Infirmary, and Randy Newman’s Louisiana.

In April 2010, he published We The People, a CD/DVD combo. It included music tracks and videos about political and patriotic topics. Because of its success, he produced and released Spirit of 76, a CD of additional patriotic and political satire songs, in early 2011. Then he launched a DVD called Internet Video Hits, which contained ten videos created specifically for the online and received over 20,000,000 unique internet views.

After 2010, he also released a book titled Let’s Get Political. It leverages the titles of the songs from the two CDs mentioned above to allow him to expound on those topics in 34 articles. Some of these writings have appeared in major publications as well as on big websites such as Fox News Channel.

In 2012, he released Labor of Love, an “Encyclopedia of Recorded Comedy Music.” This effort took him over two years in the studio, where he recorded what he calls “the songs that made me who I am today.” He also researched and wrote comprehensive liner notes for all of the songs, which he included in the project’s “owner’s manual,” along with a “History of Comedy Music” essay written by Don Cusic and the writer/publisher credits.

In addition, in 2015, he released “Ray Stevens’ Nashville.” It’s a memoir about his time in the music industry. He went to multiple Barnes & Noble book signings. Later that year, RFD-TV aired his 30-minute TV show of the same name.

After 2015

To excellent reviews, he opened his Ray Stevens CabaRay Showroom in Nashville in January 2018. The music venue features a 700-seat Vegas-style dinner theatre where fans may be thoroughly delighted by Ray himself in full concert while also enjoying excellent food and beverage service.

Stevens also hosts and produces his Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville TV show. It’s a weekly 30-minute music/talk show that airs on PBS and RFD-TV and is shot on the CabaRay stage. In 2019, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as the newest member. Furthermore, on August 21st, 2018, Stevens was inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame.

Throughout his career, he has sold over 40 million CDs and maintains daily office activities at his Music. He also gave us the pop classic Everything Is Beautiful, the thought-provoking Mr. Businessman, and the Grammy Award-winning arrangement of Misty.

Furthermore, he has mimicked everything from Tarzan movies to recent crazes, and he has developed his own genre of comic masterpieces. His musical styles include pop, country, rock, bluegrass, and humor. He has also provided entertainment in the form of audio recordings, music videos, television presentations, concert stages, and the written word. In addition, in 2020, he will perform at Ray Stevens CabaRay Showroom in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ray Stevens’s Wife, Marriage & Relationship

Ray Stevens is married, and his wife’s name is Penny Jackson. Suzi Ragsdale and Timi Jones are the couple’s two children. They are both daughters. Furthermore, he was diagnosed with cancer in 1999 but recovered following a successful operation.

Ray Stevens’s Salary and Net Worth

Moving on, his net worth is estimated to be around $15 million. He makes money through his music productions, shows, and so forth.

Ray Stevens’s Social Media(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)

Ray Stevens may be found on a variety of social media channels. He began using Twitter in April 2009 and currently has 7.2k followers. As of April 2020, he had 30.9k followers and 968 posts on his Instagram account. He also has 328k followers on his Facebook page. In addition, he maintains a self-titled YouTube channel with 179k subscribers.

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