Monday, May 23, 2011
Ray Stevens - It Only Hurts When I Laugh
Today was a long day and with what I have to do this week I can tell you it will be a long long week. I ran into this song on youtube last year and thought it was fantastic. Not the usual goofy Ray Stevens song. I could see how his reputation for novelty songs may have hurt him with this one or else it might have been a hit. Of course it also did not help that the other side is a novelty song.
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Mercury Records issued this as a B-side of "Rockin' Teenage Mummies" in 1965. Ray recorded quite a few non-comical songs for Mercury in the early '60s but his commercial success lay with novelty songs as you mentioned...and so the label intentionally put the serious songs as B-sides just in case people who bought the singles would turn them over and hear what was on the other side. Also, some people don't believe it, but Ray was unable to release new material until 1966. He had joined the Monument label in late 1963 but Mercury continued to release singles on Ray through 1965. During the late '63 through early '66 gap Ray was behind the scenes being a producer, arranger, writer, and session musician for numerous artists on the Monument label.
Ray participated in recording sessions for the likes of Patti Page, Brook Benton, Ronnie Dove, Skeeter Davis, Dusty Springfield, and of course, Dolly Parton during the early to mid '60s. Some people like to say that Ray "vanished" during the mid '60s but in reality he was busy as ever behind the scenes.
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