Everything is still beautiful for Ray Stevens.
Even though record stores and radio stations lost interest long ago, the 54-year-old maestro of novelty records (remember "The Streak," which became a No. 1 pop hit in 1974, "Gitarzan," and "Ahab the Arab"?) is thriving on mail order sales - mainly through late-night television commercials.Some 1.7 million videos were sold that way. And since the "Ray Stevens Comedy Video Classics" did so well, it was released to retail stores in May.
The low-budget video compilation of oldies like "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" and "Everything Is Beautiful" - which became a No. 1 pop single in 1970 - jumped to first on the Billboard video chart, where it has remained for 13 weeks. Sales now total about 2 million.
Videos by Guns N' Roses, Ozzy Osborne and Andrew Lloyd Webber have failed to unlodge Stevens from the top spot. He has followed up with the video of his Branson, Mo., stage show. It's also being marketed strictly by mail order at first.
Talking to Stevens is more like having a conversation with a resourceful businessman than an artist.
"I sell records to the people out there who go to the stores and say `I want the Ray Stevens record - the album that has the song about the psychiatrist,' or whatever," Stevens said in a phone interview from the Ray Stevens Theatre in Branson, Mo.
"I figure I lose a lot of sales simply because they go to the store, and since it's not on the chart, (the clerks) don't know what they're talking about and it becomes too hard. So the people go away saying, `I wish I could buy that record.' "
Stevens performs two shows a day, six days a week at his 2,000-seat eponymous theater. He was one of the first stars to see that Branson was becoming an entertainment mecca and build his own theater.
"The people that come to Branson have the same demographics as the people who go to Disney World. . . . They're kids, they're mothers, they're teenagers, they're aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, the whole age spectrum comes here," he said. "And this is the power of America and this is who country music appeals to."
As for his mail order experiment, Stevens began in a collaborative effort with MCA Records five years ago on a hits package. "It sold a whole bunch," Stevens said.
"I then cut an album on (saxophonist) Boots Randolph and marketed that, and that was fairly successful. Then I decided to do this video.
"Along the way I learned a lot about it and I'm still learning. It's a pretty complicated business. There's a lot of pitfalls and a lot of minefields out there.
"I'm not sure if I'll continue to work with other artists that way, but I probably will. I probably will see what I can assemble in the form of a group of artists or products that can benefit from direct marketing."
Steven's success on his own has prompted reawakened interest from Curb Records, which has released "Classic Ray Stevens." The album is all new comedy songs, despite the title.
VIDEO QUESTION
Question: I taped an opera on PBS and then let friends borrow it. When they play the tape they hear no singing but an entirely different program. But on my VCR I hear the singing fine. What's wrong?
Answer: Most likely you have recorded the secondary audio program (SAP) on your tape simultaneously with the main program. Hi-fi VCRs with the SAP feature can do this. SAP came about with the introduction of stereo TV sound, and has become a common feature of PBS channels. One use is to provide unrelated audio, such as continuous weather updates. If your friends don't have hi-fi VCRs, they cannot hear the opera, which safely resides on the hi-fi tracks. Check to see if you have inadvertently activated the SAP button.
- Andy Wickstrom
(Knight-Ridder)