Ray Stevens

With songs like I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow and Would Jesus Wear A Rolex to his name, it would be easy to dismiss Georgia boy Ray Stevens as a purveyor of novelty songs but there is a more serious side to his songwriting talents. His 1975 cover of the jazz standard Misty (originally written by Erroll Garner in 1954) went to number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and his chart-topping Everything Is Beautiful has become an international classic. Stevens started out his career in music as a teenage prodigy signing to Capitol Records in 1957. In the late 1960s a move to Monument Records saw Stevens start to make an impact on the Country charts with the songs Have A Little Talk With Myself and Sunday Morning Coming Down. During the 1970s Stevens started producing and playing sessions for various Nashville acts and this, in conjunction with a prolific number of single releases in both the pop and novelty genre saw the accolades and awards roll in. In the 1990s Stevens concentrated his efforts on comedy, both as a performer and a writer using direct marketing and other unconventional outlets to sell his material. Latterly Stevens dabbled in politics through a series of YouTube videos and in 2010 he released a compilation of political themed comedy songs - We The People - which reached number five on the Billboard Comedy Chart. More recently, his 2015 studio album Here We Go Again positioned at number four on the US Comedy Charts.