Ray Stevens and His “Streak” of Success

Boogity boogity! The tale of the bizarre college fad that went mainstream and the singer who rode it to the top of the charts.

by Rich Watson 

Ray Stevens is a country singer who has a history of novelty songs in addition to more straightforward material. He worked with and wrote for some of the top names in country music, and won Grammys. For a brief time, he even had a TV show.

During the height of his fame, he had an improbable number-one hit song about an even more improbable fad: streaking.

Funny country songs

Country music always struck me as inherent with more than a touch of humor. Why? Being a city mouse, I couldn’t say for certain, but even many of the “serious” songs had the capacity to laugh at itself. 

Johnny Cash definitely had a playful side. You know about “A Boy Named Sue,” for instance, but do you know about a song of his called “Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart”?

Jerry Reed, Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn and other superstars recorded similar songs, taking a typical country song and exaggerating it, sometimes to outrageous extremes. That tradition continues today with singers like Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley.

And not just the music. In 1969 CBS debuted a TV show called Hee Haw. Imagine Saturday Night Live if it were made in Nashville. Apparently Elvis was a fan, but Colonel Parker wouldn’t let him appear on the show. It had a lot of funny music, but “serious” country stars appeared on it as well.

Stevens was part of a time when country music, and the culture associated with it, was presented for laughs, from The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw and The Dukes of Hazard on TV through Smokey and the Bandit, Every Which Way But Loose and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the movies—and the mainstream loved it.

Even after the trend died, Stevens continued.

About Ray Stevens

The Georgia native worked as a DJ in Atlanta while in high school, and also played in a band. He got connected to Capitol Records and recorded songs. While at Georgia State, he moved to Mercury, where he cracked the Top 40 with a song that set the tone for what kind of singer he’d become: “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills” (yes, that’s the actual title). In later years, he’d reach the top twenty with songs called 

• “Ahab the Arab,” 
• “Harry the Hairy Ape” and 
• “Gitarzan.” 

As a session musician, he sang with Patsy Cline’s Jordanaires, played trumpet for Elvis, and wrote songs for Dolly Parton and others.

In 1970 he signed with Andy Williams’ Barnaby Records, which led to his own NBC TV show, albeit a summer replacement series. It was on that show, however, he wrote “Everything is Beautiful,” his straight theme song. It spent two weeks at number one and won the Grammy—but he was far from done.

Around this time streaking became a thing…

An attempt to explain streaking 

Ever since Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse to get her husband to lower taxes, some people have ran around in their birthday suits for one reason or another. The seventies was the peak time for such activity.

College students in particular popularized this stunt. A Yale kid, when asked why, summed it up pretty well: “We’re college students and college students are supposed to have fun.”

This article about streaking from a runner’s perspective posits that streaking might’ve been due to 

changing attitudes toward sexuality and nudity, generalized distrust of authority and institutions, and the fact that streaking tended to garner a lot of media attention, which begat more streaking.

Streakers are primarily white, primarily male. They have invaded sporting events, in America and the UK, including the Olympics, Super Bowl and the NBA Finals. One even crashed the Oscars. (David Niven was never the same again.)

Brit Mark Roberts has done it over 550 times since 1993. He’s the one who did it at Super Bowl 38. His sponsor paid him a million bucks for the stunt.

So there are all kinds of reasons why someone might run nude through a public place. 1974 may have been the year streaking reached its zenith.

Stevens was there for it.

“Don’t look Ethel!”

Stevens read about streaking in a magazine while flying and thought it would be a fun idea for a song. He didn’t actually write “The Streak” until later, when in his words, he “woke up and it was all over the news. Everywhere you turned, people were talking about streakers.”

By the time he wrote, recorded and released his song, fifteen other artists had songs about streaking. Stevens had timing on his side, though: “The Streak” came out a week before the Oscar streaker. 

About the timing, he said:

I wrote the song the minute I heard about streaking, and got in the studio and cut it…. I don’t know how they got their records out so fast, but maybe they weren’t all that good. When mine came out, it took the market. It was the one that radio liked. 

It went gold. It hit number one not only in the US, but Canada, the UK and New Zealand. It also hit number three on the country chart.

Eighteen years later, in 1992, he made a video, which was faithful to the narrative of the song: a TV news reporter interviewing a guy who has seen the Streak in various locations (and trying to keep his wife from doing the same).

Also, in 1976, Stevens’ straight cover of the Johnny Mathis song “Misty” earned him his second Grammy.

Stevens in the 21st century 

Stevens has remained active. The February after 9-11, he put out an album called Osama—Yo’ Mama: The Album. That led to a CD/DVD, a webisode series, a part in a movie and a memoir. Last May he released a new comedy album, Say Whut?

He owns a Nashville dinner theater, Ray Stevens’ CabaRay Showroom. 

In December he successfully underwent “minimally invasive heart surgery.” His Facebook page reports his recovery is “progressing very positively,” though he has yet to announce when he’ll perform again. 

———

The Harlem Renaissance, beginning March 11.

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