He Thinks He's Ray Stevens was Ray Stevens' twenty-first studio album and his first for MCA Records, released in 1984. The front of the album cover shows Stevens spoofing French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
The track "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" is the only Top 40 single from this album, reaching No. 20 on Hot Country Singles (now Hot Country Songs) in early 1985. Stevens uses comic storytelling to frame what occurs when a young adolescent boy catches a squirrel (while visiting his grandmother in Pascagoula, Mississippi), brings it into church, where several self-righteous members – all with sinful secrets to hide – are prominent members ... and the squirrel breaks loose from a box the boy has kept it in. As the squirrel wreaks havoc, several members admit to their fellow congregation members their faults, and by song's end they all make a vow to change.
"Furthermore" is a re-recording and partial rewrite of Stevens' 1962 single of the same name. "The Monkees (Theme From)" is a cover of the theme song to The Monkees but sung by Ray in broad German dialects under the guise of two fictional singers, Wolfgang and Fritzy. This album also marked the debut of "It's Me Again, Margaret," a chart single about an obscene phone caller.
A re-release on CD on August 15, 1992 (MCAD-20688), titled Mississippi Squirrel Revival, featured this album's first eight tracks in a different order.
Read more about He Thinks He's Ray Stevens: Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words thinks, ray and/or stevens:
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)
“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls,
When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops.
He mocks the guinea, challenges
The crow, inciting various modes.
The sparrow requites one, without intent.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)