''Me'' was

Ray Stevens Harold Ray Ragsdale (born January 24, 1939), known professionally as Ray Stevens, is an American country music, country and pop singer-songwriter and comedian. He is best known for his Grammy-winning recordings "Everything Is Beautiful" and "M ...

' twentieth studio album and his third and final for

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. Mercury Records released ...

, released in

1983 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the ...

. In 1982, Stevens returned briefly to Mercury to record this album (his first for that label in 20 years) before moving to

MCA Records MCA Records was an American record label owned by MCA Inc. established in 1972, though MCA had released recordings under that name in the UK from the 1960s. The label achieved success in the 1970s through the 1980s, often by acquiring other ...

in 1984. The front of the album cover shows Stevens portraying a painter painting a self-portrait; while the back shows the finished portrait on a table along with a second self-portrait that is sketched by pencil, a cup filled with paint brushes, the paint tray, tubes of paint, a small glass filled with water and a rose, and a lamp. Two singles were lifted from the album: "Love Will Beat Your Brains Out" (which did not chart) and "My Dad."

Track listing

Personnel

* Produced by Jerry Kennedy and Ray Stevens * Arranged by Ray Stevens * Engineer – Stuart Keathley * Recorded and Mixed at Ray Stevens Studio (Nashville, Tennessee). * Mastered by Randy Kling at Disc Mastering, Inc. (Nashville, Tennessee). * Photography – Slick Lawson * Paintings and Sketches – Susan Scott Musicians * Ray Stevens – vocals, other synthesizers * Rodger Morris – acoustic piano,

Rhodes piano The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

, Gleemon synthesizer * Mark Casstevens – acoustic guitars * John Clausi – electric guitars * Steve Gibson – electric guitars * Weldon Myrick –

dobro Dobro () is an American brand of resonator guitars owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally a gui ...

steel guitar A steel guitar () is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conventional guitar i ...

* Jack Williams – bass *

Jerry Carrigan Jerry Kirby Carrigan (September 13, 1943 – June 22, 2019) was an American drummer and record producer. Early in his career he was a member of the original Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and later worked as a session musician in Nashville for over ...

– drums (1, 3-10) *

James Stroud James Stroud is an American musician and record producer who works in Pop music, pop, Rock music, rock, R&B, soul, disco, and country music. He played with the Malaco Rhythm Section for Malaco Records. In the 1990s, he was the president of Giant ...

– drums (2) *

Terry McMillan Terry McMillan (born October 18, 1951) is an American novelist known for her vivid portrayals of African American women's lives, relationships, and journeys of self-discovery. Her best-selling works, including ''Waiting to Exhale'' and ''How S ...

– percussion,

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica incl ...

Jew's harp The Jew's harp, also known as jaw harp, juice harp, or mouth harp, is a lamellophone instrument, consisting of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or reed attached to a frame. Despite the colloquial name, the Jew's harp most likely originated in ...

Nashville String Machine Nashville String Machine is a musical collective comprising session musicians, based in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Members of the group have been credited on records dating from 1972 to the present, although the group was formally formed ...

– strings * Suzi Ragsdale – backing vocals (1), female vocal (7) * The Cherry Sisters (Sheri Huffman, Lisa Silver and Diane Tidwell) – backing vocals * Alan Moore – backing vocals * Hurshel Wiginton – backing vocals

Chart performance

Singles

References

{{Authority control 1983 albums Ray Stevens albums Mercury Records albums