Ray Stevens was born Harold Ray Ragsdale in 1939 in Clarksdale, Georgia, so he was raised on country and R&B music. While he was in high school, he formed his own band, called The Barons and began writing his own music. Knowing music was his life’s work, after high school, he enrolled at Georgia State College as a music major.

When he was only sixteen years old, he was already working as a producer at Prep Records. Producing songs for R&B groups like The Cellos. It was 1957 and R&B and Doo Wop was big in this country.

By 1961, Ray had written songs for himself and was signed to the Mercury label. His first single to hit the Top 40 has one of the longest titles in music history. “Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills.” The song only reached 35 on the charts but it proved that Ray could do the job. His next single was what put him the map. It was “Ahab the Arab” and it went to number five, establishing Ray Stevens as a musical force. He was stuck with novelty songs for awhile. Someone compared him to Al Yankovic, but unlike Al who took existing songs and wrote parodies around them, Ray wrote original songs.

In 1966, he switched labels, moving to Monument Records and decided it was time for a serious song, so he wrote “Mr Businessman” but it only got to number 28, so he went back to the novelty songs, with “Gitarzan” and “Along Came Jones.” In 1969, Roger Miller, another country singer that sings novelty songs, introduced Ray to Andy Williams’ brother, Don. Andy moved Ray over to the Barnaby label and it was here that he recorded his first number one hit, “Everything is Beautiful.” By this time Ray was appearing on the Andy Williams show quite regularly.

“Everything is Beautiful” was written by Ray Stevens. He says he just sat down at the piano one day and worked on it until he got what he liked. He took a portable cassette recorder to his daughter’s school, Oak Hill Elementary in Nashville and recorded the children singing the chorus to “Everything is Beautiful” in the school cafeteria. It sounds pretty good for a portable recorder. Two of his daughters who attended the school sing on the record.

“Everything is Beautiful” is quite a departure from what Ray was known for. This was a serious song and dealt with anti-racist and pro-tolerance subjects that you don’t hear in popular songs very often. The song made its debut on the Andy Williams Presents Ray Stevens Show on June 20, 1970 and the record went right to the top of the charts.

“Everything is Beautiful” debuted on the pop charts on April 18, 1970 and spent two weeks at the top. Ray Stevens had one more number one, in 1974, back to the novelty songs, with “The Steak.”