Songoftheday 3/7/21 - Hey can you tell when you look in my eye, you don't mess around with me 'less you feelin' dangerous...

 

 

"Are You Jimmy Ray?" - Jimmy Ray

from the album Jimmy Ray (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song of the day comes from pop artist Jimmy Ray, who grew up James Ray Edwards in London in the 1970s. Originally part of a new wave duo, Jimmy signed on with Epic Records in the late 1990s. His first single was the goofy neo-rockabilly confection "Are You Jimmy Ray?", which he wrote with producer Con Fitzpatrick. The lyrics are absolutely batty, as background singers run through lists of names ending in "Ray", as Jimmy just inserts a verse about how "dangerous" he is. This is way more about the sound than the content, with the rockabilly revival just starting to come by, and unless you knew, you'd have thought he was from somewhere in the U.S...

"Are You Jimmy Ray?" became his first and only chart hit in America, reaching the pop top 20 in March of 1998. The song also climbed to #25 on Billboard magazine's older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#2), Spain (#4), and Hungary (#5), and landed in the top-40 in his native UK (#13) and New Zealand (#31). His debut album Jimmy Ray, released in March as the single peaked, spent a month and a half on the Billboard 200 sales chart in the U.S., topping out at #112. 

Despite the success of that song, that would be Jimmy's last time on the charts in America. The second single from the record, "Goin' To Vegas", went to #49 on the British singles chart. He disappeared from the music scene as a performer, though he returned to put out a second record, Live To Fight Another Day, in 2017 independently. 

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Here's Jimmy Ray appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote the album...

Up tomorrow: This R&B trio is decrying proximity.