Ray Stevens Breaks Neck at 87 — And Still Releasing an Album This Week

Ray Stevens fell on March 29. His neck was broken. He was brought to a Nashville hospital, where he spent a short time before returning home to recuperate. He was given a neck brace by his doctors, which he was instructed to wear for about four weeks. Favorites Old & New, his new album, will still be released on April 10. No biography could adequately convey the man’s personality from that series of events alone.

Born Harold Ray Ragsdale in Clarkdale, Georgia, on January 24, 1939, Stevens has been a mainstay of American comedy and music for more than 70 years. He is the creator of “Everything Is Beautiful,” a song sincere enough to win a Grammy and unexpected enough from a man who also recorded “Ahab the Arab” and “Gitarzan.” He is also responsible for “The Streak,” a novelty hit that somehow became a true cultural moment in 1974. He’s won two Grammys. He is a member of the Hall of Fame for Country Music. He still performs and hosts other artists at the CabaRay, a showroom he owns and runs in Nashville. Gravity made its own announcement while he was actively getting ready to release new material at the age of 87.

Bio / Key Information: Ray Stevens

Reference Links: Ray Stevens Official Website Ray Stevens — Country Music Hall of Fame

It was a Sunday when the fall occurred. By Monday, his team had updated his nearly 47,000-follower Instagram account, confirming the broken neck and stating, in typical understatement, that Stevens “remains fully mobile and in good spirits as he continues his recovery.” Fans expressed their relief and prayers in the comments section. This kind of news has a different impact on those who grew up listening to him than it would on a younger artist. Observing someone in their late eighties endure severe physical harm as if it were a scheduling inconvenience causes a certain type of anxiety.

This was not the first scare. Stevens was admitted to a Nashville hospital last summer after experiencing chest pain that later proved to be a mild heart attack. He had minimally invasive heart surgery, postponed his CabaRay shows until July 2025, and then, in a move that no one familiar with his past could have predicted, returned. He was promoting Say Whut, his previous album, by December.and giving another performance. Beyond stubbornness, there’s a pattern here. It’s more akin to a man who truly has no idea how to function in any other way.

It’s difficult to ignore how obviously the CabaRay has taken center stage in his subsequent career. He performs, hosts tribute shows, and honors fellow musicians like Merle Haggard and Bobby Bare, who he knew personally and collaborated with during the decades when country music was still establishing its modern foundation, at the showroom on Nashville’s west side. His social media was flooded with CabaRay performance clips, including Stevens singing Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” on what would have been Haggard’s birthday, just days before the fall news broke. It’s simple to ignore something like that, but it reveals something genuine about a person who has outlived many of his peers and still manages to pay tribute to them in front of an audience.

The upcoming album, Favorites Old & New, which features thirteen tracks released by Curb Records, is described as a blend of well-loved standards and original material from outside songwriters. In a press release, Stevens said he had “a lot of fun” making it and expressed his hope that viewers would find it as enjoyable as he did. That remark, made while recuperating from a fractured neck, is either completely sincere or a master class in professional poise. Given how little the general public is aware of Stevens, it’s most likely both.

In a genre that frequently exalts youth and novelty, the larger narrative here is about perseverance. Stevens became well-known for doing things that no one else was doing: comedy music that was taken seriously enough to chart, novelty records with real musical craft beneath the jokes, and a career based on the notion that heartbreak and laughter could coexist in country music. He was correct. Additionally, the fact that he is still here, releasing records, operating a Nashville showroom at the age of 87, wearing a neck brace, and telling people he’s in good spirits, suggests that the genre made room for him in ways he may not have fully anticipated when “Ahab the Arab” was rising to the top of the charts in 1962.
Observing all of this from a distance gives me the impression that Ray Stevens knows something about resilience that isn’t found in press releases or inspirational posters. It results from just continuing. He stumbled. His neck was broken. On Friday, the album will be released.