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Ray Bourbon’s Last Recording

People who talk to me about Ray, getting familiar with his voluminous recorded output, sometimes ask me what my favorite recording is by Ray or the one I find most interesting. It's difficult to choose.  I have a fondness for "The Wedding" and "The Raid", outrageous stories about 1920s gay life told as only Ray … Continue reading Ray Bourbon’s Last Recording →

Ray Bourbon and a Member of the Chinese Royal Family?

Ray's incomplete autobiography, written while he was in prison, along with his letters, are really the only documents we have were Ray tells his own story.  Remarkably, as outlandish as many of the stories are, doing a little digging can usually confirm that what Ray said was true or had some basis in fact. I … Continue reading Ray Bourbon and a Member of the Chinese Royal Family? →

The Censored Tracks on “An Evening in Copenhagen”

When I first obtained a copy of An Evening in Copenhagen in the early 1990s, I could tell that most of the tracks on the lp were actually dubs from Ray's 78 releases - you can hear the surface noise of the original 78 rpm records in the tracks. I wasn't sure about "The Wedding" … Continue reading The Censored Tracks on “An Evening in Copenhagen” →

Ray Bourbon, Bill Barclay, and Hollywood Phone Pranks

Prank phone calls have been a staple of comedy for many years, ever since little boys started calling their local store and asking, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?". Steve Allen is famous for his prank calls on his tv show (listen to some of them here and here).  Remember Allen and Johnny … Continue reading Ray Bourbon, Bill Barclay, and Hollywood Phone Pranks →

Ray Bourbon Models Spring 1931 Fashions at Bakersfield Department Store

I have to give credit to Kliph Nesteroff in his 2012 post on Ray Bourbon, "Murder in Mink", at the WFMU blog, for this odd little highlight. Imagine that you're a housewife in Bakersfield, California in 1931 and, in your local paper, find a full page ad for the unveiling of the latest spring fashions … Continue reading Ray Bourbon Models Spring 1931 Fashions at Bakersfield Department Store →

The Strange Case of Ray Bourbon, the FBI, and the Russian Defectors

In the mid-1990s, on a hunch, I sent a public records request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see if the agency might have a file on Ray Bourbon.  With Ray's many travels, his high profile as a performer, and notoriety for his arrests for dressing in drag, I wondered if the FBI might … Continue reading The Strange Case of Ray Bourbon, the FBI, and the Russian Defectors →

Ray Bourbon and Bob Hope

One of the most curious questions about Ray Bourbon I've been trying to sort out for several years is how he became friends with Bob Hope. There are several second-hand reports that Ray knew Hope and that Hope attended shows at Ray's nightclub in Los Angeles.  Ray's lawyer, in an interview about a decade after … Continue reading Ray Bourbon and Bob Hope →

Ray Bourbon Images at the Los Angeles Public Library

Images of Ray Bourbon are fairly hard to come by. According to friends and people who knew him, Ray had a large collection of scrapbooks and even carried around a tape machine and used it to record or try out routines.  But, when he was arrested for murder, all his personal effects were, quite literally, … Continue reading Ray Bourbon Images at the Los Angeles Public Library →

William Kennedy Screenplay for the Ray Bourbon Story

Searching for some images of Ray on Google recently, I ran into a curious listing of a previous eBay auction I missed at WorthPoint. "THE RAE BOURBON STORY, SCREENPLAY BY WILLIAM KENNEDY The RAE BOURBON story, screenplay by William Kennedy -125 page manuscript THE DETOUR , an original unproduced screenplay imagining a happier time for … Continue reading William Kennedy Screenplay for the Ray Bourbon Story →