page_title: Eddy Raven
section_title: 1984-88: RCA Records
hierarchical_section_title: Eddy Raven / Musical career / 1984-88: RCA Records
caption_attribution_description: Frank Myers, country music songwriter and musician, performs during the 2019 Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) Honor Guard Gala at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., March 6, 2019. TAPS is a not-for-profit organization that has assisted over 70,000 surviving family members grieving the loss of an armed forces service-member. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann)
context_page_description: Edward Garvin Futch, known professionally as Eddy Raven, is an American country music singer and songwriter. Active since 1962, Raven has recorded for several record labels, including ABC, Dimension, Elektra, RCA, Universal, and Capitol Records. After multiple albums which yielded few hit songs, his greatest commercial success came between 1984 and 1990, during which time Raven achieved six number-one singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. These were "I Got Mexico", "Shine, Shine, Shine", "I'm Gonna Get You", "Joe Knows How to Live", "In a Letter to You", and "Bayou Boys". Raven has a total of eighteen top-ten hits on that chart. Although his chart success diminished in the 1990s, Raven continued to record throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. In addition to his own work, he has written singles for Don Gibson, Randy Cornor, Jeannie C. Riley, and The Oak Ridge Boys among others. Raven's music is defined by mainstream country, country pop, Cajun music, and reggae, and he wrote a large number of his singles by himself or with Frank J. Myers.
context_section_description: Raven moved to RCA Records Nashville in 1984 at the end of his self-imposed hiatus. His first single for the label was "I Got Mexico", which also became his first number-one single on Hot Country Songs that year. Also co-written by Myers, it was the first single from his RCA debut I Could Use Another You. Raven produced the album with Paul Worley, who was then known mainly as a session guitarist but would become increasingly known as a producer throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Also released as singles from the album were the title track and "She's Gonna Win Your Heart", which both placed within the top ten of Hot Country Songs. Cash Box described the title track as "an upbeat tune stressing Raven’s clear, distinct vocals." Writing for Stereo Review magazine (now known as Sound & Vision), Alanna Nash noted that while it had fewer songs written by Raven and a "slightly more mainstream" sound than its predecessors, the album was "well up to his own high standards"; she also considered Raven's singing more upbeat and confident than on previous efforts.
  His next RCA album was 1985's Love and Other Hard Times, which he co-produced with Worley. It accounted for three top-ten singles on the country music charts: "Operator, Operator" (previously a single for co-writer Larry Willoughby in 1983), followed by "I Wanna Hear It from You" and "You Should Have Been Gone by Now". Raven co-wrote six of the songs on the album. In the process of recording, he and Worley chose to incorporate a more acoustic influence on some tracks, and thus chose Mark O'Connor to play fiddle and mandolin. Cash Box reviewed the album positively, stating that it was "another exhibition of his fine vocal range and his valuable songwriting ability." Billboard also published a positive review of the album, which said that his "haunting and sincere voice is matched here by some of the best material he's recorded in recent years." In 1985, Raven was nominated for the Horizon Award (now known as the Best New Artist award) from the Country Music Association.
  Right Hand Man, released in late 1986 on RCA, accounted for four more singles: "Sometimes a Lady", "Right Hand Man", and "You're Never Too Old for Young Love" all achieved peaks of number three on the country music charts, while the final single "Shine, Shine, Shine" became his second number-one single. Don Gant returned to production duties except for "Sometimes a Lady", which Raven and Worley produced; the album would also be Gant's last production credit, as he died in March 1987. In addition to Raven and Myers, other writers on the album included Gary Burr and Gary Scruggs, brother of bluegrass singer Randy Scruggs. Nash wrote in Stereo Review that the album seemed to focus more on Raven's singing over his songwriting, noting that the album had more of a country pop sound than its predecessors.
  Raven's tenure with RCA ended with a compilation album titled The Best of Eddy Raven in 1988. In addition to most of his RCA singles, it included three new songs that were all sent out as singles. The first two were "I'm Gonna Get You" (written by Dennis Linde) and "Joe Knows How to Live", which both ascended to the top of the Hot Country Songs charts that year. Both had originally been cut by other artists in 1987: "I'm Gonna Get You" by Billy Swan, and "Joe Knows How to Live" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album Hold On. The final single from The Best of Eddy Raven was "'Til You Cry", which peaked at number four. All of these were produced by session keyboardist and record producer Barry Beckett, who had contacted Raven and expressed interest in producing for him. While Beckett had played on some of Raven's previous albums, Raven said that he was unaware of Beckett's roles as a producer at the time, and agreed to the offer after discovering that Beckett had been a producer on several recordings of which he was a fan. In advance of the album's release, Raven toured the southern United States with then-labelmates Alabama.
caption: Frank J. Myers co-wrote several of Raven's singles, and formerly played guitar in his road band.
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