- THE MISSING YEARS - THE PRESENT -

The question regarding Ray Griff's whereabouts, his low profile and
his disappearance from the country scene for a number of years has
been a subject often discussed among his fans and peers in the
music world.
Here, Ray answers those questions himself:
In the middle seventies my life was about as hectic as it could get.
With recording and producing my own records, producing other artist's
projects, writing songs, running a publishing company, performing
concert dates and being the host of my own weekly television show;
I was completely overloaded and had a nervous breakdown.
Just when I started pulling out of it, my little Yorkshire Terrier Dandy
died. I love animals deeply and because of this I was devastated.
My depression and state of mind was to get even worse when my wife
and I got a divorce shortly thereafter. I continued to work some show
dates, but over the next few years I basically became a hermit,
living in seclusion on an acreage outside of Nashville. It was at that
time that I made a decision to end my association with the major
record label I was recording for when the person who had signed me
with the label was fired. I practically stopped pitching my song's to
record labels and other artist's altogether.
I kept writing song's, but used it more as therapy than anything else,
since most of what I wrote at that time had to do with the depressing
side of life. The next few years brought more difficulty.
During that time I was in severe pain from a back injury and it became
necessary to have surgery. I stopped touring the United States in the
middle eighties. My mother had become quite ill and in order to be
close to her I turned to working the night club circuit in Canada.
During one of these engagements I was attacked by three goons
after one of my performances and my right hand was severely broken,
and major surgery was performed half a dozen times to try and repair
the damage. I could not play the piano for two years which was very
difficult for me, since it was such an important part of my life both as
a song writer and a performer.
When my mother passed away in 1990 my state of mind was about
as low as it could get. Shortly thereafter I sold fifty percent of my
publishing copyrights to a European conglomerate that consisted
of a catalogue of more than five hundred songs, forty years of my
life's work.
My life started to turn to the better, however, when I met a special
lady while I was in Canada on tour. We fell in love and were married
in a quiet ceremony at my home in Nashville in 1990. Although I had
an office in Nashville, I had pretty much become disillusioned with
the direction that country music had taken and chose to stay out
of the mainstream of the business.
In 1998 I was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Honour!
While producing some aspiring talent in Canada, in 2001 I got the
desire to return to the recording studio myself as an artist and
recorded my first new music project in 16 years "See Ya, Love Ya, Bye".
Since 2001 I have released eight CD's of both new recordings, past hits
as an artist and songwriter, previously recorded cuts from vinyl albums,
as well as never before released material from my extensive catalogue
of recorded music.
A complete list of my 19 vinyl albums and 19 CDs can be found on the Bio
page of my Website. A few of the vinyl albums as well as all of the CD's
listed are available for purchase at Rays Store.
Click on "Ray's Store"