“I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed”
Song by Ray Charles
Sweet and pleasant, sly and suspicious, clever and warm – “I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed” from Ray Charles’ 1983 album Wish You Were Here Tonight is real Nashville country for the 1980s. The song, co-written by George Jones and first appearing on Jones’ 1978 Bartender’s Blues album, was the fifth and final song on Side 1 of its parent LP and was used as the B-side of a single a few months later.
The conceit of the lyrics – the song’s hook – is classic country with its self-pitying but oddly bemused humor, and uses that old country staple, the thinnest of double entendres. The singer warns that he better not find someone messing up his bedspread and “fluffing my pillow”. But of course it’s his woman, not his linens, that he’s concerned about. Fluffing his pillow indeed!
It’s a fairly slight song, but that doesn’t really matter when you’re talking about Ray; he could make anything sound good if he felt it. In fact, “I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed” here is better than the original, because the backing music is a little softer, which fits well with Ray Charles’ voice. Ray’s soulful, grainy snarl and melodic tenderness stand in pronounced counterpoint to the work-a-day instrumentation; the music is light, and Ray is the shade that pulls everything into 3D.
“I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed”, nice as it is, is a rare example of Ray Charles offering style over substance, even if the imbalance is slight. This song was part of an album that was his first in three years, and was part of a multi-year deal with Columbia Records intended to give Ray some country hits. He would succeed admirably in this during the 1980s, but there is a bit of the ol’ RC spark missing from this track. Not quite tentative, but not the one hundred percent devotion to the material that the world had gotten used to over the years.
It really doesn’t matter though; serious as that charge may sound, “I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed” is still more fun than a lot of music out there, and it’s good to see Ray indulging in some real country music, trying a genre that was basically new to him as a recording artist. (His biggest hits of the 1960s were often “country” tunes, but in complicated, orchestral settings. Fantastic, but not actually country.)
Single releases
Wish You Were Here Tonight was released in March 1983, and its third single was “Ain’t Your Memory Got No Pride At All”, released in August of that year. “I Don’t Want No Stranger Sleepin’ In My Bed” was the B-side of that single (Columbia 4083); both songs were from the LP.
Incidentally, the single’s A-side also appeared on George Jones’ Bartender’s Blues LP. With all this George Jones activity going on in Ray’s life, maybe it’s fitting that in November 1983 a single would be released featuring a duet with Jones, “We Didn’t See A Thing”, that would eventually lead to Ray’s dominating the country music scene for about a year with the Friendship album of duets. But that’s a tale for another time.
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Songs on Wish You Were Here Tonight