- THE MISSING YEARS - THE PRESENT -


The question regarding Ray Griff's whereabouts, his low profile and
finally his disappearance from the country scene the last few 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.