"And now... a Bar Mitzvah!"
The story of Ray Clay announcing Bar Mitzvahs.
The rumors were running wild among the 7th graders in Skokie: Ray Clay was coming to Brad Sugar’s Bar Mitzvah.
And that was just fine by Brad.
“The details are hazy to me but what I do remember are the weeks leading up to that, there were all of these rumors that ‘Ray Clay is coming to Brad’s Bar Mitzvah,’” Sugar, 42, told me last week with a laugh about his Bar Mitzvah in November of 1994. The joke was that Clay wouldn’t actually be there: he had recorded the Bar Mitzvah introductions.
But when you’re 13 years old, you’ll take whatever positive rumors you can get.
And when you’re 13 years old on the North Shore in the 1990s, there is no rumor like a Bulls rumor.
Ray Clay became the Bulls’ full-time p.a. announcer for the 1990-91 season, officially year 1 of the dynasty. With the Bulls becoming the biggest thing in American culture, it was no surprise when one of Clay’s friends asked if he would announce his wedding party.
“He actually was the guy who gave the idea that, ‘Boy, this could be a nice side gig,’” Clay told me this summer. Despite his fame with the Bulls, Clay was never actually a salaried employee. He started out at about $65-$75 a game while working full-time at UIC as Director of Campus Recreation, so earning a few hundred dollars per event recording was big.
Obviously he didn’t charge his friend, but his friend also was not the only person who realized that the biggest, boldest voice in Chicago would be perfect for personal events.
By 1992, Clay had done his first Bar Mitzvah.
“I’m sure that people didn’t hear that I did (my friend’s) wedding, but people were thinking all the time, ‘A Bar Mitzvah, that’d be neat,’ or, ‘Boy, a wedding!’” he said.
One of those people was Dr. Sam Sugar. The Northwestern physician had three sons, and when the youngest, Brad, was preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, the father and son had an idea that, it turned out, was sweeping Chicagoland: get Ray Clay.
“It turned out to be very easy,” Dr. Sugar told me this summer. “I wrote the script and the rest is history. He was very lovely, very cooperative.”
My Bar Mitzvah was in Evanston on November 12, 1994. It was one of the best days of my life to that point, as we got to pair it with my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary that night, three days ahead of their anniversary. The party was simple but memorable: a luncheon at our synagogue, complete with a magician we’d seen at Ravinia and a klezmer band.
These were the days of growing extravagance in Bar and Bat Mitzvahs; because of my grandparents’ party we couldn’t do anything big, so I negotiated with my parents my catering of choice: Brown’s Chicken, which we brought to Beth Emet.
It was a hit! And I was greatly appreciative of my parents. Again, the combination of a really fun Bar Mitzvah luncheon with my grandparents’ party that night made for a day I will never forget. I didn’t really want something grandiose like some of the Bar Mitzvahs I was attending. It wasn’t my style.
The one thing I did wonder about, though, were the rumors I was hearing around the North Shore that for the right price, Ray Clay would announce your Bar Mitzvah. Little did I know that the very next day, November 13, 1994, at the Sofitel in Rosemont, my fellow 13-year-old Brad Sugar was having that very experience. As he reflected on it 30 years later, the Ray Clay experience was one for the ages.
This is his story, and I’ll hand it off to Brad and his father — and Ray — to tell it, in a lightly-edited interview combined from separate discussions with each of them.
BRAD SUGAR: You know the euphoria around the Bulls at that time. The culture of north suburban Bar Mitzvahs is, how can you do something unique? I sort of abhor this culture now, but back then everyone was trying to one-up each other of what they could do. And there was nothing cooler than the Bulls.
DR. SAM SUGAR: A lot of sports celebrities in Chicago came to Bar Mitzvahs if you called them, particularly members of the Cubs, White Sox and Blackhawks. It was a known thing. You could buy the appearance of Jeremy Roenick. I’m pretty sure Stan Mikita did that too. They would come and grab a bite to eat and sign a few autographs and leave. The whole deal was less than an hour.
BRAD SUGAR: My dad and I would watch games together and go to games together, and we gathered around this idea of, “How do we start the Bar Mitzvah?” The coolest thing of all was the Bulls opening lineups and the Sirius song.
DR. SAM SUGAR: We finally got in touch with Ray Clay and he was doing gigs for exactly this, for private individuals. Turned out to be very easy. I wrote the script and the rest is history. He was very lovely, very cooperative.
BRAD SUGAR: There was an option for Ray to be there or to record an opening. I actually, several months ago, when we were going through old items in storage, I found the contract. It was faxed. He had a template, and you could request whatever language that you wanted him to say, and he would put it on a tape and send it to you.
RAY CLAY: Back in the old days, I would send them a cassette. That was hard to do. I played it to make sure that everything I said fit in and I would send people a cassette. We started doing CDs after that. Now everything’s MP3, so you just send it off with an email.
BRAD SUGAR: I think it was a couple hundred dollars a tape.
DR. SAM SUGAR: It was reasonable. I remember feeling very good about it because he wasn’t ripping anybody off. The truth is, he undersold himself. He probably could have charged me three times as much because I really wanted to have it.
BRAD SUGAR: We didn’t know if it would work out because the internet was in its pre-infancy then. But lo and behold, the tape came and we played it. And as a 13 year-old kid, when you hear that, it’s magic. Because you imagine yourself at Chicago Stadium being introduced. That really achieved the effect of being one of the coolest things ever.
The details are hazy to me but what I do remember are the weeks leading up to that, there were all of these rumors that, “Ray Clay is coming to Brad’s Bar Mitzvah.” Obviously I knew he was not coming to my Bar Mitzvah but I also remember not correcting people. (Laughs.)
The truth of the matter is that no one would have known anyway. The room was large enough that no one would really see. It was over the p.a. system. He very well could have been in a back room somewhere.
But there was a lot of excitement leading up to that. I think the adults found it just as cool as the kids. When you say “Ray Clay,” the adults knew who he was. The kids mostly knew “The Bulls announcer” but didn’t know him by name. I did, because I was a fanatic, but people who were casuals wouldn’t have necessarily known him.
JACK: But for the adults there was probably that additional titillation because they are the ones who are having to fund this arms race of Bar Mitzvahs. So they’re probably like “Oh, Dr. Sugar got Ray Clay…”
BRAD SUGAR: It very well could have been. I know the kids’ angle of it: this aura of mystery. People talk about it to this day.
DR. SAM SUGAR: Everybody loved it because of the Bulls. Everybody knows that iconic intro music. In those days, it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You knew you were at something special. You were at an event. It meant something.
BRAD SUGAR: My grandmother loves to be the center of attention, and when you go back and watch that video, when Ray Clay announces her, he says, “Starting at Bubbe1, Rose Sugar!” The doors open up and the spotlight is on her, and she thinks it’s a pageant. She sits there and she’s smiling and is waving at people.
DR. SAM SUGAR: My mother wouldn’t know Ray Clay from anybody but she understood what was going on. She hammed it up, the other two boys hammed it up, my wife hammed it up. I played it down. I walked in — I wanted to watch.
BRAD SUGAR: One of the guest tables you can see is of my family and they’re just laughing hysterically.
DR. SAM SUGAR: We made up other names for the grandparents. It went over very well. And of course, everybody knew who that voice was. Everybody knew who he was. There was no need for introductions, although he did introduce himself as the announcer for the Chicago Bulls.
***
Brad’s Bar Mitzvah was a hit, and something that the family still talks about. They’ve maintained the celebrity sports angle for milestone events; for Dr. Sugar’s last birthday, his sons got the Cubs’ Patrick Wisdom to record a message, while for Brad’s own son’s Bar Mitzvah, he tapped an ace: Pat Hughes.
It was another happy Chicago sports moment for the next generation of the Sugar family, and reminded Brad of that day in Rosemont in 1994 when Ray Clay’s voice kicked off his Bar Mitzvah.
“It was a wonderful time to be alive, a happy time in my family,” Brad said. “It was a cool time to be a 13-year-old because the Bulls were everything.”
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Did Ray Clay announce your Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or your wedding? Any other 90s Bulls stories to share? Email me! 6rings@gmail.com.
Bubbe is the Yiddish word for “grandmother,” paired with zayde for “grandfather.”