Ray Stevens sings "No, Not Much"...

Among the 12 songs found on the Ray Stevens Nouveau Retro album is "No, Not Much". This pop song, published in 1955, sold millions of copies for The Four Lads throughout 1956. It was a time when pop crooners were still finding space on the Hot 100 along side the brand new format, rock and roll. In a recent interview Ray remarked that one of the various reasons he decided to do these four digital albums is because he felt, with the passage of time, that a lot of contemporary recording artists and record companies over the years have had little interest in preserving the iconic recordings of the past...and by that it's perhaps taken to mean that there's not a whole lot of recording artists or record company executives willing or wanting to keep those songs alive and introduce them to current consumers. 

In my way of thinking Ray felt a call to rectify this and so he began recording, and recording, and recording...until he'd recorded at least four albums worth of songs. Great Country Ballads, Melancholy Fescue, Slow Dance, and Nouveau Retro are the end result...four digital albums filled mostly with songs that were rescued from the brink of prolonged obscurity. But wait...these songs aren't all that obscure...each of them had some sort of impact or commercial success in their initial time period. The songs shouldn't be that obscure if you're knowledgeable in recorded music history, either. "No, Not Much" is a clever song...it builds on irony. The lyrics tell of a man who tries to convince himself the opposite of how he truly feels but then openly wonders if he's believing all he's telling himself... "No, Not Much" he replies.