Surprise Records

As part of my alphabetical journey through my record collection, I've been expecting this day to come. Several years ago, I fancied "wallpapering" a room in album covers. It didn't matter if the record was any good as long as the cover or I felt it would make an interesting addition to a larger whole. It just so happens that two of these albums (bought at a thrift store) came up back-to-back. Here are the covers:

This will always amuse me.

Little about the album artwork leads me to raise my expectations about the music, so perhaps that feeds my reaction a bit, but both albums were very listenable. I doubt they'll make my regular rotation, but I wasn't unhappy with the experience. Rock Killough, who looks more like an biology teacher than a musician in his picture on the back cover, reminds me of the Jim Croce/Joe Cocker ilk. A singer/songwriter with a touch of the blues. There are moments where the album goes from serviceable to engaging and the musicianship is quite impressive at times. Unfortunately, I can't find any samples from the above album, but here he is much older (and sounding a little like Ray Stevens*):

The Ramsey Lewis Trio are a pretty good jazz group. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I think it was more along the lines of crappy smooth jazz or some awful funk, but I might listen to this again** (having said that, I did let a two year old run around with the actual record to play with).

Given the YouTube presence, clearly The Ramsey Lewis Trio are the more popular of these artists. 

*That could be a mistaken first impression of this song, since I haven't heard it before as he has little presence on YouTube (unless he's also a rock climber) and YouTube was being a pain and wouldn't load any videos after my first sample.

** May not be the best example due to the above asterisk.