Wax of the Week #26...Alex Keack: Surfers Paradise (1963)

It's a tough slog going through old budget label LPs in search of something you'd want to hear twice, but it's worth it to discover little gems like this. Keack was a member of the vocal group The Islanders, but on here he plays some pleasant exotica, and not the slapped-together surf music one might expect. Budget labels have provided years of exploration for tenacious diggers. I remember well into the early ’80s these types of records were sold mainly in pharmacies and discount stores like Woolworth’s, for non-collector civilians who vaguely desired some music but rarely ventured into record stores. I used to pick up King’s Road exploito cover albums of hits of the day at Fay’s Drugs on upper 2nd Ave. in Lansingburgh. Crown pressed released of albums from 1957 to about 1972, a few of them quite enjoyable and many pretty curious or even strange. A few of the older blues LPs they pressed featured raw demos from the likes of B.B. King and Elmore James and aren’t easy pulls.