Sammy Davis Jr - Jumps With Joya Sherrill (1957)

Why is there a crazed chick looking up Sammy’s bunghole?

It brings me no small amount of joy that this record cover could exist during the Eisenhower era, a time when television could only show Elvis' pelvis from the waist up and Lucy and Ricky sleeping in separate beds on TV. Like a happiness-inducing Rorschach inkblot, I can look at the two figures on this album art a bunch of different times and find an endless supply of things to draw smiles from — the Soupy Sales losing lunch look on Sammy's face, the fact there was once a time when men would color coordinate red socks with red vests, and, oh yeah, there's a crazed chick looking up Sammy's butt! That the chick was Duke Ellington's sophisticated lady singer of choice matters not a whit when Sammy's airborne ass is peering down over her face and she in turn is gaping right back up, as delighted as a parent examining her child's first solid poo. Hell, the longer you stare at this moment frozen in time, the easier it is to imagine ...