Thanks, Joe and Jeri: Yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend the "Ella" CD. There are probably twenty or thirty better ones than that. Sometimes it's a help to hear that something you might consider shouldn't be your first choice.

I started a similar thread on a blues and jazz site, and picked another CD at random. This one turned out to be more enjoyable. It's an unusual CD because it's all solo guitar performances by two legendary jazz guitarists: Johnny Smith and George Van Epps. I bought it mostly for the George Van Epps tracks, as he has always been a favorite... finger-pickin' jazz on 7 string guitar (the 7th string is a bass string.) George is of good stock. His father Fred was the premier plectrum banjo ragtime musician back in the Edison Cylinder and earliest 78 r.p.m. days. George played the guitarist in Pete Kelly's band in Pete Kelly's Blues... another favorite of mine. I seem to have made a subconscious connection on the two blind picks I made today.

Jerry