Derek & Ray consisted of Derek Smith and Ray Cohen (not to be confused with the brothers Derek and Ray who played with the band Gentle Giant). The first couple of Derek & Ray albums featured the two men playing Baldwin pianos. The next 3 albums (The Cinema Scene Today, Interplay, and The Keyboard Sounds of Today!) featured Derek playing harpsichord and Ray on piano. Generally speaking, the albums featured jazz keyboard arrangements of Top 40 M.O.R. hits, sometimes with orchestral accompaniment.

A review in High Fidelity magazine of the 1966 Keyboard Sounds of Today! (pictured above) referred to the album as "a fertile bid in the almost-music market." Another review, from the American Record Guide, gave similarly faint praise to the album: "The twin team of Derek and Ray make for a mildly exciting combination."

Obviously, when I found this LP for 49 cents at the CAAN thrift store in Ventura, CA, I was more than mildly excited. (Even though the record itself was pretty banged up, as though it had been listened to and then stepped on). Whereas the 1st of D&R's harpsichord-piano records featured some kind of German factory-made harpsichord, the next two feature a more historically-informed model, possibly by the Boston maker Eric Herz. (In each of the 3 albums, though the liner notes mention that it's a Baldwin brand piano, they don't say anything about the maker of the harpsichord).

To me, the tracks on Keyboard Sounds of Today! sound a bit more like music than those on the other 2 releases. In particular, the 1st half of their cover of Cannonball Adderley's "Work Song" (below) seems almost pretty good.