BLP 1512

Jimmy Smith - A New Sound, A New Star Volume 1

Released - March 1956

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, February 18, 1956
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Bay Perry, drums.

tk.2 You Get 'Cha
tk.6 Lady Be Good
tk.7 The Preacher
tk.8 But Not For Me
tk.12 The Way You Look Tonight
tk.13 High And Mighty
tk.15 Tenderly
tk.16 Joy
tk.18 Midnight Sun

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Way You Look Tonight	Dorothy Fields, Jerome Kern	18/02/1956
You Get 'Cha	Jimmy Smith	18/02/1956
Midnight Sun	Sonny Burke, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Mercer	18/02/1956
Oh, Lady Be Good!	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	18/02/1956
Side Two
The High and the Mighty	Dimitri Tiomkin, Ned Washington	18/02/1956
But Not for Me	Gershwin, Gershwin	18/02/1956
The Preacher	Horace Silver	18/02/1956
Tenderly	Walter Gross, Jack Lawrence	18/02/1956
Joy	Johann Sebastian Bach	18/02/1956

Liner Notes

It isn't very often that a musician possessing that rare quality of creative genius coupled with "volcanic fire" makes an appearance on the musical scene. In my entire career in the music field I had only felt that "fire" when listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Webster, Charlie Christian and Bud Powell.

Jimmy Smith has definitely joined this immortal group which was and still is vital to the survival of Modern Jazz. His dexterity on the organ is comparable to Bud Powell's on the piano and he possesses the only "Oklahoma funkish" style of comping on the Blues since Charlie Christian. He is probably the first organist who plays the instrument with a modern conception and he has developed a sound all his own. The modern musicians are definitely in Jimmy's corner. When he played recently at Smalls' Paradise, the back-room was crowded nightly with "cats" to dig the "Smith" sounds. In everything he touches his musical genius makes itself felt. It doesn't matter if he plays a funky Blues, a hard-swinging number or a slow ballad.

Born in Norristown, Pa., Jimmy studied the piano under his father, a piano teacher. He "gigged" around Norristown and Western Pennsylvania from 1941 to 1951, finally settling in Philly. There he met all the touring "great cats" and decided he'd need more musical schooling. For two years he attended Halsey Music School majoring in Harmony and Theory along with a guy named Clifford Brown.

After completing his schooling he began playing "gigs" again, and when one night in 1953 he heard Wild Bill Davis, he decided then and there that the organ was for him. For the next year he gigged on piano by night and practiced the organ by day.

Early in 1954 he joined the Don Gardner Quartet for a tour of the Rhythm and Blues circuit, but the constant demand for commercialism was destroying his creativeness. So, in 1955 he left the group to go out again as a single.

Last summer he opened at a club in Atlantic City. He didn't need any "tubs" because all the drummers there were lined up nightly waiting for a chance to play with him. Within three days the news reached me about this "insane" organist and I drove down to "dig" for myself.

What I heard was a "cat" playing forty choruses of Georgia Brown in pure "Nashua" tempo and never repeating. I heard "futuristic stratospheric" sounds that were never before explored on the organ. I was supposed to see a host of "cats" that night, but all I did was "lay dead" because every cat in town made it by Jimmy's "gig" during the night.

As you are digging the album, Jimmy will already have two New York engagements under his belt: one at Smalls' Uptown and one at Cafe Bohemia, the progressive spot in the Village.

On these LP's Jimmy is ably assisted on guitar by Thornel Schwartz, a real swinging cat. They are sound twins on the bandstand and are always singing new arrangements in the car while traveling. Bay Perry, brother of the late Ray Perry of sax fame, was used on A New Sound... A New Star... Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Vol. 1, while Donald Bailey, Jimmy's regular drummer, supplies the rhythm On A New Sound, a New Star: Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Vol. 2. I am very proud to have the opportunity to write these notes on such a great artist, who — like so many others before him — makes his debut on Blue Note. VOILA!

JIMMY SMITH GREATEST HITS Liner Notes

JIMMY SMITH was first with the mostest.

I first heard Jimmy at "Smalls' Paradise" in January of 1956. It was his first gig in New York — one week. He was a stunning sight. A man in convulsions, face contorted, crouched over in apparent agony, his fingers flying, his foot dancing over the pedals. The air was filled with waves of sound I had never heard before. The noise was shattering. A few people sat around, puzzled, but impressed.

He came off the stand, smiling, the sweat dripping all over him. "So what do you think?" "Yeah!" I said. That's all I could say. Alfred Lion had already made up his mind. "Do you think?" He shrugged: "We'll see." When he heard a good thing—that was enough.

A week or so later, Jimmy lugged his organ into Rudy's studio. He tried The Champ, one of his big number then, but he was nervous, we were all nervous. Eventually we recorded some ballads and standards, but they didn't quite project his "new sound."

Next time he came in, he was set. Spitting fire he roared through The Champ in 8:30 flat. We brought this album out first. The distributor said: "Who's Jimmy Smith? What's this — sounds like birds twittering. Very, very strange. Well — give me ten pieces."

It was in the cards that Jimmy would succeed. He had revamped the jazz organ and come up with a "new sound." The sound has now been adopted by almost all jazz organists, but his style remains his own. Right from the start of his recording career, he was in full command of this very complex and demanding machine, the Hammond organ. Apart from his incredible technique he had fire, feeling, beat, humor — all adding up to a highly personal style. Everything was there, everything was right when he did The Champ and through the years so many other masterpieces.

Jimmy Smith is a great artist—and a beautiful guy.

—FRANCIS WOLFF
1968, notes from "Jimmy Smith's Greatest Hits"