BLP 1525

Jimmy Smith - The Incredible Jimmy Smith, Volume 3

Released - August 1956

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, June 17, 1956
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.2 Willow Weep For Me
tk.14 Autumn Leaves

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, June 18, 1956
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.16 Fiddlin' The Minors
tk.18 Lover Come Back To Me
tk.19 Well, You Needn't
tk.20 I Cover The Waterfront
tk.24 Judo Mambo

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Judo Mambo	Jimmy Smith	18/06/1956
Willow Weep for Me	Ann Ronell	17/06/1956
Lover, Come Back to Me	Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg	18/06/1956
Side Two
Well, You Needn't	Thelonious Monk	18/06/1956
Fiddlin' the Minors	Jimmy Smith	18/06/1956
Autumn Leaves	Joseph Kosma, Johnny Mercer, Jacques Prévert	17/06/1956
I Cover the Waterfront	Johnny Green, Edward Heyman	18/06/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID K. MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

ONE OF THE highlights of the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival was a panel discussion regarding the future of jazz. A group of musicians, including a well known concert conductor and several jazzmen, expounded weightily on the nature of things to come.

After many ideas had been expressed and several theories advanced, one of the panelists, Quincy Jones, shocked the audience as well as his fellow panelists by declaring that the entire idea for arguing about the future of jazz was basically insignificant, for if such a forum had been held in 1940, he pointed out, before any of the panelists had heard Charlie Parker, many erudite opinions might have been expressed, all of which would have been completed negated after the speakers had had their ears opened by Bird. "The same thing can happen again", said Quincy. "Here we sit talking about the future of jazz, and maybe next week or next year some cat will come swinging out of Chittlin' Switch who is so great that this symposium will have been a waste of time."

These heretical remarks come to mind when one considers the case of one James Oscar Smith. Just as Parker and Gillespie accomplished something completely unpredictable on the sax and trumpet, just as Blanton and Christian reduced the status of all their predecessors through a new approach to their instruments, so has Jimmy Smith revolutionized the concept of jazz on the Hammond organ. Not that is has happened, it is easy to say, "Why didn't it happen before?" But just as easy to answer, "Because nobody else had the imagination, or at least nobody else applied it in this particular direction." In other words, Jimmy Smith simply got there first with the most.

It took only a few days after Jimmy's arrival for his first gig at the Cafe Bohemia for the word to spread among modern jazzmen that something unique had arrived on the scene, but it took many years of frustration and preparation for Jimmy to reach this initial recognition, which soon after ws consolidated when Alfred Lion arranged his trio debut on BLP 1512 and BLP 1514. Born December 8, 1926, in Norristown, Pa., Jimmy first studied with his father, a pianist and teacher, his mother also sang and played. He attended the Orenstein School of Music in Philadelphia from 1947 to 1949, studying piano, bass fiddle, harmony and theory.

Jimmy's professional debut began formally in 1942, when James Sr. and James Jr.had a father and son dance team at the Coconut Grove in Norristown. He continued to gig around locally during most of the 1940s, except for a war-time interlude that took him as far afield as U.S.O. posts in Sydney, Australia, Pearl Harbor and Guam. By 1949, he was playing dates in Newark, N.J. with Bobby Edwards' Dial Tones and the Herb Scott quintet, the next year he was in Philadelphia with Johnny Sparrow and His Bows and Arrows, and from 1951-4 he was around the eastern seaboard with Donald Gardner and the Sonotones.

It was not until 1953, after hearing Wild Bill Davis, that Jimmy switched from piano to organ, a change that had to be accomplished slowly in view of the morass of rhythm and blues combo work in which he had so long been sunk. (Jimmy names Bill Davis and, of all people, Jesse Crawford, as his favorite organists.)

By 1955, his course was clearly charted: he had to have his own group and had to stick to modern jazz and the Hammond organ, in order to fulfill his ambition to become an outstanding exponent of the contemporary idioms on an instrument whose jazz possibilities until that time had been less than fully explored. The setting he established for himself was an instrumentation that has now become standardized for Hammond organ trios, though the Smith trio use of the format is far from conventional. Thornel Schwartz Jr., the guitarist, born in Philadelphia May 29, 1927, has a background not unlike Jimmy's own, having begun with a small rhythm combo and progressed to the Chris Powell rhythm and blues group (which then included the late Clifford Brown) and the Donald Gardner combo. from 1952-5 he played with Freddie Cole, Nat Cole's brother, joining Jimmy in the fall of '55. An admirer of Kenny Burrell and Tal Farlow, Thornel says, "My ambition is to combine the speed of Johnny Smith, the ideas of Tal Farlow and the feeling of Charlie Christian."

Jimmy's drummer, Donald Orlando Bailey, also known as "Donald Duck", is another Philadelphian born on March 26 1934. Though his brother plays good tenor sax and his father is an excellent drummer, Donald has never studied; his first major inspiration derived from some Max Roach records he heard in 1949. He worked with Lee Morgan and various Philadelphia combos before joining Smith. Donald says that Specs Wright helped him gain coordination and that Max Roach and Art Blakey are responsible for his style; he names Philly Joe Jones as an additional inspiration.

The first side opens with a a characteristically original item, Judo Mambo, in which Jimmy's resourceful use of a variety of stops, the frog-like efftect of at the opening and closing, the use of Latin percussion effects, the exciting drum solo and the gradual fade to an atonal ending combine to make what one might call one of his most unusual performances, were not all of his performances unusual. Willow Weep For Me is played very slow, but with a double-time feel and attractive use of the guitar,. Lover Come Back To Me is taken at a racehorse pace, with a long organ solo that builds tremendous tension, followed by some inspired solo work by Thornel.

The old Thelonious Monk tune, Well, You Needn't, a simple riff tune based mainly on the chords of F and G-flat, moves at a medium swinging pace with Jimmy and Thornel at their funkiest and Bailey taking some effective breaks. Fiddlin' the Minors, a fast riff opus, again shows how effectively Jimmy makes use of minor keys.

Autumn Leaves, with the guitar in a melodic mood, shows Jimmy on a more grandiose kick and provides an interesting change of mood. I Cover the Waterfront, taken faster than one might expect, is a completely different and original interpretation, far from its slightly humorous opening all the way to the flatted-fifth ending.

I don't know how long it will be before there are a dozen other organists of whom it will be said that they play in the Jimmy Smith style, but it is the surest tribute to Jimmy that this probably is an inevitable development; for the mark of originality is unmistakably present here, and in originality, no less in jazz than in the other arts, lies the key to greatness.

-LEONARD FEATHER

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID K. MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT AT THE ORGAN, VOLUME 3

Given that Jimmy Smith had made his New York debut less than six months before the music on this disc was recorded, Leonard Feather makes what must have seemed like extravagant claims in the original liner notes. Reading these notes now, which as I write is less than a month after Smith's death on February 8, 2005, it seems that Feather may have understated the organist's importance. The comparisons to Gillespie, Parker, Christian, and Blanton in terms of instrumental innovation were clearly on target, as was be prediction that legions of organists influenced by Smith would soon appear. Had he added that Smith would also create a newly acceptable instrumental format for serious jazz players, we could start referring to Feather as Nostradamus.

The substantial package of skills that made Smith so influential, and so popular so quickly are easy to spot. They begin with his breathtaking keyboard technique, and virtuosity on the Hammond B-3 foot pedals that gave the impression of a distinct fourth voice in his trio; but what takes Smith's music far beyond the realm of mere technical bravura is its great diversity of sound and idiom. While he was willing to employ established combinations of his instrument's stops, Smith also discovered new blends that allowed him to present distinctive tonal profiles from track to track. In this collection, we hear echoes of the roller rink ("My Funny Valentine") and radio soap operas ("Autumn Leaves"), to Fats Waller and Erroll Garner ("I Can't Give You Anything but Love," "I Cover the Waterfront"), variations on the leaner single-note sound that became a Smith trademark ("Willow Weep for Me," "Well, You Needn't," "Lover Come Back to Me"), and such startling audio images as a "frog-like effect" ("Judo Mambo") and tingling tones ("Slightly Monkish"). In two instances ("I Can't Give You Anything but Love," "Waterfront"), Smith even employs contrasting voices and engages in conversations with himself.

In the area of style, Smith favored the same level of diversity. He is celebrated as a master of blues and funk, in part because he was (hear "Jamey" and "Slightly Monkish" in this collection), but also because that was the aspect of his concept most universally embraced by his acolytes. At the same time, Smith was totally at home with the music of the most visionary modernists. He covered Thelonious Monk compositions and wrote tributes to Monk long before the practice was commonplace. Bud Powell is clearly among his primary influences, both in terms of keyboard technique and writing (a comparison Of "Judo Mambo" and Powell's "Un Poco Loco" is instructive on this last point). On some occasions, and the coda of "Slightly Monkish" is one, Smith even flirted with what would later be considered the avant-garde. To summarize, Jimmy Smith overflowed with music, as his Blue Note recordings illustrate.

This album was his third in four months, an output that begs comparison with such other keyboard masters as Monk and Andrew Hill. It was over a two-day period, and produced far more music than a 12-inch LP could accommodate. With its four bonus tracks, the present reissue presents a more complete view of this most prolific artist.

The June 17th session emphasized slower tempos, and produced "Willow Weep for Me" and "Autumn Leaves" for the original album as well as "Jamey" and "My Funny Valentine." The former is a steady blues excursion with gentle double-timing in the third organ chorus and one of Smith's trademark held notes when he returns after Schwartz's solo. "Valentine" offers a fatter sound from both the leader and the guitarist.

A day later, the remaining tracks were cut. Of the July 18th bonus titles, "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" was issued at the time only as a 45" single, with "I Cover the Waterfront" on the flip side. The original "Slightly Monkish" appears in an extended live version on volume 1 of the 1957 Groovin' at Small's Paradise. It is also the only Smith composition in this collection to have been covered for a recording by organist Lonnie Smith and drummer Alvin Queen on their 1985 Black & Blue recording Lenox and Seventh.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2005