BLP 1585

Jimmy Smith - Groovin' At Smalls' Paradise - Volume 1

Released - March 1958

Recording and Session Information

"Smalls Paradise", Harlem, NY, November 15, 1957
Jimmy Smith, organ; Eddie McFadden, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.3 My Funny Valentine
tk.6 Laura
tk.11 Slightly Monkish
tk.13 After Hours

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
After Hours	Erskine Hawkins, Avery Parrish	15/11/1957
My Funny Valentine	Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers	15/11/1957
Side Two
Slightly Monkish	Jimmy Smith	15/11/1957
Laura	Johnny Mercer, David Raksin	15/11/1957

Credits

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

Liner Notes

This album was recorded in Harlem. The fact may seem irrelevant and inconsequential to some; for others more familiar with the signal role played by this area in the development of jazz, it Will have a unique nostalgic significance.

Most of today's fans are too young to have known Harlem as a fountainhead of jazz; yet in the 1920s, during the first years after the district had become an almost exclusively Negro neighborhood, Harlem was to the world what Greenwich Village was to the aspiring writer or painter. More than that, to the average visitor from downtown it was a slightly exotic offbeat center of entertainment, a show-business nursery in which were developing the talents were to become global names, the Josephine Bakers' and the Florence Mills.

In this section of Manhattan, beginning where Central Park ends at 110th Street and stretching north some 45 blocks, generally somewhere between Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas, could be found, if your guide knew the ropes, some of the private joys of the era's music seekers: the home-cooking, sneaky-pete wine, bathtub-gin sessions, the rent parties, the spontaneous cutting contests at which men like the Beetle and James Johnson and Duke Ellington and Willie "The Lion' Smith would share the music and the liquor and the kicks of the night. into the bright daylight of the next restless day. In this section, too, were the more formal faces of Harlem's music, the theatres and the dance halls and the cabarets. In some of these, places the white visitor often was a lone intruder: in other, ironically, Negroes actually were discouraged as patrons and white business was cultivated exclusively.

During the 1930s, as prohibition ended and gangster control weakened, democracy took a firmer foothold and Americans of every shade mingled more freely as the Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue at 14Oth Street became New York's rhythm vortex. Here the dancing was as incredible as the music; here the seeker after that exclusive commodity called jazz could find it in the engagingly loose-jointed brass and reed and rhythm sections of bands led Chick Webb or Jimmie Lunceford, Teddy Hill or Benny Carter or Willie Bryant. And there were always the little bars and grills and late spots: Pete Brown might be at the Brittwood next to the Savoy and Dickie Wells might have a crazy little kazoo band at his after-hours joint. The theatres, too, had elaborate shows with name bands and lines of girls; the Apollo and the Harlem Opera House and others vied for attractions.

Harlem still held on to a measure of its glory after the 30s, though the music was moving downtown while the patrons from uptown, finding the Jim Crow ropes slowly disappearing, followed the music to 52nd Street. The club business was shaky and the Savoy was losing its grip, but there were still surprises to be found in a score of unpublicized retreats. Who remembers the spot where Frankie Newton had that fine little band? Or the club for which Bi!l [Bojangles) Robinson acted as frontman, and the tall and lovely Louise McCarroll. with the deep contralto voice, who sang in the show? Wasn't that the Mimo Club? And wasn't it at Elks' Rendezvous that Louis Jordan's band started the whole cycle of rhythm-and-blues, 15 years before the public heard it in the debased form known as rock 'n' roll? How about the nights of those early harmonic and rhythmic experiments with Monk and Diz and Klook and Christian at the Play House? And what was the name of that little joint on Sugar Hill, the St. Nicholas Avenue bar next to the spot where Timme and Inez had the hippest record shop in town?

All this happened many years ago and the picture has blurred; Harlem has blurred too, but it is still possible to look back gratefully to the contribution its denizens made, and to assess the part it played in nurturing good music through a phase when there were no Carnegie Hall concerts, or Newport festivals, or even Blue Note Records. to act as its propaganda agents.

Brightest of all memories, because they blazed with the brightest lights, are the big show spots of Harlem. They were the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway had the best-remembered big bands; Connie's Inn, home base of Fletcher Henderson's glory; and Smalls' Paradise. And, despite the fame of the other two, the greatest of these three, in many ways, ways Smalls'.

Originally, Ed Smalls had opened a spot at Fifth Avenue and 135th Street. Bill 8asie played piano there and Clara Smith sang while the youthful Count played, and Ethel Waters was around; and in 1926 the Smalls' moved across town to the basement at Seventh and and 135th, in the same building of which the club now occupies the main floor. It was there that Bix 8eiderbecke would most often be found hanging out; there that all the ofay trombone players, from Jack Teagarden on down, would came to listen to the fabled youngster named Jimmy Harrison; there that Elmer Snowden's band introduced many New Yorkers to the revolutionary styles of Big Sid Catlett, Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry, there, too, that Luis Russell brought his bandful of King Oliver alumni.

John Hammond, who made his first contacts with jazz through such excursions, remembers that the musicians all felt more at ease visiting Smalls' because, unlike the other Harlem showplaces, it was Negro-owned and did not dally with racial discrimination; anyone who could pay his check was welcome.

There was always a big show at Smalls': everything was big but the prices. A menu saved as a souvenir of my first visit — with Mac and Mezz Mezzrow, a couple of years after Prohibition ended — reminds me that there was no cover or minimum, that whiskey was 50c at the tables, a cocktail 60c and a sirloin steak $1.50. (Of course I was much young to drink.)

As business slowed down and the war years brought a curfew law, Smalls' lost ground, finally cutting its show presentations week ends only. A Few years ago Ed Smalls sold out; he now owns a liquor store uptown. Today the management is headed by Gene Tyler, through whose cooperation the present album was recorded on the spot.

The use of Jimmy Smith's Trio is an extension of musical revival that has been in slow but sure progress at Smalls' for the past years. Marlowe Morris was the first to introduce the Hammond organ to the club, in an engagement that ran from 1953 well into 1955. The quality the visiting combos since then has remained high. The club now functions, as in the old days, on the basis of a music-all-week long policy. Oscar Pettiford, Art Blakey, Jo Jones and other contemporary jazz names have headed groups dominating a bandstand now straddled halfway between the congenial bar at the entrance and the large room with (complete with dance floor) in the rear.

If you live in, or visit, the Harlem area today, you may find rock 'n' roll in the saddle at the Savoy, or even at the Apollo, scene of the one remaining stage presentation; but chances are better than even that you will find Harlem's best jazz at Smalls', where so many of the antecedents of this same music kept an earlier bandstand swinging when the 32-year-old Jimmy Smith was an infant in Philadelphia.

This is the first record album ever recorded at Smalls'. I was lucky enough be present the night it was recorded. It seems to me that some of the relaxedly friendly atmosphere of the club is transfused into the grooves of this disc, and Jimmy and Eddie and Donald were playing their best that night. If they knew the traditions of the happy half-acre that was the site of their performance that night, they could hardly have done less.

After Hours goes straight down the blues path, slowly and determinedly, like a streetcar named Despond, then builds into a long solo vehicle for Jimmie and McFadden. It's strange that they chose to name it after the Avery Parrish piano solo that originated in the Erskine Hawkins band in 1941, for actually the trio itself composes this performance most of the way; for a more exact reflection of the Parrish original, check with Jutta Hipp on BLP 1516. Notice how surreptitiously drummer Donald Bailey eases into double time during the guitar solo.

After After Hours, same naive feminine voice in the audience can be heard calling for I Can't Give You Anything But Love. Jimmy blithely responds by offering her a valentine — a big and tender bouquet with one of those incredible protracted Smith finales.

Slightly Monkish, it need scarcely be pointed out, is a tribute neither to Julius Monk nor to Monk Montgomery, but rather an unexpectedly dissonant and provoking echo of Thelonious. Laura is a lady of many moods, now gentle, now maestoso, with some magnificent moments immediately following the guitar solo.

Imagination is introduced by a paraphrase of the melody, with many elaborations, in a fast one-note-line solo by Jimmy: Eddie Has the first completely ad lib chorus, though both soloists are duly represented at considerable length. Guitar introduces the melody of Just Friends, at a medium-bright tempo in a version that strikes me as the most exciting and jazz-valid since Bird's, Lover Man has another of those Sputnik-like Morse-code solos by Jimmy, leading into a more subdued mood conjured up by McFadden.

Body And Soul, after a long and suspenseful introduction, has some typical contrasts: examine the wild forays in the second eight against the comparative simplicity of the first, or the division of the release into four simple measures followed by four highly complex. Indiana is mostly Eddie McFadden's outing, and one that should enable the experts to bear him in mind when voting time comes around in the next critics' poll. He has technique, imagination and something else that I once saw neatly described, in a happy typographical error, as "fagility" — facility with agility. Donald Bailey's snare punctuations contribute much to the impetus of this stimulating performance. Jimmy goes out in a sudden ending with a flat fifth.

-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz)

Alfred Lion of Blue Note extends special thanks to Mr. Tyler, as well as Messrs. Odell Boyd and Sam Atkins, for their genial cooperation in making this recording session possible.

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT GROOVIN' AT SMALLS' PARADISE

Smalls' Paradise was still in business, and still presenting live music, when I made my first visit to Harlem in the 1970s on a pilgrimage to historic jazz sites. Most, like the Savoy Ballroom and Monroe's Uptown House, were memories; but not the club at 2294 1/2 Seventh Avenue. One could still walk into what had been known as "The Hottest Spot in Harlem" and imagine the sounds that emanated from the bandstand since the move from its original Fifth Avenue location that Leonard Feather mentions in the liner notes. (My sources cite October 26, 1925 as the date of the move, and note that radio broadcasts began the following year.) For a decade, Smalls' was the home of Charlie Johnson's Paradise Orchestra, the band where Benny Carter first made his reputation as a player and a writer. It also provided a base for the groups of Willie Gant, Elmer Snowden and Hot Lips Page in Harlem's musical heyday. In the '60s, when basketball great Wilt Chamberlain had purchased the club, Ray Charles appeared on Smalls' stage; and in 1957, Jimmy Smith recorded his two-volume Groovin' at Smalls ' Paradise for Blue Note.

Even at two discs, the original Blue Note albums could not contain all of the music that Rudy Van Gelder captured on the night of November 15, 1957 (less than two weeks, incidentally, after he had documented Sonny Rollins for Blue Note at the Village Vanguard). This collection includes all of the music from the original release plus four previously unissued titles equal in playing time to a third LP, sequenced in the order performed. All of the new material is interesting, particularly "Walkin'," where Smith plays one of his exceptional blues solos, and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," where his sound and buoyant mood anticipate his 1962 Blue Note tribute to Fats Waller. Only A Paper Moon" is a quality reading of a quality song while "The Champ" finds the organist expanding upon one of his first hits. Eddie McFadden provides a steady if unspectacular second solo voice on all four tracks, as well as on the initially issued titles, and creates an infectious rhythmic pocket with the leader's bass lines and the inestimable Donald Bailey's drums.

The primary story here, of course, is Jimmy Smith, whose blend of virtuosity and eccentricity had earned him the "Incredible" label that attached to many of his appearances on Blue Note. Looking back after decades of funk and acid jazz, it may be difficult to appreciate just how radical and multi-dimensional Smith's concept was during the years he recorded his first several sessions. His ability to generate a groove and play the blues was never in doubt; but Smith also excelled at ballads (hence his previous album, Jimmy Smith Plays Pretty Just For You), could generate jazz material like "After Hours," and had a feeling for contemporary harmonic and rhythmic discoveries that allowed him to pay tribute to Thelonious Monk. Several of his abstract introductions, "My Funny Valentine" being a primary example, suggest that Erroll Garner may have been one of Smith's significant models, a notion reinforced by the infectious bounce imparted to "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." Yet we also detect the accelerated inventions of Bud Powell and the angular chasms of Monk, all filtered through the truly electric sound of modern music played on the Hammond B-3 organ.

The Smalls' albums were the second pair that Smith had produced for Blue Note in a nightclub. He had been captured a year earlier at the Club Baby Grand in Wilmington, when the guitar chair in the trio was held by Thornel Schwartz. There were two-volume studio sets as well, also employing the design of identical covers in different colors, the A Date With Jimmy Smith and Jimmy Smith At The Organ tandems that were taped in February 1957. This sequential design style, also employed by Blue Note for a variety of other artists who released multiple discs in its 1200, 1500 and 4000 12-inch LP series, is a prototype of what would become a signature Pop Art style. In the present instance, it also provided one of the greatest images of Jimmy Smith in action.

— Bob Blumenthal, 1999