BLP 4050

Jimmy Smith - Home Cookin'

Released - January 1961

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, July 15, 1958
Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.11 Motorin' Along

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, May 24, 1959
Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.14 I Got A Woman

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, June 16, 1959
Percy France, tenor sax #1,3-5; Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.4 Messin' Around
tk.8 Sugar Hill
tk.10 Gracie
tk.14 Come On Baby
tk.19 See See Rider

Session Photos

July 15 1958

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
See See Rider	Ma Rainey	16/06/1959
Sugar Hill	Kenny Burrell	16/06/1959
I Got a Woman	Ray Charles, Renald Richard	24/05/1959
Messin' Around	Jimmy Smith	16/06/1959
Side Two
Gracie	Jimmy Smith	16/06/1959
Come on Baby	Kenny Burrell	16/06/1959
Motorin' Along	Jimmy McGriff	15/07/1959

Liner Notes

ON THE front of this album, there is a brilliant photograph of Jimmy Smith by Blue Note's talented lensman, Frank Wolff. Jimmy is standing in front of what is, to many musicians, the "soul station" in the neighborhood of Harlem's Apollo Theatre.

Kate's Home Cooking is located on 126th Street, not far from the Apollo's backstage entrance. Performers such as Ruth Brown, Cozy Cole, Count Basie, Fats Domino, James Moody, Art Blakey and Horace Silver make it their prandial headquarters during the course of a week When they are playing the big A. Jimmy Smith is an admirer of "home—soul" cooking, especially the brand dispensed by Kate O. Bishop. Home Cookin' is a dedication to Kate. This date musically approximates the feeling her cuisine imparts. The distance from grits, greens and gravy to swing, sounds and soul is a short one for Jimmy Smith.

In The New Edition of The Encyclopedia Of Jazz, Leonard Feather accurately sets Smith in historical perspective when he writes: "His relationship to previous jazz exponents of the Hammond organ parallels those of Charlie Christian and Jimmy Blanton to earlier guitarists and bassists."

Jimmy has explored the myriad combinations possible on the Hammond more than any other jazz organist today. He is able to express many moods through tasteful employment of his instrument's tonal palette. His footwork is extraordinary too. Whereas most organists who do not work with bassists, usually include them on record dates, Jimmy's feet are sufficiently talented to maintain a swinging harmonic base whenever and wherever he is playing. In terms of both the actual playing of the instrument and overall jazz conception as applied to the Hammond, Jimmy Smith is boss.

Like Smith, the three other musicians involved in this set are all at home in the blues.

Kenny Burrell, one of the finest guitarists jazz, in has been heard on Blue Note many times in the past, both with his own groups and as a supporting player. This is not his first recording with Smith either. They shared the same pulpit on The Sermon (Blue Note BLP4011) and the same living room in House Party (Blue Note BLP4002). This is a welcome reunion because they are so empathic. Kenny is a player of great clarity who does not waste notes. His simple, direct solo on See See Rider is a good example of this. Even when he is playing in a multi—noted manner, the notes relate to the totality of his Style. And he knows how play the blues.

Percy France is new to Blue Note but is a veteran of the New York scene. Born in Manhattan on August 15, 1928, he started piano studies at 6, took up the clarinet and on September 11, 1941 bought his first tenor saxophone. Percy remembers the exact date he paid for horn out of his own, hard-earned money.

At Benjamin Franklin High (a schoolmate was Sonny Rollins), he played in the band. Then he turned professional with Betti Mays' Swingtet and later played with trumpeter Frank Humphries. After gigging around with his own group in the late 1940s, France joined Bill Doggett in 1951 and remained with the organist into 1955. Since then he has free-lanced in New York, including many dance dates. Percy enjoys playing for dancers and I'm sure they enjoy his brand of basic, swinging tenor. It seems he likes to work with organists (perhaps he has been type-cast) for in both 1959 and 1960, he appeared with Sir Charles Thompson at Count Basie's.

France first dug Don Byas. He then admired Coleman Hawkins "for changes" and Lester Young "for feeling". Among the younger tenormen, he likes Benny Golson for one. "He really knows his instrument," says Percy.

France does not sound like Golson. He does, however, have strong roots and gets a warm groove full of feeling, reflective, in a general way, of his early influences.

The only member Of Jimmy Smith's regular group is drummer Donald Bailey, who has been with him since 1955. Bailey likes Blakey, Roach, Philly Joe and Art Taylor. He is one of the steadiest of younger drummers, concentrating on time rather than flash.

An old, old blues, in a subdued vein, sets a marvelously relaxed mood as the opener, See See Rider, first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1925 (Louis Armstrong was on cornet), proves, like all good blues, to be timeless. The undiluted portion of feeling that is France's first solo definitely recalls Lester Young, although tonally it is unlike Prez.

Sugar Hill, named by composer Burrell for that particular section of Harlem, moves right along with a lucid solo from Kenny and one by Smith that builds nicely. Jimmy works in some near-Eastern motifs originally suggested by the theme. His is a powerful pulse. France is not heard on this track.

Percy also lays out on Ray Charles' I Got a Woman, which is invested with a quiet intensity in a highly rhythmic performance by the trio. Jimmy generates much genuine "down home" feeling without ever getting hysterical.

Messin' Around has no connection With Ray Charles' Mess Around. This is a firm, straight Smith blues line. The music just flows in a relaxed stream of blue truths from Burrell and France, while Smith lays down a rich chordal background and combines with Bailey to supply the necessary throb. Jimmy's solo uses rhythmic variety in its phrase-making to fascinate the ear.

I don't who Gracie is, but bet she is not George Burns' wife. The way France, Burrell and Smith talk about this chick, in the dialect of the minor blues, you don't get the idea she is a feather brain, real or imaginary.

Burrell's Come On Baby is a slow, rocking-groove number that echoes the title's entreaty. Percy, Kenny and Jimmy make their blue pleas so convincingly that, men, I advise you use this track with caution on bashful females. It's a strong potion.

The tenorless trio closes the set with Smith's Motorin' Along. The title reminds me of an amusing anecdote, related to me by Down Beat's George Crater. It seems that Jimmy uses an old hearse to transport his organ and speaker from one gig to another. The only is that a hearse cannot travel on thruways and turnpikes unless it is "in use". In order to get to the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival on time, it was imperative that they use the turnpike. Donald Bailey was the corpus electi and rode New York to Newport horizontally.

There are no stiffs on this trip, however. Burrell is in especially high gear as Smith and Bailey wheel down the highway at a steady pace. Then Jimmy gets into the driver's seat and Kenny feeds him the fuel. This car has only three cylinders but what a lot of horsepower.

This salute, Home Cookin', in recognition of a certain brand of culinary art that has not perished (thanks to Kate Bishop), finds Jimmy Smith and his colleagues demonstrating that the blues, if utilized when ripe and seasoned correctly, will never lose any of their flavor, either.

— IRA GITLER

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

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT HOME COOKIN'

Part of what made Jimmy Smith so incredible during his tenure with Blue Note Records was the sheer quantity of music he produced. Knowing that it had under contract that rarest of jazz birds, an innovator who was also immensely popular, the label saw to it that Rudy Van Gelder constantly documented Smith's both in person and at the Van Gelder Studio. Most of the classic albums that resulted were the product of one or two sessions. Home Cookin' is an exception. as it is drawn from three separate dates that span eleven months in 1958—59.

The earliest music represented here was taped at a trio date, with Kenny Burrell in place of Eddie McFadden, Smith's regular guitarist of the time. Six titles were recorded, with the emphasis on standards, yet only the original, "Motorin' Along," was included on the Home Cookin' LP. (This tune is sometimes credited to fellow Philadelphian and former Smith student Jimmy McGriff.) That track and "Since I Fell for You" were released on a 45 at the time, and both are heard here in master as well as alternate takes. The remaining material from this session comprised the bulk of On the Sunny Side, a 1981 collection of Smith odds-and-ends.

A day later, the same trio, with baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne added and Art Blakey sharing drum duty with Donald Bailey, returned to Van Gelder's for a session that only yielded one side of a 45 at the time, but that ultimately appeared in its entirety on the 1999 CD Six Views of the Blues.

Smith did not record again until the following May, and once again he had Burrell in the guitar chair. As with the July '58 sessions, the output was substantial but the immediate results meager, with only "I Got a Woman" included on the original Home Cookin' as well as on a 45. Curiously enough, it was Jimmy McGriff, and not Smith, who would have a crossover hit with his instrumental version of the Ray Charles classic. The bonus track "Groanin'," a simple medium-tempo blues in the mood of Smith's Classic "The Sermon," was also cut together with seven tracks that were ultimately released on the Smith CD Standards.

A little more than three weeks later, tenor saxophonist Percy France was added to the trio and the bulk of the original Home Cookin' was recorded. France was an excellent choice for such a blues-focused session, given his extended tenure earlier in the decade with Bill Doggett, an organ champ who predates Smith. The saxophonist's playing is muscular and concise, like a less boppish Gene Ammons, and he wrote the bonus track "Apostrophe," with its very appealing line. There is not much more of France in a jazz context to be heard on record, though he did make one more Blue Note appearance, again with Burrell, on Freddie Roach's debut album Down to Earth, and was heard outside the organ-group context in the '80s and '90s on three albums by pianist Lance Hayward. It may have been that France was not comfortable with material that ventured in more complex harmonic directions, a conclusion suggested by his absence on Burrell's intriguing minor-key composition "Sugar Hill."

Despite drawing upon three separate sessions, there is great unity of mood on this album — and despite the preponderance of blues, there is an admirable variety. Smith and company knew how to give each piece a distinctive personality, as can be heard by comparing "Messin' Around" and "Gracie." Another instructive comparison can be heard in the. way Smith and McGriff approach "I Got a Woman." McGriff had always insisted that he Was a blues musician, while his mentor Smith was the jazz king of the organ, and the difference is audible in McGriff's hit recording of this piece, wherein he generates the audience-pleasing flamboyance that Ira Gitler so accurately finds lacking in Smith's reading. Gitler was also right on target in calling attention to the fantastic Francis Wolff cover photo. It is one of three "location" shots featuring the that appeared in rapid sequence in 1960-61. All three illustrated the title tracks of the respective albums, but the others, Midnight Special and Back at the Chicken Shack, might be considered fictional images. The Smith we see here is true to life, and thus even more truly down home.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003