BLP 4141

Jimmy Smith - Rockin' The Boat

Released - September 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 7, 1963
Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Quentin Warren, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums; John Patton, tambourine #1,2,5.

tk.2 Matilda, Matilda!
tk.6 Pork Chop
tk.7 When My Dream Boat Comes Home
tk.8 Please Send Me Someone To Love
tk.11A Just A Closer Walk With Thee
tk.15 Can Heat
tk.17 Trust In Me

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
When My Dream Boat Comes Home	Cliff Friend, Dave Franklin	07 February 1963
Pork Chop	Lou Donaldson	07 February 1963
Matilda, Matilda!	Harry Thomas	07 February 1963
Side Two
Can Heat	Jimmy Smith	07 February 1963
Please Send Me Someone To Love	Percy Mayfield	07 February 1963
Just A Closer Walk With Thee		07 February 1963
Trust In Me	Milton Ager, Jean Schwartz, Ned Wever	07 February 1963

Liner Notes

The phenomenon of Jimmy Smith is quite literally unique in modern music annals. Rarely does an instrumentalist cross that vague yet irremovable borderline between in-group acceptance and mass appeal. In Jimmy’s case there can be no doubt that through some special brand of magnetism he has attracted not only a loyal legion of followers among fellow-musicians and jazz fans, but also a substantial segment of the general public now receives his message with unreserved enthusiasm.

The fame he has built since 1956 when he made his original impact as an organist and his first Blue Note recordings, has spread internationally. The reports of his triumphs at the Cannes Jazz Festival, in Paris and Brussels and everywhere else he has played overseas, have been finding domestic parallels at such major events as the New York News jazz show at Madison Square Garden, etc. Naturally the bigger the audience the greater the enthusiasm, for Jimmy’s is not the kind of sound that can be lost or vitiated in a large or impersonal setting; he can establish with a crowd of 20,000 the kind of intimate rapport that most artists have trouble achieving with 200.

I cannot analyze with any accuracy the secret of Jimmy’s success. Probably a correct explanation would have to involve technical details about the particular stops and combinations of stops he uses, and a lot of other data, all of which, since I am not an organist, are beyond my comprehension. But one aspect of his work that is easy to explain is that he has brought to the organ, to an extent that was never observed in any performer before him, a particular brand of hip intensity, a soulful blues feeling, that none of the others had quite managed to capture.

There have been many who, observing his triumph and studying his methods, have tried to take a leaf out of his book. Today the Hammond organ trio in the bar and grill is a commonplace, and there are scores of organists (not to mention guitarists, saxophonists and drummers employed in organ combos) who can thank Jimmy Smith for the fashion he consolidated and the work channels he helped to open up for them.

Jimmy’s companions in the present set of performances are, of course, familiar to Blue Noters. The 36-year-old Lou Donaldson has been heard on many earlier Blue Note dates of his own as well as with Art Blakey, Milt Jackson and Thelonious Monk. Donald Bailey is a Smith veteran, having joined the trio right at the start in 1955 in Philadelphia. And Quentin Warren, from Washington, D. C., was also an early associate of Jimmy’s, having joined him at the age of 19, in 1959.

Rockin’ The Boat is a logical title for an album that starts out with an inspired rhythmic renovation of the familiar 1936 popular song, When My Dream Boat Comes Home. This is truly the blues from the first chord on through. The gradual building of Jimmy’s solo, the way Lou keeps the mood up when he enters, and the superbly rhythmic feeling that is maintained from start to finish, all add up to one of the most exciting of Smith performances.

The mood slows down for Pork Chop, a slow interpretation of an eight-bar blues (How Long style) in which we are reminded of an important aspect of Jimmy’s work: though he can cut anyone else around on the technical level, he still remembers just when, where and how to exercise discretion, and still plays with warmth and simplicity. Here he is wistful and nostalgic yet gutty and earthy, as is Lou in his own admirable contribution.

Matilda, Matilda! will of course be recognized as the old Calypso song, brought back to popularity a few years ago by Harry Belafonte. An appropriate mood is established with alto and tambourine before Jimmy moves in.

Can Heat is one of those cookers that starts out with a slow glow, then burns with growing intensity. The ping-pong alternation of organ and guitar phrases at the beginning sets a good groove for a performance that maintains an impressive blues-oriented atmosphere throughout.

The familiar Percy Mayfield composition Please Send Me Someone To Love is especially effective as a vehicle for Lou Donaldson. You can almost hear Lou blowing the lyrics through his horn in a movingly melodic opening chorus. Jimmy sustains the feeling in his own superb solo.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee, once a hymn strictly for religious use, has been played by traditionalist jazz groups in recent years. The venerable church mood is as well transmitted through Jimmy’s instrumentation as it ever was in the New Orleans bands. Though the tempo is a little slower, Don Bailey gets much the same rhythmic quality going here as on Can Heat.

Trust In Me, a change in mood, is the only track that is not directly blues-involved. The song is a fine, simple ballad that was popular in 1936 and was recorded by the late Mildred Bailey. Both Lou and Jimmy give it a relaxedly soulful interpretation.

Like so many Jimmy Smith Blue Note albums, this is a strong and persuasive set that needs no further recommendation from me; as usual, he will stand on his own extraordinary merits. No matter how hard he rocks the boat, there is smooth sailing for Jimmy along the course he so skillfully charts for himself on these sides.

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT ROCKIN' THE BOAT

Jimmy Smith made his debut on Blue Note Records in 1956 billed as a new star with a new sound. He departed almost exactly seven years later as an honest-to-goodness superstar by the lights of the jazz world, having delivered a rare jazz instrumental single that climbed toward the summit of the pop charts.

The single was "Walk on the Wild Side, Part 2," from Smith's Verve album Bashin'. The jazz label that Norman Granz had founded offered Smith key advantages that Blue Note could not match — a budget that allowed for the organist to be heard for the first time in an orchestral setting (arrangements by Oliver Nelson), and the more extensive promotion and marketing resources of parent-label MGM Records. (Verve's sale to MGM in 1961 put Granz's former label somewhere between an independent like Blue Note and a "major" label, a position Impulse! also enjoyed through its relationship to parent ABC-Paramount Records.) Smith took advantage of the situation with virtuosic bravura and blues-drenched emoting that made "Wild Side" the surprise pop single of 1962, back when juke boxes still played those small 45 rpm records with the large holes.

In a nine-day period early in 1963, shortly before Smith became an exclusive Verve artist and recorded his orchestral sequel Hobo Flats, the organist completed his commitments to the label that had introduced him to the jazz world and documented his music so copiously. On consecutive days at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, Smith cut two trio albums, I'm Movin' On and Bucket!, with the former featuring Grant Green in place of Smith's regular guitarist Quentin Warren. Six days later, Smith was back at Van Gelder's for another two-day run, this time supplementing his working threesome first with alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson on the present session, and then with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine for Prayer Meetin', which is also being reissued as part of the RVG Series.

Lou Donaldson was among the first group of horn players to record with Smith on Blue Note, and would become the organist's most frequent saxophonic collaborator. This final Smith/Donaldson parley (until the live music they made together at the 1985 Town Hall label relaunch) does not reach the peaks the pair scaled in 1958 in the studio (hear "The Sermon") und at Small's Paradise, but the fault lies primarily in the program rather than the playing. Smith's tune choices lean a bit heavily on change of pace items like the calypso "Matilda, Matilda!" and the second-line shuffles of the spiritual "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and the title track, the performance of which (pace Leonard Feather) recalls Fats Domino's then-recent cover more than the tune's 1936 origins. These performances lean a bit toward novelty. The other numbers are tailored more clearly toward the pure emoting that leader and star soloist do best. Both ballads glow, and Donaldson's balance of bop and rhythm and blues on "Pork Chop" raises echoes of the stories Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson's alto told on the similarly constructed "Person to Person."

It was somewhat misleading to call Rockin' the Boat a quartet recording above, given the presence of a tambourine player on some tracks. While the second percussionist remained uncredited on the original LP, session logs indicate that it was organist and soon-to-be Blue Note recording artist in his own right "Big" John Patton, who had come to the label's attention the previous spring on Donaldson's album The Natural Soul. (Patton is also the presumed tambourine player at the next day's session, though he is not mentioned in the logs.) The departure of Smith from Blue Note created a situation that no doubt hastened Patton's signing with the label, created more space to feature the already-signed Freddie Roach, and (by the end of 1964) also helped open the door for the arrival of Larry Young. These organists each had their strengths and their studio triumphs, but none filled the commercial void that Smith's departure created. The label did see other artists enjoy important crossover success, including Lee Morgan with The Sidewinder and Horace Silver with Song for My Father. In the realm of "organ groups," however, it was saxophonist Donaldson and his unit's "Alligator Boogaloo" with Lonnie Smith at the organ in 1967 that finally pulled out the Hammond-B3 stops and made the pop charts.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003