BLP 4030

Jimmy Smith - Crazy! Baby

Released - June 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 4, 1960
Jimmy Smith, organ; Quentin Warren, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.1 Alfredo
tk.2 Mack The Knife
tk.4 Makin' Whoopee
tk.7 What's New
tk.8 Sonnymoon For Two
tk.10 When Johnny Comes Marching Home
tk.12 A Night In Tunisia

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
When Johnny Comes Marching Home	Traditional	04/01/1960
Makin' Whoopee	Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn	04/01/1960
A Night in Tunisia	Dizzy Gillespie	04/01/1960
Side Two
Sonnymoon for Two	Sonny Rollins	04/01/1960
Mack the Knife	Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill	04/01/1960
What's New?	Johnny Burke, Bob Haggart	04/01/1960
Alfredo	Jimmy Smith	04/01/1960

Liner Notes

IT IS one of the anomalies of the American artistic scene that the term "popular music" (more often abbreviated as "pop music") is generally employed in opposition to the word "jazz." The obvious implication is that the music we call jazz is not basically popular, and popular music inherently cannot be jazz.

Jimmy Smith is a swingingly assertive voice of dissent in this absurd argument. As much as any artist Who has entered the jazz world in the past few years he has shown that popularity on a significant scale can be achieved without any conscious or unconscious concession to the alleged demands of the pop market. His performances today have the same rhythmically intense and melodically inventive qualities that earned him widespread interest when his original LP, New Sounds on the Organ, was issued on 1512 only four years ago. In other words, Jimmy's work is and always will be as indisputably jazz as it has become unmistakably popular.

This new collection, marking his first release in several months, summarizes in its table of contents what Jimmy has done to weld the so-called popular and jazz fields, since the material he chose maintains an ideal balance. Of the seven tracks on these two sides, three (including Jimmy's original) are essentially jazz in character and origin; one (What's New) is a ballad that began in a jazz band; two are old pop songs and one is virtually a folk melody.

It is to this final item, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, that we'll turn our attention first. Here is a theme which, for all its antiquity and frequent use in what might be considered corny contexts, nevertheless has a harmonic basis well suited to jazz improvisation. The performance seems to begin right outside the induction center — "Marching in the street," says Jimmy, "using an Oriental sound to blend With the rebel sound." Next comes what Jimmy refers to as an "Irish vamp," though to these ears the C-and-G pedal point seemed to suggest rather the advance of a Scots regiment. Then the trio settles into a regular tempo treatment in C Minor. The beat moves a trifle too fast for marching, but never too fast for swinging.

Johnny, incidentally, was issued as a 45 rpm single before the release of the present album and has established itself quite firmly as a hit. On the LP it is followed by Makin' Whoopee, a typical sample of what Smith can do to revitalize an old familiar vaudeville favorite. The road from Eddie Cantor to Jimmy's hands and feet has been thirty years long and not a little devious, but you'll know it was a worthwhile trip as soon as you dig his time on those subtle processions of eighth notes and those perfectly placed staccato triplets. Or if you'd rather be less technical about it you might just say that Jimmy outdistances and outswings all his predecessors on this song, in a comfortable canter.

A Night In Tunisia has had a long career as a jazz standard. Although Dizzy Gillespie wrote it under that title in 1942, it not until two years later that the first record was made (On a date produced) when Sarah Vaughan sang it under the Interlude. The vocal version and title never seemed to stick, however, and Jimmy's treatment uses what has now become the standard routine established by Diz, with the interlude between first and second choruses.

Sonnymoon for Two is a twelve-bar blues theme founded on what is virtually a descending blues scale. Blue Note 1581 introduced the tune when the composer, Sonny Rollins. taped it during a session at the Village Vanguard. After the theme has been outlined the spotlight moves to guitarist Quentin Warren, a promising youngster (only 19 at the time of recording) who has not previously been heard on records. Warren, who is from Washington, D.C., has been touring the club and theater circuit with the Jimmy Smith Trio for almost a year.

Mack The Knife, Which was released as a single on the back of When Johnny Comes Marching Home and therefore has already become a juke-box favorite, achieves the near-impossible by making a silk, pulsating purse out of this dog-eared sow's ear. Those who approach this track With misgivings are reminded of the ancient Sy Oliver provide: Tain't watcha do, etc.

What's New never exactly either a jazz tune or a pop song. Introduced as a vehicle for Billy Butterfield in the Bob Crosby Orchestra Of 1938 (under its original title, I'm Free) it later acquired lyrics and, though to the best of my recollection it never got near the Hit Parade, its melodically tasty contours have appealed to singers and instrumentalists consistently the past 22 years. Jimmy makes effective use of double time in his second chorus, but generally this is a lyrical and compelling ballad treatment With a dramatic ending.

The side continues with a medium-paced, minor-key original entitled Alfredo. It shouldn't take too much cerebration figure out that this is a dedication to Blue Note's Alfred Lion. Quentin Warren shares the footage in this catchy and easy-swinging performance.

All in all, it's an album that represents everything Jimmy Smith has come to epitomize throughout his short but intense recording career. In my first set of liner notes for him back around BLP1525 the following observations were included: "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 is an inevitable development; for the mark of originality is unmistakably present here."

Time, and Jimmy Smith, have borne out these comments, since today there is a whole school of second-string Jimmy Smiths, but there's still only one genuine article, and he's still a little too far ahead, too for out in space, for the others ever to catch up all the way.

Speaking of space travel, I'd like to leave the concluding remark to Jimmy, who made this observation in a recent telephone chat: "Leonard, I'm going to be at the moon before Khrushchev gets there; and before I leave I'm going to stop by and get Coltrane. And you know I'll have to pick up Monk, because he'll be home in bed. But I'm on my way!"

—LEONARD FEATHER

Cover photo by BOB GANLEY
Cover Design by REID MILES
Model: MARION BARKER, Car by JAGUAR
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER