BN-LA-400-H2

Jimmy Smith

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, February 18, 1956
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Bay Perry, drums.

tk.7 The Preacher

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 27, 1956
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.12 The Champ

Manhattan Towers, NYC, February 13, 1957
Jimmy Smith, organ; Eddie McFadden, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.12 Blue Moon

Manhattan Towers, NYC, February 25, 1958
Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Eddie McFadden, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.5 Lover Man

Lee Morgan, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.15 The Sermon

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

tk.2 Mack The Knife

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 25, 1960
Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.12 Midnight Special
tk.16 Back At The Chicken Shack

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 1, 1963
Jimmy Smith, organ; Quentin Warren, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.38 Bucket

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.

tk.6 Pork Chop

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Midnight Special	Jimmy Smith	April 25 1960
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)	Davis-Ramirez-Sherman	February 25 1958
Bucket	Jimmy Smith	February 1 1963
Side Two
Mack The Knife	Weill-Brecht-Blitzstein	January 4 1960
The Champ	D. Gillespie	March 27 1956
Blue Moon	Rodgers-Hart	February 13 1957
Side Three
The Sermon	Jimmy Smith	February 25 1958
Side Four
Title	Author	Recording Date
Pork Chop	Lou Donaldson	February 7 1963
Back At The Chicken Shack	Jimmy Smith	April 25 1960

Liner Notes

JIMMY SMITH

Early in 1956 Jimmy Smith suddenly burst onto the national jazz scene — out of the blue, as it were — and the music has quite literally never been the same since his arrival. And arrive he did, in an explosion of excitement that set the jazz world on its ear. Booked into the Café Bohemia as intermission act to the then reigning doyens of funk, Art Blakey and Horace Silver, the unheralded organist completely stole the Jazz Messengers' thunder with the blistering, aggressive ferocity of his playing and the striking newness of his approach to the instrument. When, shortly afterwards, his first Blue Note album was released to phenomenal popular acceptance, Smith's star was fixed and a new sound added to the jazz arsenal, that of the organ trio — Hammond organ, electric guitar and drums, the instrumentation of Smith's group — which rapidly became one of the dominant sounds of the late 1950s and '60s.

Smith's, however, was and remains the preeminent approach to the instrument and, though many have tried, no one has ever succeeded in wresting that dominance from him, quite simply because no one has been able to match his command of so many of the instrument's expressive resources, in the pioneering usage of which he has been, and continues to be so instrumental and influential. So much so, in fact, that it often seems as though Smith singlehandedly invented jazz organ. He didn't, of course, and is himself quick to demonstrate an appreciative awareness of the pioneering work of such earlier jazz organists as Bill Doggett, Wild Bill Davis, Milt Buckner and Jackie Davis, among others. Smith knows exactly what they've done and how, just as surely as he knows how vastly different from theirs is his own music.

In a very real sense, though, he did invent the modern approach to jazz organ, which since his debut has become the pervasive approach to the instrument, used by all who have followed. Fired by hearing Bill Davis in 1953 Smith, then a journeyman jazz pianist in the Philadelphia area (he had been born in nearby Norristown, Pa., in 1928), set out to learn how to play electric organ. Unable to find anyone to instruct him in what was then a relatively new instrument, he was forced to teach himself, which he did through the simple expedient of investing two solid years of his life in daily practice during which he not only acquired his mastery of the instrument but also forged the distinctive sound and vigorous conception that are so uniquely his.

Chief among these were the striking new voicings and sound colors he drew from the instrument, the results of his investigations of the wide tonal potential different combinations of organ stops permitted, in the mastery of which he soon excelled. The ones he devised opened up totally new areas of sound texture for the instrument, permitting vastly increased tonal variety, and made possible a more forceful, incisive attack of much greater rhythmic resilience than had been achieved prior to his investigations. All of which made the electric organ much more responsive to the expressive needs of the modern jazz musician, and all of which have been widely used by jazz organists since Smith first introduced them in the middle and late 1950s.

While the superficial aspects of his style — the combinations of stops and other of his tonal and textural devices — can be, and have been extensively imitated, the essential nature of his music cannot be so easily copied. He is, for example, a compelling and thoroughly distinctive improviser of great rhythmic versatility and, more important, subtlety. His phenomenal sophistication and fluency in this area places him in the very front ranks of improvising jazz players and, more than any other of his awesome expressive skills, is responsible, I feel, for the singular, forceful character of his music, There are numerous instances of his unexampled command of rhythmic nuance in the 10 performances contained here — it is, after all, one of their integral characteristics — but particular attention should be paid to his bristling, unrelenting improvisation on Dizzy Gillespie's appropriately boppish The Champ, a flawless example of Smith at his rhythmically inventive best.

Important as such things were to his music, it was not Smith's technical prowess either as improviser or as innovative organist that accounted for his immediate and wide-spread acceptance by listeners. No, it was the impassioned force of his playing and the enthusiastic, unashamedly blues-drenched directness of his approach to making music that drew audiences to him like flies to sorghum. In a time of funky, unpretentiously earthy jazz as the late 1950s and '60s so ubiquitously were, Smith was funkmaster par excellence, the best and baddest there was at communicating the joyous, orgiastic emotional bedrock of jazz. To this day, in fact, none has done it better, more persuasively than he. The stinging, dancing clarity of the lines he spun out so effortlessly no less than the all but numbing intensity of his attack, the urgent, preaching fervor that crackled like electricity through every note he played—these are what pulled those huge audiences to his propulsive, freewheeling, supercharged music.

More fundamental still was Smith's willingness, his eagerness to communicate directly and immediately with his listeners. And this, above all else, is the very cornerstone of his great popular success. He knows his audiences as do few jazz musicians. "I bow to the masses," he has said of his crowd-pleasing approach. "There are all kinds of tricks in the trade, and I know all of them. I have different bags that I work out of. I have even changed tunes right in the middle of a number if I'm not getting to my audience. I know — I can tell when I'm not getting them with one thing. I just change things up a little."

Because of this thoroughgoing democratic spirit of his, a number of Smith's more effective albums for Blue Note were those he recorded on the spot, playing to and for the wildly appreciative and always responsive audiences who thronged the clubs to hear him, "It's just like in church," he explained. "The preacher's got to have that Amen corner going for him, The more they say Amen, the better he can preach, Well, it's the same in a club, A lot depends on the people and their response to what you do." There can be no more convincing demonstration of Smith's fiery brand of musical preaching and his congregation's response to it than the strong, bluesy reading of the lovely ballad Lover Man, a very live recording indeed, made in November of 1956 at the Harlem watering spot, Small's Paradise.

But then, Smith's forte as an improvising jazzman has been the projection of strong, heartfelt feeling and a powerfully propulsive swing within relatively simple, accessible musical forms—infectious, riffish blues-based pieces (such as The Preacher, the Horace Silver funk anthem from Smith's first Blue Note recording session in February of 1956; the organist's own salute to Silver, The Sermon; the huge hit Midnight Special; Bucket or Back at the Chicken Shack) or ballad standards like Blue Moon or Imagination, with the popular Mack the Knife, from The Threepenny Opera, lying midway between the two. Each nourished the other; his excursions into funk always possessed a supple, singing lyricism along with their more obvious muscular strengths, and he energized his ballad interpretations with the stinging rhythmic urgency and unpretentious emotional vigor of his earthier side.

These, along with other facets of his unparalleled expressive skills, are handsomely laid out in this well-programed set, which spans his phenomenal Blue Note recording career. The best way to come to an appreciation of just what it was that made James Oliver Smith the single most widely popular communicator In the history of jazz is to listen to, and take joy from his exuberant, forthright and always potently emotional music. So dig in.

Perhaps the very best summary of Smith's music and his contribution to jazz was that provided by the organist himself, when he observed succintly and with the obvious pride of a man who knows his true worth: "What I've got is a gift from God, and you don't mess with a thing like that. You can just say that they called me the Bird of the organ...Some people refer to me as the eighth wonder of the world. That statement came from Miles Davis." And Davis, of all contemporary jazz musicians, surely knows whereof he speaks.

Preach on, brother Smith, preach on!

PETE WELDING