BST 84372

Richard "Groove" Holmes - Comin' On Home

Released - 1971

Recording and Session Information

A&R Studios, NYC, May 19, 1971
Richard Groove Holmes, organ; Gerald Hubbard, guitar; Chuck Rainey, electric bass; Darryl Washington, drums; Ray Armando, congas.

Theme From Love Story

Richard Groove Holmes, organ; Weldon Irvine, electric piano; Gerald Hubbard, guitar; Jerry Jemmott, electric bass; Darryl Washington, drums; Ray Armando, congas #1-5; James Davis, tambourine, shakers, cowbell, voice.

Groovin' For Mr. G
Wave
Theme From "Mr. Clean"
Down Home Funk
Don't Mess With Me
This Here

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Groovin' for Mr. G.	R.G. Holmes	May 19 1971
Theme from Love Story	Francis Lai, Carl Sigman	May 19 1971
Mr. Clean	Weldon Irvine	May 19 1971
Down Home Funk	Weldon Irvine	May 19 1971
Side Two
Don't Mess With Me	R.G. Holmes	May 19 1971
Wave	Antônio Carlos Jobim	May 19 1971
This Here	Bobby Timmons	May 19 1971

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
In the Beginning	Jeremy Steig	February 11 1970
Mint Tea	Jeremy Steig	February 11 1970
Wayfaring Stranger	Traditional	February 11 1970
Side Two
Waves	Jeremy Steig, Eddie Gómez	February 11 1970
All Is One	Jeremy Steig, Eddie Gómez	February 11 1970
Space	Jeremy Steig, Eddie Gómez	February 11 1970

Liner Notes

"Comin' On Home" by Richard "Groove" Holmes It's a tricky instrument to play, the jazz organ, because on the lowest possible level it's a relatively easy instrument. Thus it has become a favorite of a multitude of mediocre musicians whose actual keyboard acuity would make them sound like second-year students on piano, but who manage, with the help of electronic technology, to sound almost respectable as they play block chords and timid right-hand improvisations on the organ. For a legitimately talented musician then, to sound truly exciting as a jazz organist, he must be very good indeed, which is precisely what Richard "Groove" Holmes is. To begin with, he's unusually proficient simply in terms of technique (listen to his playing on "Waves," for instance); more important still, he has developed an honest, earthy, internally-consistent sound that is so thoroughly and identifiably his own, that he might properly be termed an innovator in an area of jazz in which innovation is virtually unknown.

His unmistakably organic jazz style first reached large audiences a decade ago in the early sixties. A century away, it seems now. Before Dallas, before Watts, before the moon landing, before My Lai, before Jackson and Kent State, before ping-pong diplomacy. Mindbending concepts like "LSD" and "hot pants" and "Agnew" had not yet gained currency. The Beatles were in Liverpool. Pablo Casals was at the White House, and jazz was abroad in Los Angeles. In a profusion since equaled only by bottomless bars, jazz clubs sprang up in every part of the city, often two or three to the block. And, as if in reaction to the structured, overly-austere music of the West Coast Cool, the jazz they featured was mostly warm, basic, bluesy. Music that touched the happy-sad core that most men seem to share. Music of the unbridled spirit. Soul jazz.

Groove Holmes came into the middle of all this, from his hometown of Camden, New Jersey. He was soon an increasingly popular L.A. jazz club regular. Discovering him for oneself was an unforgettable event. I remember walking into a club called Mr. Adams (it had been Dynamite Jackson's before, and has become an anonymous storefront since); there was a huge, smiling magician sitting proudly behind a battle-scarred keyboard console, playing over, under, around and through the changes of an up-tempo blues, combining absolutely confident strength with disarming delicacy, catching up everyone in the room in his relentlessly animated improvisations. Groove Holmes. Grooving like all hell.

Two A.M. seemed to come three hours early that night, and when it did, Groove loaded the organ into an old Cadillac hearse, and the next thing I knew, I found myself slouched in a seat at the Adams West Theatre across the street, where Groove Holmes himself was setting up to play a lengthy after-hours set. Around six A.M. there was a Sunday morning breakfast set at The It Club on Washington Boulevard; I stumbled in, and there—so help me God—was Richard "Groove" Holmes in person, getting ready to play some more. And I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to have found him at an afternoon jam session somewhere else, and then back at Mr. Adams that night. I was personally in no shape to find out by that time, though. All I knew was that I had spent 12 hours, off and on, watching an almost unknown organist who was going to become one of the major jazz figures of the then-fledgling sixties. The point of this little remembrance? Just that I put an advance copy of Comin' On Home on my turntable a few days ago, and I feel confident in predicting — sadder and wiser and ten years older than I was when first I heard him — that the same organist (who was indeed one of the major jazz figures of the sixties) is going to make even more important contributions, in an even broader musical context, in the now-fledgling seventies.

Dick Bock first recorded Groove Holmes in 1961, on his Pacific Jazz label; the LP was called Groove (PJ-33), and the other musicians included Les McCann, Ben Webster, and Lawrence "Tricky" Lofton. A succession of best-selling albums followed for Pacific Jazz, on which Holmes was joined by the likes of Gene Ammons, Clifford Scott and Joe Pass. (Regrettably, so far as I know, Groove never recorded at that time with the group he so often played live; Thornel Schwartz, formerly Jimmy Smith, was the guitarist, there was an incredible powerhouse of a drummer who called himself Mousey, and they were fantastically good.) In 1964, Groove recorded a rather prefunctory set of blues standards with the Onzy Matthews Orchestra for Warners, and then he went back home to the East Coast. He signed Prestige (whose home, like Groove's was in New Jersey), and his first LP for them contained an electrically buoyant jazz translation of "Misty," which became a hit of heroic proportions. His next LPs featured artists like Teddy Edwards, Paul Chambers, and the Richard Evans "Super Soul Big Band." In 1968, Groove returned to Pacific Jazz (which had been bought by Liberty), and when United Artists and Liberty became one, he switched to Blue Note, thus joining that elite fraternity of jazz artists who have recorded for both Prestige and Blue Note — the two oldest and most active jazz labels in the world.

This latest Blue Note recording features Groove's regular group, Gerald Hubbard, James Davis and Darryl Washington, who seem to possess all of the virtues a permanent unit ought to have (consistency, compatibility, creative empathy, etc.) and none of the vices it so often ends up with (repetitiousness, predictability, lack of inspiration or of energy). Ray Armando adds his well-known conga drums wherever they are appropriate. Weldon Irvine contributes a pair of compositions and a great deal of piano, and two of the best bassists in New York, Jerry Jemmott and Chuck Rainey (the latter on "Love Story") stride solidly along giving the most: dependable sort of support. (Both are extremely versatile musicians, but both have firm groundings in R&B — Jemmott has played with King Curtis' group among others, and Rainey has logged time with blues masters like B.B. King.)

"Theme From Love Story" is certainly the best-known cut on Comin' On Home; Groove's version is already familiar to anyone who lives within a mile of a radio, but I wonder how many people have stopped to consider the extent of his achievement with it: he has taken an emotionally romantic ballad from a movie sound-track, and turned it into a briskly exuberant, infectiously-swinging song of joy. Then there's unabashed soul music like Bobby Timmons' classic "This Here" (which Groove previously recorded on an unreleased Prestige LP with Gene Edwards and Freddie Waits), and new tunes like "Down Home Funk" and "Groovin' For Mr. G." (by Weldon Irvine and Groove, respectively), whose titles are self-explanatory. Irvine's "Mr. Clean" is a polytonal blues of almost unnerving simplicity and deceptive sophistication; Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave" is graceful, elegant, almost mystical; "Don't Mess With Me," featuring the improvised comments of percussionist James Davis, is just funky fun, cool and sly and completely engrossing.

In closing, it should be mentioned that, the present album title and his wide travels notsithstanding, Groove Holmes never have to worry about "Comin' On Home", he'll always be there, for home is where the heart is and his heart is in his music. The proof of this is not in these liner notes; it's in the album they briefly introduce. Listen to Groove Holmes; where his heart — and his home — are be wonderfully obvious.

— Colman Andrews