LT-992

Jimmy Smith - Confirmation

Released - 1979

Recording and Session Information

Manhattan Towers, NYC, August 25, 1957
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; George Coleman, alto sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Eddie McFadden, guitar #1; Kenny Burrell, guitar #2; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.3 What Is This Thing Called Love
tk.5 Cherokee

Manhattan Towers, NYC, February 25, 1958
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Jimmy Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.12 Confirmation

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
What Is This Thing Called Love	C. Porter	August 25 1957
Confirmation	C. Parker	February 25 1958
Side Two
Cherokee	R. Noble	August 25 1957

Liner Notes

JIMMY SMITH

The impact of Jimmy Smith on the course of modern jazz (and make no mistake, the music he purveyed on his first album in 1956 remains modern in every sense of the term) is a unique phenomenon, even when inspected from a vantage point at the end of the 1970s.

Until his advent, the role of the Hammond organ in jazz had been minimal. Fats Waller used it from time to time during a few sessions toward the end of his life, from 1940-42, most memorably in his Jitterbug Waltz. After Waller's death in 1943 there was a lull of several years. Coincidentally, the next two artists to be identified with the Davis, who worked with Jordan from 1945-48 and began specializing in organ after leaving him; and Bill Doggett, who replaced Davis with Jordan, and who took up the organ in 1951.

Davis made a couple of organ records which Mercer Ellington and I released on our Mercer label. Doggett played organ on a couple of well-received Ella Fitzgerald records. Soon both men were working regularly as leaders of Hammond combos that enjoyed modest success mainly on the rhythm and blues circuit.

It was not until the advent of Jimmy Smith, however, that the significance of the instrument as a medium for innovative explorations attracted the attention of jazz critics around the world. With all due respect to Davis and Doggett, both admirable musicians, Smith took the console to an entirely new creative level for which there were very few analogies. It might be said that he accomplished for the organ, technically, what Art Tatum had achieved when he upset all the prevailing standards for jazz pianists in the early 1930s.

Melodically and harmonically, however Smith's work might better be compared with what Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker had done in taking improvisational music into uncharted territory. He brought to this relatively ignored vehicle a power and passion unlike anything that had been heard before. As I observed in The Encyclopedia of Jazz, his relationship to previous jazz exponents of the Hammond paralleled those of Jimmy Blanton and Charlie Christian to earlier bassists and guitarists.

Like virtually all Hammond organists, Jimmy Smith began his career as a pianist, making the transition to organ during 1952-53, and spending prodigious quantities of time wood-shedding, before he could reach the plateau of perfection he felt necessary to enable him to establish himself in this new role. He formed his own trio in Philadelphia in 1955.

His venture came to the attention of Blue Note's Alfred Lion, who produced Smith's first session in February 1956, with an instrumentation that was to become more or less standardized: organ, guitar, drums. (Bass was rendered unnecessary by the power of Smith's footwork on the chromatically arranged pedals.)

From then until 1962 Smith taped a long series of trio and combo albums. Although he occasionally demonstrated his sensitive approach to ballads, the material most often consisted of blues, at every tempo, mixed in with pop and bebop standards.

Two such dates produced the three tracks heard in this album. Although they were never previously released, other cuts from the same sessions were heard on two LPs. What Is This Thing Called Love and Cherokee were recorded at the same session as J.O.S. (from an album called The Sermon), Just Friends and Blues After All (from Houseparty). Confirmation is a product of the date that included Au Privave and Lover Man, both on Houseparty, and Flamingo and The Sermon, from the set of which the latter was the title tune.

Jimmy Smith's modus operandi in the recording studios was informal in the extreme. As often as not he would select a group of compatible musicians, call out tunes agreeable to all participants, and simply tape a jam session, with no arrangement. Such was the caliber of the men he selected that this simple procedure resulted in some of the best informal musical of its genre.

The guitar work was split between Eddie McFadden and Kenny Burrell on the first session, but the evidence of our ears indicates that it was McFadden who played on What Is This Thing Called Love. He is the first, and most laid back, in a succession of soloists occupying this quarter-hour jam. The trombone of Curtis Fuller (later well known as a side-man with Blakey and Basie) is forceful and declarative. George Coleman, better known as a tenor soloist, takes over on alto for four ebullient choruses. The most remarkable of the horn solos is contributed by Lee Morgan, the grace and logic of whose lines build to a fierce level of intensity during his last chorus, yet he retains some of the subtle essence of Clifford Brown, with whom he was often compared.

Jimmy Smith comes in as the concluding soloist — quite logically, since he has always been a tough man to follow. He seems to be particularly at home with these changes, which are the same as those used in Tadd Dameron's bop anthem Hot House.

Confirmation, introduced by the horns in unison, is the Charlie Parker standard recorded during the bop years by the combos of Art Blakey, Gillespie and Jackie McLean. (Note, by the way, the subdued part taken by Blakey during both these sessions, in contrast to the explosive personality displayed with his own Jazz Messengers.) Lou Donaldson is effective enough as a sort of toned-down Bird, but this track is of special interest due to the presence of Tina Brooks, a shamefully underrated musician. As Robert Levin observed in commenting on Brooks' work in other tunes from this session, his tone is comparatively small, yet he projects a sense of great energy and a wealth of ideas.

Cherokee reverts to the 1957 session, this time with Burrell replacing McFadden and introducing the Ray Noble melody that has provided a point of departure for scores of durable records over the past four decades. I imagine Jimmy Smith selected the tune because of the challenge provided by the chord pattern of the bridge, which he meets head-on on his commanding, damn-the-torpedos solos.

Curtis Fuller, Burrell, Morgan and Coleman reveal similar cooking confidence, though it would be wrong to place them on an equal footing, for clearly the final blowing chorus by Lee Morgan provides the most overwhelming passage of this 20-minute marathon.

In the two decades since the taping of these sides, Jimmy Smith's name has been firmly established around the world as the symbol of ultimate achievement in the area he staked out for himself. Over the years he has made ballad albums, albums with big bands such as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra, and has won his rightful share of Down Beat polls, Grammy awards and the like.

Having reached the mountaintop, Jimmy announced in 1975 that he planned to go into semi-retirement. Not long afterward he bought the pleasant, intimate club that bears his name, in North Hollywood, and since then has been dividing his time more often than not between his San Fernando Valley home and weekend gigs at Jimmy Smith's. Never has a semi-retirement been more clearly deserved; but the vitality and energy he expended on such occasions as these sessions remind us eloquently how long and hard and brilliantly he worked for it.

—LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Horizon Press)