Jimmy Smith wasn’t the primary organist in jazz – Fat Waller, Rely Basie, and Wild Invoice Davis all preceded him – however he was the primary notable practitioner of the Hammond B3 and gave the instrument credibility inside a jazz setting because of Blue Notice albums the likes of 1959’s The Sermon! and 1963’s Again At The Hen Shack. He was additionally profoundly influential, his jaw-dropping virtuosity spawning a raft of nimble-fingered acolytes who adopted in his wake – amongst them Charles Earland, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jack McDuff, John Patton, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, and Lonnie Smith.
A brand new sound from a brand new star
Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Smith was initially an aspiring jazz pianist who gravitated to the organ apparently out of necessity – he was pissed off by the numerous out-of-tune pianos he encountered whereas gigging with bands within the Philadelphia space in the course of the early 50s. It additionally helped that he had witnessed organ pioneer Wild Invoice Davis play within the flesh, which opened Smith’s thoughts to the numerous potentialities that the organ offered. Satisfied that his future lay with the Hammond B3, Smith bought one and locked himself away for a 12 months practising.
When Smith re-emerged, he was a completely fashioned organist, however what made him distinctive was that he didn’t sound like some other organist on the planet. He had absorbed the bebop lexicon of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and the ornate pyrotechnics of blind pianist Artwork Tatum, each famend for his or her facility for melodic and harmonic ingenuity.
In early 1956, Smith acquired his huge break when Blue Notice co-founder Alfred Lion heard him play in a membership. Lion had been alerted by pianist Freddie Redd, who had witnessed Smith play in Philly and was blown away by what he heard. For sure, Alfred Lion didn’t hesitate to snap the 31-year-old organ grasp up and add him to his label’s already formidable roster (which at the moment included Lou Donaldson, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, and Thad Jones).
Smith’s Blue Notice debut, A New Sound… A New Star…, greater than lived as much as its title, presenting the Hammond organ in a tough bop context for the primary time. Inside two brief however extremely productive years, Jimmy Smith had recorded 14 albums for Lion and Blue Notice, and was one of many largest dwell sights on the jazz circuit.
Persistently creative and entertaining
Launched in December 1959, his fifteenth album for Blue Notice was The Sermon!, drawn from two separate periods recorded on August 25, 1957, and February 25, 1958, respectively. Like his earlier album, Home Social gathering, launched in 1958, The Sermon! was engineered and recorded by optometrist-turned-studio boffin Rudy Van Gelder, who supervised most of Blue Notice’s studio endeavors – although, in an uncommon transfer, the album wasn’t recorded at Van Gelder’s personal studio, which at the moment was the entrance room in his mother and father’ house in New Jersey. Relatively, each periods had been lower at The Manhattan Towers Lodge Ballroom, a venue that Van Gelder generally used when he had a bigger band to file, or when its location was extra handy for the musicians concerned.
The Sermon! begins with the 20-minute title monitor, a 12-bar blues that was recorded on the second session for the album, in 1958. Smith performs a fluid, strolling bassline together with his ft, whereas selecting out some bluesy right-hand licks on prime. The mellow groove actually cooks, thanks primarily to Artwork Blakey’s calmly swinging backbeat. Kenny Burrell joins in with delicate guitar chords and by that point the band is absolutely cooking, although in a simmering, low-key method. After Smith’s first solo, at 3:30, Burrell performs a tasteful bop-flavored guitar solo, whereas Smith is content material to sit down again, enjoying delicate, unobtrusive chords whereas conserving the bass pedals transferring.
At 6:39, tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks takes the subsequent solo, his liquid sound a meld of Parker-esque figures and down-home blues licks. Younger Lee Morgan, then four-and-a-bit months shy of his twentieth birthday, exhibits that, regardless of being a teen, he can play the blues like a seasoned vet. Coming in final is North Carolina alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson. His solo – which additionally throws in a few musical quotations, one in all which is from George Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” – is replete with a way of earthy funkiness that anticipates the soul jazz motion of the early 60s. Although it’s 20 minutes lengthy – and occupied one facet of the unique Blue Notice LP – “The Sermon” by no means flags or loses its momentum, and the solos are constantly creative and entertaining.
A go-to album
Lee Morgan and alto saxophonist George Coleman lead the horn entrance line on the quicker “JOS” – named after its composer, James Oscar Smith – which was recorded in the course of the August 1957 session that additionally resulted in parts of the Home Social gathering album. The lower includes a totally different guitarist, too (Eddie McFadden), whereas the drummer is Donald Bailey. It’s a frenetic, free-flowing onerous bop groove pushed by the drummer’s pulsing, omnipresent hi-hat. The solos, too, are pressing and fiery, and consistent with the character of the piece. Often, Smith throws in a random eerie chord that has a jolting impact on the band (it was most likely meant as a sign to wind up a solo, however it appears to be unheeded, particularly by Lee Morgan).
The Sermon!’s remaining music is a canopy of “Flamingo,” the Ted Grouya/Edmund Anderson music that was a success in 1941 for The Duke Ellington Orchestra. This model was recorded on the February 25, 1958 session that yielded The Sermon!’s marathon title tune, although Donaldson and Brooks don’t contribute. “Flamingo” is a jazz normal – a gradual ballad that provides a time for reflection and options some wistful trumpet from Lee Morgan on the intro, earlier than a fragile solo from Kenny Burrell. It picks up tempo because it progresses (although powerhouse drummer Artwork Blakey is in an uncharacteristically subdued mode), with Morgan glowing throughout his second solo. Unusually, maybe, Jimmy Smith takes a background function on this quantity, supporting his soloists with refined accompaniment.
A long time since The Sermon! was first launched, it stays a go-to album in Jimmy Smith’s canon. Although it lacks the flamboyant, show-stopping organ pyrotechnics that characterised a number of the Hammond maestro’s earlier work, the album demonstrates that James Oscar Smith was rather more than a charismatic soloist – right here he proved he was a delicate musician who served the music moderately than his personal ego. With its palpable gospel-inflections, The Sermon! additionally helped to sow the seeds for a extra accessible, R&B-oriented mode of bebop known as soul jazz. It stays one of many undoubted jewels in each Smith’s and Blue Notice’s crowns.
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