Recorded over two days at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on two late April days, Jimmy Smith’s The Cat merely buzzes with pleasure, from the opening bars of Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme From ‘Joy House’” to the moody “Blues In The Night.” As DJ Al Collins wrote within the liner notes of this fabulous album, “Jimmy Smith’s The Cat cuts through grease like fresh battery acid.”
Launched on September 14, 1964, the album is stuffed with consummate Hammond B3 enjoying, along with Lalo Schifrin’s preparations for giant band. “Basin Street Blues” epitomizes Nineteen Sixties sophistication, whereas the appropriately tremendous cool “Delon’s Blues” is devoted to the French actor Alain Delon, who Smith had befriended whereas on tour in Europe in 1963.
Take heed to Jimmy Smith’s The Cat proper now.
Schifrin conducts the massive band that backs Smith and it contains, amongst others, trumpeters Thad Jones and Ernie Royal, Grady Tate on drums, and Kenny Burrell on guitar. Such was the impact of The Cat it made No.12 on the Billboard Pop charts the place it stayed for nicely over half a yr…nearly extraordinary for a jazz album. The title monitor additionally made the decrease reaches of the Scorching 100. And it’s nonetheless proving influential: The album’s title monitor was sampled by each Pizzicato 5 on “Twiggy Twiggy” and The Orb’s “Perpetual Dawn (Ultrabass 2).”
Critics have all the time been considerably patronizing concerning the album, accusing Smith of being “too commercial.” But it surely’s arduous to dislike this joyful, fabulous file, one which most likely received extra folks listening to jazz than a lot of its contemporaries.
Jimmy Smith’s The Cat might be purchased right here.
