JIMMY SMITH
Live at the Club Baby
Grand, Vol. 1
Blue Note 0946 3 92785
2 7
1. Introduction by Mitch Thomas
2. Sweet Georgia Brown
3. Where or When
4. The Preacher
5. Rosetta
JIMMY SMITH
Live at the Club Baby
Grand, Vol. 2
Blue Note 0946 3 92787
2 5
1. Caravan
2. Love is a Many Splendored Thing
3. Get Happy
4. It's All Right With Me
Jimmy Smith - Organ
Thornel Schwartz - Guitar
Donald Bailey - Drums
Jimmy Smith started as a
pianist but it was lucky for us that he heard
Wild Bill Davis playing an early model of
the Hammond organ and decided to buy one.
Jimmy Smith may have been preceded by Wild
Bill in taking up the Hammond organ but he
established a highly influential style on
the instrument: supplying a strong bass rhythm
on the pedals and exploring the many possibilities
of the instrument's range of sounds.
Jimmy was signed to the Blue
Note label in 1956 and proceeded to make a
plethora of albums, of which these two 1956
live sessions comprised the third and fourth
LPs, now reissued in remastered form by Rudy
Van Gelder. Despite the remastering, the sound
is sometimes fuzzy, as in Caravan,
the first track on the second CD. While I'm
considering the downside of these albums,
it seems as if Jimmy wasn't quite sure of
the melodies of Sweet Georgia Brown and
Love is a Many Splendored Thing, so that
the theme statements sound approximate rather
than spot-on.
On the plus side, these two
albums show why Jimmy Smith was such a pioneer
with the Hammond organ. His solos mix long-held
notes with streams of staccato single notes,
sometimes delivered so swiftly as to sound
as if he has more than the normal number of
fingers. Meanwhile his feet add a constantly
funky bass rhythm which drives the music along.
And the blues feeling at the heart of all
his playing is evident in tracks like The
Preacher. Miraculously, Schwartz and Bailey
manage to keep up with him.
Neither of these CDs lasts for more than 42
minutes, so it seems a shame that they couldn't
be squeezed onto a single disc, especially
as nearly a minute at the start of the first
CD is occupied by a local DJ introducing the
trio. Nonetheless, these albums give an interesting
taste of Jimmy Smith in his early days.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Blue
Note 0946 3 92785 2 7
