Jimmy Smith Trio – February 18 1956
Babs Gonzales: Jimmy Smith – A New Sound – A New Star BLP 1512 Liner Notes
It isn't very often that a musician possessing that rare quality of creative genius coupled with "volcanic fire" makes an appearance on the musical scene. In my entire career in the music field I had only felt that "fire" when listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Webster, Charlie Christian and Bud Powell.
Jimmy Smith has definitely joined this immortal group which was and still is vital to the survival of Modern Jazz. His dexterity on the organ is comparable to Bud Powell's on the piano and he possesses the only "Oklahoma funkish" style of comping on the Blues since Charlie Christian. He is probably the first organist who plays the instrument with a modern conception and he has developed a sound all his own. The modern musicians are definitely in Jimmy's corner. When he played recently at Smalls' Paradise, the back-room was crowded nightly with "cats" to dig the "Smith" sounds. In everything he touches his musical genius makes itself felt. It doesn't matter if he plays a funky Blues, a hard-swinging number or a slow ballad.
Born in Norristown, Pa., Jimmy studied the piano under his father, a piano teacher. He "gigged" around Norristown and Western Pennsylvania from 1941 to 1951, finally settling in Philly. There he met all the touring "great cats" and decided he'd need more musical schooling. For two years he attended Halsey Music School majoring in Harmony and Theory along with a guy named Clifford Brown.
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
After completing his schooling he began playing "gigs" again, and when one night in 1953 he heard Wild Bill Davis, he decided then and there that the organ was for him. For the next year he gigged on piano by night and practiced the organ by day.
Early in 1954 he joined the Don Gardner Quartet for a tour of the Rhythm and Blues circuit, but the constant demand for commercialism was destroying his creativeness. So, in 1955 he left the group to go out again as a single.
Last summer he opened at a club in Atlantic City. He didn't need any "tubs" because all the drummers there were lined up nightly waiting for a chance to play with him. Within three days the news reached me about this "insane" organist and I drove down to "dig" for myself.
What I heard was a "cat" playing forty choruses of Georgia Brown in pure "Nashua" tempo and never repeating. I heard "futuristic stratospheric" sounds that were never before explored on the organ. I was supposed to see a host of "cats" that night, but all I did was "lay dead" because every cat in town made it by Jimmy's "gig" during the night.
As you are digging the album, Jimmy will already have two New York engagements under his belt: one at Smalls' Uptown and one at Cafe Bohemia, the progressive spot in the Village.
On these LP's Jimmy is ably assisted on guitar by Thornel Schwartz, a real swinging cat. They are sound twins on the bandstand and are always singing new arrangements in the car while traveling. Bay Perry, brother of the late Ray Perry of sax fame, was used on A New Sound... A New Star... Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Vol. 1, while Donald Bailey, Jimmy's regular drummer, supplies the rhythm On A New Sound, a New Star: Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Vol. 2. I am very proud to have the opportunity to write these notes on such a great artist, who — like so many others before him — makes his debut on Blue Note. VOILA!
Cash Box 28 April 1956 Singles Review
JOY”, “TENDERLY”, “THE PREACHER”, “MIDNIGHT SUN”, “HIGH AND MIGHTY”, “YOU GET ’CHA”. Because of the prevue reaction to Jimmy Smith’s LP to be marketed next week, Blue Note has issued three records as singles. Smith handles the organ, supported by guitar and drum and comes up with some most enjoyable commercial sides. The advent of hi-fi has made the organ a most desirable sound, and where talent accompanies the sound, as is the case with Smith, it becomes a valuable item for the retailer. Perhaps the most commercial is “The Preacher”, a gay sounding, rhythmic offering that Smith proffers with imagination and great pleasing quality. Doggett and Davis fans should lend an ear.
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| Photo by Francis Wolff |
Down Beat 8 August 1956 Volume 23 Issue 16
Although labeled Volume 1, this set is the second LP by modern jazz organist Smith. His accompanists on this one are guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Bay Perry, now in New York and for a long time a Boston percussionist. In fairness to Smith, I should point out as a preface to this review and to my previous comments on his work that I find it very difficult to listen to an electric organ, no matter who’s playing it. Its sound to my ear is excruciatingly unlovely and after 12” of neon organ, it’s some time before I can repair my aural wounds sufficiently to listen to anything else.
As for Smith himself, there is no denying his extraordinary drive and the swinging intensity he achieves on the organ (Preacher, for example). But even on up and medium tempos, there is the matter of insufficiently extended dynamics and a conception that is authentically horn-like in the modern idiom but is also often too choppy and insufficiently flowing. Smith’s structuring is too frequently a piling of phrase upon phrase instead of a cohesively supple, evolving line.
His ballad treatments here I find somewhat less heavy-sugared than on BLP 1514, and considerably more jazz worthy particularly The High and The Mighty. But in the others, I fail to hear much freshness, or again, flow of individualized lines in his slow-tempo variations. Tenderly, for instance, has less lyricism than throbbing relentlessness. Perry keeps steady time, and Schwartz’ guitar is appropriately warm and down but is also limited in its imaginative range.
All in all, Smith is being overpraised too fast as the messiah of modern jazz organ. He’s good in terms of his blowing approach and beat, but he has a lot of developing to do with regard to conception and dynamics. Is there any possibility of Blue Note recording the man on a pipe organ? That’s as much a plea as it is a question. I should have noted in my review of the first volume that Smith’s Bayou and Turquoise are gentle, attractive works, but I still don’t like the too-lush way they were played on that set. (Blue Note 12” LP 1512)
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| July 1956 |
Jimmy Smith is a fantastic new organ player whom musicians around New York Playing a modern style, Pa., lad has developed are raving about. the Norristown, sensational style of his own which produces sounds so progressive that it is being described in hep circles as “futuristic stratospheric.” Smith has recorded only for Blue Note, the album mentioned here being one of his first two releases on the label.
While Smith is a modernist, he still swings like a traditional swinger. Furthermore he is versatile, can play anything well from ballads and blues to mid-tempo riffers and jump tunes. He can serve up low-down samplings of blues or make things merry in a carefree sort of fashion. On up-tempo opuses. he plays like a madman at a break-neck clip and no other organist playing today can cram as many notes into a bar as he does. He executes so fast that some musicians jokingly refer to him as an organ “insane” player.
When Babs Gonzales, creator of the bebop language, first got to hear Smith, he literally flipped over the organist’s music, declaring, “It isn’t very often that a musician possessing that rare quality of creative genius coupled with fire’ makes an appearance on the musical scene. In my entire career in the music field I had only felt that ‘fire’ when listening to Bird, Diz. Freddy Webster, Charlie and Bud Powell. Jimmy Smith has definitely joined this immortal group which was and still is vital to the survival of modern jazz.”
Thus Jimmy Smith stands to join Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett in the hierarchy of jazz. organists.
Session Information
Jimmy Smith, organ; Thornel Schwartz, guitar; Bay Perry, drums.
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, February 18, 1956
tk.2, You Get 'Cha, BLP 1512
The Champ, rejected
tk.6, Lady Be Good, BLP 1512
tk.7, The Preacher, BLP 1512, BN-LA400-H2
tk.8, But Not For Me, BLP 1512
tk.12, The Way You Look Tonight, BLP 1512
tk.13, High And Mighty, BLP 1512
tk.15, Tenderly, BLP 1512
tk.16, Joy, BLP 1512
tk.18, Midnight Sun, BLP 1512
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