I have a live Jimmy Smith disc on right now (‘Cool Blues’) and DAMN it is smoking. Art Blakey is on a few tracks, Tina Brooks and Eddie McFaden on others. And while I fell in love with Jimmy Smith the first time I heard him, hearing this kind of playing really reminds me why. This disc is from 1958, and it is just astounding how tight these guys are playing together. This is two years after he signs with Blue Note (and basically is introduced to the jazz world) and here he is playing with Art Blakey like they are old pals.

For those who don’t know Jimmy Smith’s music, his story is almost mystical. He starts off as a piano player until he hears Wild Bill Davis playing organ in the mid-50s or so. He goes out and buys an organ, rents a warehouse and basically locks himself inside for a year or so, then emerges onto the Philadelphia jazz scene. He is discovered almost immediately by Blue Note, and records over 40 sessions over the next 8 years (with the disc I am currently listening to among them). Many are live, and quite a few are in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio. But there is a consistency in the performances that reveals how hard he works.

The other thing that often surprises first time listeners of Jimmy Smith’s music is that, for the most part, there isn’t a bass player on any of the discs. He plays the bass lines mostly with the pedals of the organ or with the left hand of the keyboard. There is an amazing level of complexity in just HIS playing, that when the others come together with him it can hurt to think about everything that is being held together by just a few human beings. It’s better to just go with the groove, and the groove is what is the strongest element of Jimmy Smith’s music. It has probably one of the strongest shuffles for players from his generation, and it goes well with the toe tapping he has happening to play the pedals.

Tonight I ripped ‘Cool Blues’, ‘Open House’, ‘Prayer Meeting’ with Stanley Turrentine, ‘Home Cookin” and the companion discs ‘House Party’ and ‘The Sermon’ (which both basically come from the same sessions). I think ‘The Sermon’ is probably one of the top 10 jazz albums ever made, and the title track is a 20 minute tour de force that feels more like a jam session at points. Each player takes a pretty long solo, and seems to be outdoing whoever came before them. Most of the other tracks from these sessions are standards or Charlie Parker tunes which seem to be the warm-up parts. All the tracks on these two albums were recorded over two days, and I get the sense that there weren’t many takes of any of these… we’re just hearing what happened while the tape was rolling, and it’s good. These sessions also see Art Blakey and Tina Brooks playing, as well as Lee Morgan and Curtis Fuller. All of these guys were Blue Note staples, and as I think I have mentioned elsewhere, certainly any of them could have been the headliner for their own albums or shows. It’s a shame that musicians (and the labels they are associated with) tend to keep much more to themselves now. Stax Records for instance got along for a couple of decade with a house band that brought in different lead singers for their albums, and Blue Note had a whole building full of jazz musicians that they could pull together to play on each others albums. Just doesn’t seem to work that way anymore.