Album of the Week, August 30, 2025
We’ve listened to a pretty fair amount of Jimmy Smith performing at peak levels, after he turned the organ trio into a vital form of jazz—as well as how his artistry translated into other settings with the help of Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman and Lalo Schifrin. But where did it all come from? What did Smith sound like at the beginning of his career when he was just getting started? Fortunately, thanks to a budget label’s 1966 reissue, we have a pretty good document of his earliest sound.
Pickwick Records is today probably best known as the home of Lou Reed in the earliest days of his career, where he wrote and performed songs like “Cycle Annie” and “You’re Driving Me Insane” as the fictional bands the Beachnuts and the Roughnecks. But they also reissued albums from other labels in their Pickwick/33 line (we listened to a Robert Shaw Christmas album they reissued a few years ago). Swings Along with Stranger in Paradise is one of those releases, combining tracks from his early recording with the Don Gardner Trio with other early Jimmy Smith recordings. I’d love to be more definitive about the years and personnel on these sessions, but as I said: budget label. All we really have is the music, and fortunately, it’s pretty good, even if it’s recognizably early in Smith’s development.
Note: Not all the tracks on this budget compilation are available on YouTube. I’ve done the best I can to link them but they come from different editions of the compilation, which was also issued under the titles The Fantastic Jimmy Smith, Fantastic, and Jeepers Creepers.
“Stranger in Paradise” is one of the numbers from the Don Gardner recording, featuring Gardner on drums and Al Cass on tenor saxophone, along with an unnamed guitarist and other musicians. Gardner was a jazz and R&B performer who spent some years on the chitlin circuit before he had a hit song in 1962 with Dee Dee Ford, “I Need Your Lovin’.” (Following Smith’s departure, his seat at the organ was taken by Richard “Groove” Holmes, about which more later.) This session dates to 1955, when Gardner was still working the R&B circuit, and this performance sounds like it: Cass’s saxophone is swoopy and dramatic, and Smith obliges with his best high-vibrato organ sound. There’s none of the rhythmic stabs or high-octave work that characterized Smith’s later work, and almost no Gardner, whose contributions are lost in the background of the poor-quality recording, but you can hear Smith pulling at the bit, providing tension through glissandi and tremolo effects throughout.
“Jimmy’s Jam” is with the same group, but does not appear to have been issued on other sessions. It’s a fast number with Al Cass improvising as quickly as he can over rapid chord changes from Smith. When Smith takes over, he blazes through the improvisations, and it’s now that we hear some of the later hallmarks of his technique, with high octave work and sustained chords to build tension. Cass attempts to end it on a “shave and a haircut” rhythm, but Smith lands it himself with a sustained diminished chord followed by a triumphant resolution. “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” is cast from the same mold, with Cass, Smith and the guitarist all stating the melody in unison in the first verse, Cass taking a straight ahead solo with increasingly animated support from Smith in the second, and Smith displaying keen rhythmic imagination in the third and fourth verses.
“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” gives us a straight ahead organ trio, with Smith mostly running through the melody at something like breakneck speed, adorned by small flourishes here and there as well as small amounts of support from the guitarist. (The engineer for this session appears to have given up trying to balance between the Leslie speakers in the organ and the other instruments; even the drums are barely audible most of the time.)
“I Had the Craziest Dream” brings us back Al Cass on saxophone and returns us to the lugubrious world of “Stranger in Paradise.” Smith is here strictly in a supporting role, and there’s not that much of interest going on. “Tell Me (Vocal)” is another thing again; though it’s hard to tell, I think that’s Don Gardner himself singing the lead alongside the anonymous bass back-up singer, although in a much more conventional tone than the R&B shout he used for “I Need Your Lovin.’” Again Smith is relegated to the background, but the penetrating sound of the Hammond ensures that he at least remains audible, and he gets a triumphant major chord to close things out.
“I Hear a Rhapsody (Vocal)” follows the same formula as “Tell Me,” with two-part barbershop vocals placed way up high in the mix with Smith relegated to the background. Harder to imagine a squarer version of this song, right up until Smith’s final chord where there’s a little redemption from Smith’s undeniable energy. “Jeepers Creepers,” thankfully, gives us a full-steam-ahead Smith attack as he and Cohn team up to take the old Harry Warren/Johnny Mercer chestnut at something approaching a fast clip, and Smith’s solo opens a technicolor window of chromatic energy across the listener’s mind.
“Jimmy’s Swing” is another quartet number in “foot stomper” mode (as Variety editor Herman Schoenfeld puts it in the liner notes). Smith builds suspension by repeating the same vamp figure beneath Cass for a full verse, before taking a solo in the high register that sounds like it’s preparing for liftoff. Ultimately instead of liftoff we get a restrained restatement of the theme swung in the saxophone and guitar.
“Misery (Vocal)” gives us a shouting blues with Gardner singing, with both guitar and sax providing support. The guitarist steps out of the shadows for a well-executed solo, and Cass provides some fine shouts around the edges. Jimmy is left in the background; this is an R&B number with the organ strictly in a supplemental role.
A lot of Swings Along With Stranger in Paradise betrays its origins: an R&B leaning session mostly led by Don Gardner. But there are enough flashes of brilliance, particularly on “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “Jimmy’s Jam” and the other fast numbers, to hear where Jimmy Smith was going to go—and how his imagination was already breaking the jazz organ out from its supporting role into a lead instrument. We’ll hear more from Jimmy’s later career as he continued to evolve his sound, but beginning next week, we’ll mix in other organists that followed in his footsteps—albeit taking the music to some very different places.
You can listen to this week’s album here:
BONUS: Jimmy Smith didn’t revisit much of the music from this session in his later recordings, but “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” was an exception. Here’s the version from his third recording for Blue Note from 1956: