Album of the Week, September 6, 2025
We’ve heard how Jimmy Smith pioneered the jazz organ trio, and how his sound evolved from the earliest days into his brilliantly orchestrated works for Verve, all without losing the brilliance of the fundamental sound of the instrument. His approach to the instrument drew fans, and also other musicians who put their own spin on the jazz organ. One such player was “Brother” Jack McDuff.
McDuff, born Eugene McDuffy in Champaign, Illinois in 1926, started out playing the bass in an early incarnation of Joe Farrell’s band, but switched to organ at the suggestion of tenor saxophonist Willis “Gator” Jackson. Jazz organists were rare in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Blue Note had Jimmy Smith sewn up at the time, so the young McDuff must have been a draw for labels looking to capitalize on the sound. He ultimately landed at Prestige, where he played with Grant Green, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammon and others. By 1963 he pulled together a quartet with Red Holloway on tenor saxophone, Joe Dukes on drums, and a 19-year-old Pittsburgh based guitarist named George Benson, who made his debut with the McDuff band. Holloway was a versatile saxophonist from Helena, Arkansas who had played with Yusef Lateef, Dexter Gordon, and Billie Holiday, but also with R&B and blues acts like Willie Dixon, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Junior Parker, and Etta James. Joe Dukes, born 1937 in Memphis, played for most of his career with McDuff, but also recorded sessions with Idris Muhammad and Lonnie Smith. And we’ve written about George Benson before.
“Hot Barbecue” opens in an unexpected place, with a samba rhythm and the band shouting out “Hot barbecue… today!” before proceeding into an extended blues. The point of departure for the brisk McDuff original appears to be Smith’s The Cat; there is some of the same rhythmic drive in Benson’s guitar and the drum part, and in Holloway’s solo, which has more than a little boogaloo about it. Benson’s solo, by comparison, is economically funky; both players only get one verse. If you had your eyes closed, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between McDuff’s approach on the organ and Smith’s, though the former leans more into expressive runs where the latter tends to favor suspensions. For this song McDuff even uses the Smith tone, which involves pulling out the first three drawbars on the “B” preset on the top manual of the organ, giving a rich, bluesy sound. But where Smith might have jammed on this fun tune for a while, McDuff is in and out in only three minutes.
By contrast, “The Party’s Over” demonstrates a completely different tone, with McDuff playing the melody on a high flute-like setting. The Camden/Green/Styne classic here gets an amiable, ambling treatment, with McDuff and Holloway playing chordal stabs in unison as if to suggest an entire horn section. Benson’s solo keeps to his trademark clean tone while still taking opportunities to elaborate the harmonies. Dukes trades eights with the rest of the band, and McDuff takes two high solo verses and leans into a fade-out.
We’re back into a Latin influence for the fast-driving “Briar Patch,” a sort of soul rhumba that gives Benson and Holloway the opening melodic statement in parallel fifths and sixths before McDuff takes a quick solo on the tonic and the blues note. Benson’s solo is noteworthy here, a casually whipped-off flurry of triple and syncopated meter. The tag is punctuated by exclamations from the organ, and again we’re in a fade-out.
Tempos are considerably more relaxed for “Hippy Dip,” but don’t be fooled; the chromatic descending bit in the second half of the theme will make you sit up straight and grab your headphones. By the time we come back around to the chromatic ascent at the end, you might be saying “What the heck was that?” This is a lot more than the casual soul jazz that we’ve heard so far, and the changes keep things interesting throughout the solos, with Holloway suggesting a little Cannonball Adderley in his approach. Benson’s cooler approach is deceptive, as he rips off a set of ascending tones that show his mind at work. McDuff leans into the tonal shifts with such abandon that you can be forgiven if you lose track of what key we’re in. This McDuff original is one that should be in rotation more, but relatively few acts have covered it. (Though “few” is not “none”; see below.)
“601 1/2 North Poplar” takes us back into an animated boogaloo, with a a fierce group chorus and a fiery Benson solo to start things off. Holloway’s solo roots around in the corners of the soul kitchen and takes us down into the basement before McDuff fires up the afterburner, leaning hard on the submediant for an entire two verses as he rips improvisation after improvisation. The band repeats the descending line from the theme into the fade-out.
Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River” is introduced by Benson harmonizing with Holloway, with punctuation by McDuff. This is clearly Holloway’s show, though, and he gives us a deeply soulful run through the melody before turning it over to McDuff. Brother Jack takes some rhythmic liberties as he leans into the crying corners of the song, and continues to give little shouts at the edges of the outro. The band takes a breath and launches into “The Three Day Thang,” which reads like an uptempo version of some of the chromatic edges of “Hippy Dip” but is really a fast blues. McDuff is on fire throughout his solo, taking off some of the restraint that characterizes the rest of the record. The group leans into a suspension to finish.
Hot Barbeque, with its rib-eating cover and Latin intro, sets itself up as a casual piece of soul jazz. But the expressively restrained solos and, especially, harmonic sophistication of the performance belie that first impression. Brother Jack had a lot on his mind, and the album is a memorable subversion of the organ combo genre. When we hear from him again, he will have subverted it even further. Next week, though, we’ll check in on how Jimmy Smith was evolving along with the 1960s.
You can listen to this week’s album here:
BONUS: Here’s a live performance of McDuff’s quartet from the RTF Festival in France in 1964, just a year or so before this album was recorded:
BONUS BONUS: While my dreams of a full-on “Hippy Dip” revival may be in vain, there are a few pretty good modern covers out there, including this one by a quintet led by guitarist Sam Dunn here: