Exfiltration Radio: Byrne Unit

David Byrne—Talking Head, art pop auteur, Broadway star, prolific collaborator—arguably has more side quests in his career than anyone else. I’ve been collecting some of these for years, starting with a good friend hipping me to The Catherine Wheel and Forestry, and picking up a copy of the LP of Music from the Knee Plays many years ago.

This playlist has a bunch of odds and ends, obscure and not. There are no Talking Heads tracks here, but there’s a lot of everything else—classical compositions, collaborations with Brian Eno, De La Soul and St. Vincent, concert performances, remixes, and straight up weird stuff.

Balanescu Quartet, “High life for nine instruments” (Byrne, Moran, Lurie & Torke): David Byrne the classical composer is a hat he doesn’t wear often anymore, but his exercises in writing for traditional ensembles brought about this pretty great African-inspired string work, performed by the avant-garde quartet led by Alexander Bălănescu. I found this CD release on the Argo label when I was in college, which is how long I’ve been trying to figure out how to squeeze it into a mix.

Brian Eno & David Byrne, “America is Waiting” (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts): This track and “The Jezebel Spirit” (which I sourced as a remix from the 12″ EP release The Jezebel Spirit) come from the seminal electronic collaboration between Eno & Byrne, which we’ve talked about before and which has appeared on past Exfiltration Radio shows. Both tracks sample radio broadcasts which I haven’t seen identified, though other tracks on the album have turned out to have identifiable samples.

David Byrne, “Dinosaur”/“The Red House” (The Catherine Wheel): Byrne wrote and performed this score for the titular performance by Twyla Tharp; Bernie Worrell, Adrian Belew, Jerry Harrison, and Dolette McDonald all appear elsewhere on the album, but not in these songs (or “Big Blue Plymouth”; see below). Some mindbending sonic fun here.

David Byrne, “Things To Do (I’ve Tried)” (Music for the Knee Plays): I’ve written about this project before—a score for the plays that hang around the outside of Robert Wilson’s opera the CIVIL warS, the project was inspired by the sound of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and features New Orleans jazz-inspired songs, together with incredibly strange spoken word work from Byrne. Also appears on a past Exfiltration Radio show and an old mix.

David Byrne, “Strange Overtones (live)” (Everything That Happens Will Happen On This Tour): Byrne and Eno reunited on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which was unexpectedly joyful, in 2008. This version of the lead-off single came from a live performance recording and is pretty great, subtracting synths and adding in other instrumentation. Great Byrne vocal on this song-about-writing-a-song, which also features Mark De Gli Antoni (of Soul Coughing fame) on keyboards.

David Byrne, “Great Intoxication (live)” (Live From Austin, TX): Another live track, this one from an Austin City Limits performance that backed Byrne with the Austin-based tango string quartet Tosca. A great full-throated performance of this track from Byrne’s Look Into the Eyeball.

David Byrne feat. Ghost Train Orchestra, “Everybody Laughs” (Who Is the Sky?): The lead off track from Byrne’s latest album finds him in familiar lyrical and musical territory, which is to say in fine form.

De La Soul, “Snoopies (with David Byrne)” (and the Anonymous Nobody…): Until I started catching up with later day De La Soul, I had no idea Byrne had collaborated with them. A great song with a fantastic Trugoy the Dove verse.

David Byrne, “The Jezebel Spirit (remix)” (The Jezebel Spirit): See notes regarding My Life in the Bush of Ghosts above.

David Byrne, “Ava (Nu Wage Remix)” (Forestry EP): So you’re going to write a full orchestra classical score for a Robert Wilson theatre piece. What’s the right way to do a single from such a project? Well, getting Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto to do this remix is a pretty good start. One I found in college and listened to a lot.

Otto, “Accident” (Little Pieces): An odd composition of Byrne’s on this 2008 release, that I found while digging for a different work of his. Otto is an interesting ensemble, featuring cello, vibraphone, reeds, and slide guitar, and this work of Byrne’s fits in with much of his soundtrack work from this period.

David Byrne, “Don’t Fence Me In” (Red Hot + Blue): One of the all-time great charity collections, Red Hot + Blue launched a whole series, but it all began with this one covering the compositions of Cole Porter. Byrne’s performance incorporates the Brazilian rhythms he was working with in the late 1980s and early 1990s and a lot of subtext about the human pain surrounding the AIDS crisis.

David Byrne, “Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)” (3 Big Songs): See notes about The Catherine Wheel above. This mix of the song came from a twelve-inch EP that was released from the original album, with the songs that ended up being included in Stop Making Sense.

David Byrne & St. Vincent, “Road to Nowhere (live)” (Brass Tactics EP): I love this EP, which pairs the two collaborators with a brass ensemble. This version of “Road to Nowhere” is about as joyous as anything on record.

David Byrne, “City of Steel” (Sounds from True Stories): The short true story about True Stories is that Byrne wanted to release a soundtrack to his film of the same name, and ended up having to release a Talking Heads album; Sounds from True Stories features all the stuff that ended on the cutting room floor. Recommended for all the performances, especially this steel guitar rendition of “City of Dreams.”

Do not attempt to adjust your set!

BONUS: Still love the video for “Don’t Fence Me In,” which was profoundly moving when I saw it for the first time many years ago:

Exfiltration Radio: can’t we smile?

An hour of bliss at the intersection of spiritual jazz and jazz-funk, circa 1969-1976.

Detail from Betye Saar’s “Window of Ancient Sirens,” 1979

Not enough people talk about the through-line from spiritual jazz to smooth jazz.

That may seem like a strange, almost nonsensical thing to say, to compare Coltrane’s A Love Supreme to Grover Washington or Kenny G. Nevertheless, there’s a path there, and it runs through some artists that I’ve talked about on this blog many times before. Generally speaking, the sound I’m talking about, and that I explore in this hour of Exfiltration Radio, blends the soaring messages of hope of Pharoah Sanders’ Karma with the more cosmic sounds of the Fender Rhodes. Many of the works are more audibly optimistic, i.e. in a major key; many of them have lyrics; several have full-blown string arrangements. Some are more spiritual in focus, while others just enjoy the groove. And they almost all seem to come from the late 1960s to around the mid-1970s, with the sweet spot being from about 1969 to 1973.

That said, the overall driving force for this mix was definitely tunes that put a smile on the face and lower the blood pressure. So enjoy! The track listing:

Lonnie Liston Smith, “Expansions” (Expansions): The title cut from Smith’s 1975 album on the Flying Dutchman label, this is a darker groove than most of the songs on the show, but with that deep plea for peace at the heart of it: “Expand your mind to understand/we all must live in peace.” With a great band comprised of Cecil McBee on bass, brother Donald Smith on flute and vocals, Dave Hubbard on saxophones and Michael Carvin on drums.

Ramsey Lewis, “Bold and Black” (Another Voyage): This track from the perennially sunny improviser’s 1969 album points toward more smooth experiments, like 1974’s Sun Goddess, while providing a sunray of musical joy. Classic top-down, driving around music.

Norman Connors, “Carlos II” (Love From the Sun): Drummer, composer and arranger Connors spent most of his career in R&B and smooth jazz, but this, his third album as leader, is a fascinating, fantastic collection of straight ahead jazz with hints of spirituality poking through around the corners. A great line-up of players, including Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes, Gary Bartz on saxophones, Buster Williams on bass, Hubert Laws on flute, Kenneth Nash on percussion, Eddie Henderson on trumpet, and Carlos Garnett, who wrote this track, on tenor sax. Dee Dee Bridgewater guests on two tracks. The whole album is a great listen.

Azar Lawrence, “Theme for a New Day” (People Moving): Lawrence played on McCoy Tyner’s Enlightenment, Sama Layuca and Atlantis before recording his first album as leader. By 1976’s People Moving he was producing fully orchestrated sonic experiences that were full of spiritual energy and deep grooves.

Donald Byrd, “Places and Spaces” (Places and Spaces): By 1975, Donald Byrd was in a very different place than when he played on Herbie Hancock’s second album, or even his mid-1960s spiritual jazz outings for Blue Note. His 1973 album Black Byrd, produced by Larry and Fonce Mizell, was a jazz-funk fusion high point that for many years was Blue Note’s biggest selling album. Places and Spaces is the fourth of Byrd’s Mizell-produced albums, and cranks much of what made that album successful up to 11, including swooning strings and a guitar-driven hook that wouldn’t be out of place on an O’Jays record. The chant that drives the record isn’t quite P-Funk quality, but it gets the job done, and Byrd sneaks in a fully respectable trumpet solo amid the rest of the funk.

Bobbi Humphrey, “Harlem River Drive” (Blacks and Blues): Humphrey, a hugely talented flautist, also benefited from the Mizell brothers’ production on the 1973 Blue Note album Blacks and Blues, including their writing this ode to summertime cruising. The band here is mostly session players, including Jerry Peters on keyboards, Chuck Rainey on bass and the great Harvey Mason on drums, but Humphrey’s flute solo is the main thing here, a work of searing beauty in an otherwise light track.

Johnny Hammond, “Can’t We Smile?” (Gears): This work, by keyboardist and sometime jazz organist Johnny Hammond, née Johnny “Hammond” Smith, not only gave me the title for this hour but kicked off the process of putting it together, after Lisa asked me why I was listening to smooth jazz; defending the track made me realize how much I liked it and how much depth lurked beneath its smooth exterior. Released in 1975 on Milestone Records, it’s another Mizell Brothers joint with Mason, Rainey, Peters, and Nash, along with trombonist Julian Priester (from Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band) and avant-spiritual violinist Michael White.

Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes, “Rejuvenation” (Astral Traveling): Before there was Expansions there was Astral Traveling. Smith’s first album with the Cosmic Echoes was recognizably straight-ahead jazz, with much the same crew as on Expansions, but again Smith’s composition leaned forward to the optimistic and hopeful, particularly in the ebullience of George Barron’s saxophone melody. Smith’s solo similarly feels extroverted in an almost soul-shouter kind of way.

Alphonse Mouzon, “Thank You Lord” (The Essence of Mystery): Mouzon’s first album, in 1973, has tinges of the same mystery that the drummer brought to the first incarnation of Weather Report, combined with a melodic and compositional sensibility that feels akin to with Smith was doing at the same time. It also feels like some of Keith Jarrett’s 1970s work, broadly anchored in major-key tonality with a swooping saxophone shining a light in the darkness.

Pharoah Sanders, “Astral Traveling” (Thembi): Before there was Astral Traveling, there was … “Astral Traveling.” The first track on Sanders’ 1971 album, his last with Smith, was legendarily composed by the band as Smith sat and played a Fender Rhodes for the first time ever in the studio. I like this version better than the one on Smith’s later album because I feel more wonder in the playing, as though the band is together exploring a new world. It’s also a welcome view of a side of Pharoah Sanders that we don’t often think of, but he could be as gentle as he was often fiery.

Leon Thomas, “The Creator Has a Master Plan” (Spirits Known and Unknown): This brings us to the last track. Vocalist and composer Leon Thomas collaborated with Sanders on the composition of “Creator,” and both Sanders and Smith are here on this recording. This version from Thomas’s debut album gives a good view of his approach: a wide-eyed spirituality, still with some of the ululating vocal flourishes of Sanders’s recording, but overall less cosmic brimstone and more bliss.

There is nothing wrong. We have taken control as to bring you this special show and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Close But No Cigar

A revival of the jazz organ combo draws on masters from that tradition, as well as soul and funk, and brings us a party.

Album of the Week, November 1, 2025

After fusion and jazz-funk took some of the steam out of the organ combo market in the 1970s, the neo-trad movement spearheaded by Wynton Marsalis similarly had the jazz-record-buying public focused elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s. But the organ combo never went away, and new players continued to emerge, including the late great Joey DeFrancesco in the late 1980s through the 2010s. New players continued to emerge, including today’s artist.

During this period, something else was happening: internet distribution of music. Music blogs and recommendation feeds helped formerly niche artists find audiences. And distribution platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp helped musicians get access to their music, whether streaming or via vinyl. Into this market (and onto Bandcamp) stepped Delvon Lamarr and his organ trio. Based in Seattle, Lamarr had played in a number of bands including the now-defunct jazz-funk combo Megatron before forming his organ trio in 2015 with guitarist Jimmy James and what would turn out (spoiler alert) to be a revolving door of drummers. For the first album, that was Seattle-based David McGraw.

The band’s manager (and Lamarr’s wife) Amy Novo learned about Loveland, Ohio’s Colemine records and its founder Terry Cole from another Colemine act, and McGraw brought their tracks over. Cole tested the tracks in his record shop, and decided to release the album after seeing fifteen or twenty patrons bob their heads to the music and then ask “Who is this?” 

“Concussion” comes out of the gates swinging hard. Lamarr plays the melody in the mid to low range, as Jimmy Smith did, but unlike his predecessor gives a strong voice to guitarist Jimmy James in the arrangement. The two play in a tight combo, closing the head out with two single notes. Lamarr’s solo stays in the midrange, iterating over the bluesy chord changes and powering up on his second repetition to something more fiery but still very much in the pocket. Jimmy James’ guitar solo, on the other hand, takes off like the shuddering rotors of a helicopter, playing with time over the bursts of sound from the organ and McGraw’s drums. 

“Little Booker T”  is a nod to one of Lamarr’s major non-jazz influences, Booker T and the MGs. The combo gives a good impression of the laid-back vibes of the great Stax house band, complete with a pretty great bass line courtesy of Lamarr’s organ.  The laid-back vibe continues with a completely different beat in “Ain’t It Funky,” a tribute to the great 1970 line-up of James Brown’s JBs. Jimmy James plays a great Catfish Collins impression, and Lamarr picks up the groove as James takes a ripping solo. The only minus is McGraw’s drumming—while in the pocket, it lacks some of the originality and bounce of a Bernard Purdie.

“Close But No Cigar” takes Stax as its inspiration, with a melody slightly reminiscent of Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff.” Lamarr slows the melody down in the chorus even as the groove continues. There’s a little melodic development here but that’s almost beside the point; this is grimy, funky good-time dance music, and the syncopated B melody that seems designed for whiplash-inducing head-nodding only reinforces the point. The John Patton classic “Memphis” (from a 1969-1970 album that went unreleased until 1996) is an opportunity for McGraw to show off his skills, and he rises to the occasion, with a funky, bouncy beat. We’re back in Stax territory again, as the name suggests, and the chorus, alternating between the tonic and supertonic chords, reinforces the funky energy.

“Al Greenery” tips the hat to the Reverend Al circa “Love and Happiness”—in fact, making a groove out of the first four measures of the song. This one definitely leans more pop; Jimmy James doesn’t get much of a chance to go off the reservation here. That’s reserved for Lamarr in “Can I Change My Mind,” a bright and sunny number written by Carl Wolfolk and Barry Despenza and debuted by Tyrone Davis in 1969 that allows both organist and guitarist to add a little sunny soul to the mix, with Lamarr giving by far the most joyous expression on the record.

“Between the Mustard and the Mayo” references both the infamous “sandwich cover” of Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo and a bit of the mid-1960s arrangements by both Oliver Nelson and Lalo Schifrin that we have heard in earlier columns. Lamarr is flat out here, improvising at maximum velocity as James and McGraw groove hard underneath him. “Raymond Brings the Greens” gets a fiercely greasy groove courtesy of James and a stumbling McGraw drum beat, but the band isn’t above a wink as James tosses in a riff from “The Man Who Sold the World” in his solo.

The Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic “Walk On By” closes us out with an end-of-the-evening vibe: no crazy solos, no Isaac Hayes psychedelic soul, just the band giving their best groove over a bashing drum part from McGraw. Lamarr is the best part of this album closer, leaning into the chords at the chorus with a weeping expressiveness. It’s time to go, he seems to say, but you’ll be back.

Delvon Lamarr and his band hit something just right with this debut album, proving that there was an audience for just plain fun jazz and soul played with heart. The trio would go on to record more; we’ll hear a live show from them next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Along with the aforementioned live show, the band hit the road to promote the album. You can skip the first 2:50, though the interview is interesting enough, to watch the band tear into “Close but No Cigar” live:

Remembering Edwin S. Williams

Dr. Edwin S. Williams passed away last week at the age of 81. In addition to being the first Black member of the Virginia Glee Club, where he was denied service by a truck stop manager while on tour in an event leading to the desegregation of similar businesses between Charlottesville and Washington on Route 29, he was only the second Black student to graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.

Williams’s career in medicine, following his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia, lasted fifty years. He was a patron of the arts, supporting the Washington National Opera. And he was a reader of my book, in which I was fortunate enough to be able to tell part of his story. His niece was kind enough to let me know he had enjoyed the book; in the ultimate “small world,” she and I not both only attended UVa but also went to the same high school, where we both played in the high school orchestra.

In 2025, we are a nation that is increasingly inimical to the rights of Black people and seeking to actively dismantle measures taken to redress the many years spent denying them access to higher education. When I was growing up, it seemed unthinkable that—just a few years before my birth—my state was shutting down the public school system to resist integration. Dr. Williams entered UVa three years later. It must have seemed like unbelievable progress at the time. We must stay vigilant against attempts to regress our society to those days; as measured by the life and contributions of those like Dr. Williams, the cost of such a regression would be immeasurably high.

Jimmy McGriff and Groove Holmes, Dueling Organs

If one Hammond organist is good, two are somethin’ else.

Album of the Week, October 25, 2025

The way I have structured this series is inherently unfair to some of the artists I write about. Basically, unless I have the album on vinyl, I don’t write about it. This means that I’ll never write about some artists, and others will be represented by albums that don’t represent their most significant work.

Such is the case with this week’s album. Originally released in 1973 on the famed Groove Merchant label as Giants of the Organ Come Together, it was gifted with a bizarre cover illustration and a much shorter (and inadvertently suggestive…) title when Pickwick’s subsidiary label Quintessence re-released it as part of their Quintessence Jazz Series. Both organists featured on the record had long careers of their own. Jimmy McGriff cut over sixty records on a variety of labels from the early 1960s to the early 2000s, including Blues for Mister Jimmy and Groove Grease. He got his start with the Hammond B-3 organ when he heard one played at his sister’s wedding by a man who turned out to be Richard “Groove” Holmes. Holmes had about forty records to his own credit, from 1961 to 1991 when he passed away from a heart attack; his most famous was a 1965 version of “Misty” that hit the Hot 100.

The liner notes correctly point out that recording two Hammond organs at the same time is challenging; the instrument isn’t subtle (or light), and a two-organ setup would have been challenging to mike in the studio—but still easier than getting two organs into the average nightclub or concert hall. But the producer, Sonny Lester, persevered. He placed Groove Holmes and his guitarist, George Freeman, in the left channel, and Jimmy McGriff and his guitarist, O’Donel Levy, in the right. Straight down the middle were conga player Kwasi Jayourba and redoubtable funky drummer Bernard Purdie.

“Licks A’Plenty” is what it says on the package, a battle of dueling voices. Here we hear both organists start out, followed by the mellow tones of Jimmy McGriff’s instrument and O’Donel Levy. It’s interesting to compare their approach to Jimmy Smith with Kenny Burrell; where Burrell answered Smith’s licks, Levy plays alongside McGriff, playing runs and chords as a kind of counter-solo and showing why the organist brought his own guitarist. Groove Holmes plays a series of chords and then lets George Freeman take a solo, while McGriff supports with rhythm from the other channel. Holmes returns the favor for Levy’s solo as well. There’s lots of back and forth here, with some supportive work as well as spotlights for Purdie and Jayourba, and even an Acme siren whistle at one point. Everyone appears to be simultaneously having a great time and trying to outdo his neighbor, which is what the best cutting contests are all about.

“Out of Nowhere” starts with a Jimmy McGriff solo and rolls from there, with Holmes supporting him with chord stabs at the turns of each phrase. Freeman takes a laid-back solo with repeated notes on the dominant that builds through the repetition; Levy’s no-nonsense solo is more rapid but similarly relaxed. Groove Holmes takes a solo in a higher octave that builds tension through sustained notes; McGriff does a blast of rapid vibrato that eggs him on.

“The Squirrel” is one of two tunes credited to Holmes and McGriff. It’s a tune that features the band with McGriff playing what almost amounts to commentary after each phrase. Again, Freeman builds a minimalist solo with repeated licks; Levy is positively extroverted by comparison, with notes scampering over the fretboard.

“Finger Lickin’ Good,” the other original on the album, is sadly not the song sampled by the Beastie Boys in their song of the same name, though they clearly had this album in the studio given that Check Your Head also features a song called “Groove Holmes.” But this one is an instantly recognizable classic, with chord stabs from Holmes answered by running notes from McGriff and the guitars. The band takes this cheery blues around the world, with each organist and guitarist taking a solo as the other players support them. There’s a moment at the end of the song where Holmes’s organ makes a sound as though it’s being run through a wah-wah pedal, and the whole band shifts into a hemiola as things fade out.

“How High the Moon” is as close as this record gets to a ballad, with both organists playing swoony turns on the classic melody. Holmes in particular shines here with a solo that swoops up into the high corners of the tune. The record concludes with a briskly virtuosic take on “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” replete with stabs on the organ from Holmes, laid back licks from McGriff and Levy, and a bluesy guitar solo from Freeman. Groove Holmes takes a full twelve bars of tremolo that builds to a screaming climax, then trades licks with McGriff all the way to the end.

Under whatever name you refer to this collaboration, it’s an oddly fun one, hearing the two masters of the organ trade ideas and licks back and forth, and as a bonus has one genuine classic in the form of “Finger Lickin’ Good” that sits alongside “The Cat” in the ranks of organ combo standards. It’s definitely worth seeking out the records that each organist made under his own name, but this session is a lot of fun to listen to as well.

There were some dry years for organ combos over the next little bit, but younger players have come along to claim the mantle of these greats. We’ll spend a bit of time with one of them over the next few weeks as we draw nearer to the end of this series.

You can hear this week’s album here (under its original title):

BONUS: The duo of McGriff and Holmes also cut a live album with this set-up. Here’s “The Preacher’s Tune” from Giants of the Organ in Concert:

Jimmy Smith, Root Down

Root down, and get it, with this milestone live recording by the master and a young band with connections to the Jackson 5, Motown and Quincy Jones.

Album of the Week, October 18, 2o25

When last we heard from Jimmy Smith, he had just started to build a new trio after years of relative stability with Grady Tate. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the personnel for his bands continued to change, and his live sets continued to blow minds even as his recorded work continued in the same groove it always had. But a live session from February 1972 went to new heights and effectively immortalized him for a later generation.

As we’ve heard, even famously conservative labels like Blue Note were leaning harder into the jazz-funk stream. Jimmy had always had a healthy dollop of R&B in his sound, but the band of younger players he brought to the Bombay Bicycle Club on February 8, 1972 went much farther in that direction. Drummer Paul Humphrey had played sessions with Wes Montgomery, bluesman Mel Brown, Quincy Jones, Merry Clayton, and organists “Groove” Holmes and Charles Kynard. Wilton Felder was a founding member fo the Jazz Crusaders who had played bass on the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and “ABC.” Conga player Buck Clarke had performed with Les McCann, Willis Jackson and Cannonball Adderley. And guitarist Arthur Adams had performed with Quincy Jones, the Jackson 5, the Crusaders, and others, as well as releasing his own material as a leader with Motown. The band were steeped in funk and soul, and just as the arrival of the Collins brothers had turbocharged James Brown’s funky side a year earlier, the young collaborators did incredible things for Jimmy’s sound that night.

Paul Humphrey, Wilton Felder, and Buck Clarke begin with a fierce rhythm over which Adams begins to lay down a scratch guitar line as Jimmy plays the opening lick and descending chromatic chords of “Sagg Shootin’ His Arrow.” Adams gets the first solo, making heavy use of a wah-wah pedal to alter the sound. Jimmy’s solo uses sustained tones over which he plays a frantically fast organ part; as Adams keeps going with sustained tension on a minor third in the mid-range of the guitar, Jimmy keeps his solo higher so that it can be better heard above the band. When Adams drops back to the funk “scratch” effect, Jimmy drops an octave, but not for long as his intense energy continues to drive his solo forward. Note: the version of the tune linked above is the unedited version from the 2000 reissue of the album. The original LP has a seven-minute edit instead.

“For Everyone Under the Sun,” written by Peter Chase, kicks off with a mellower introduction, but Jimmy brings an enormous amount of energy to even this ballad, with the melodic line rolling like waves. Arthur Adams takes a brief solo but then it’s back to Jimmy. He embellishes almost every line with rolling chords, blue flourishes, and secondary melodies; the ideas seem to just pour forth. If his studio solos were sometimes predictable on earlier albums, here he’s anything but.

“After Hours” is a deeply bluesy original that starts with just Humphrey and Felder backing up a triple-time rolling blues solo by Jimmy. Steve Williams, who seems to have just been hanging around the club, gives a few licks on the harmonica that serve mostly as color underneath both Jimmy and Adams; this track is his sole recording credit (Discogs thinks otherwise, but I doubt he’s the same Steve Williams on that 2009 Australian blues record). Buck Clarke gets a feature alongside Jimmy on his second solo, his polyrhythmic hits helping to fan the fire already burning under Jimmy’s solo as the organist leans into the tonic as a drone under his solo. The band leans into the slow blues at the close, at what must have been the break in the set (and the end of Side 1); the audience in the club is audible in their appreciation.

Side 2 opens with “Root Down (And Get It),” which is to say it opens with Felder. His opening note on the bass is a slide into the tonic an octave up, followed by a bluesy descent down to the subtonic an octave down. The theme on the bass: subtonic to repeated tonic, subtonic to repeated tonic, up to a minor third, at the lowest reach of the bass, is some seriously, deeply stanky funk all by itself. When Humphrey hits a series of syncopated beats on the tom and snare, it builds to a rhythm that immediately has the audience clapping along. Arthur Adams arrives with a deeply wah-wah’d, scratched intro, the congas percolate along, and Jimmy’s organ plays mostly on the tonic and subtonic, laying into a funky groove that builds up to rising chromatic chords. Structurally we’re in twelve-bar blues land, but artistically speaking we are in some deep funk. What makes “Root Down” more funky than “Sagg Shootin’ His Arrow”? In my mind it’s the space in the arrangement. “Sagg” feels frantic, almost overloaded, like the band has something to prove, but “Root Down” breathes even as it consistently, insistently circles back to those rising chords. The moment late in the song where the players drop back and you can hear just Humphrey and Buck Clarke’s rhythm is magic.

The band rolls right into “Let’s Stay Together”; the Al Green song must have been on many minds, considering its cover on Two Headed Freap last week. Jimmy’s solo here is exuberant and extroverted, and the band’s hard backbeat and groove make this version one to listen to. If the beat is relaxed here, it is only in preparation for its double time recapitulation of the opening number, retitled “Slow Down Sagg.” Here Arthur Adams takes a walk down Main Street in Funkytown, both in his solo and in his accompaniment of Jimmy’s frantically Terpsichorean boogie. Paul Humphrey gets his moment in the spotlight, as do both Buck Clarke and Wilton Felder, in what seem to be made-for-sampling breaks. At the end, Jimmy changes both key and mode into something out of the Arabian Nights as the band finally stops, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd.

Jimmy continued to record into the 1990s, making his last studio album, Dot Com Blues, for Verve just a few years before he passed away in 2005. By the 1970s, he had been around that even his imitators had built up significant traction and recording careers of their own. We’ll hear from a few of these peers next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: There are a lot of live covers of “Root Down” out there, but this one by Chris Thile’s band is a pretty darned good funkgrass rendition:

BONUS BONUS: Not gonna lie: even as a terribly uninformed hip-hop novice I knew about the Beastie Boys a long time before I heard Jimmy Smith. So in that regard this song was my gateway to this album. It was absolutely mind blowing when Verve released the Jimmy Smith album on CD in (checks notes) 2000 and I could hear what the Beasties were listening to:

Moving hosts

Note of no interest to most, but yesterday I migrated this site from its host of twelve years to a new one.

About twelve years ago, Erin Clerico at Weblogger (who helped me move my site from Manila to WordPress) let me know he was getting out of the hosting business. I found Pagely and moved the site there around May 2013. And it’s been there and happily hosted, through good times and bad, since.

So why move? Well, Pagely’s business model shifted to a more professional customer base. They were very kind to grandfather me in—for years!—at something close to the rate I was paying when I joined. But it became clear that their service offerings were no longer aimed at individual bloggers. No shade, and good on them for focusing on more lucrative segments.

I was trying to figure out what to do when Doc Searls serendipitously pointed to his host, Pressable. I asked a few questions on the site, their staff was instantly responsive, and they provided a fully automated migration path that even moved non-Wordpress content from my site to their staging, all in less than 15 minutes. A little white-knuckle DNS work yesterday and I was all set.

So farewell Pagely, and hi Pressable. This blog has been around for more than 24 years, and I’m glad it has a home that will keep hosting it for many more.

Ronnie Foster, Two Headed Freap

The debut recording from Foster puts funk, soul, R&B and jazz into a blender and comes out with a “brew” that’s a genuine classic.

Album of the Week, October 11, 2025

Blue Note Records in 1972 was not the same label that it had been in , or even in 1963. Duke Pearson’s run as head of A&R had shifted the label from the straight-ahead jazz favored by his predecessor Ike Quebec to something a little more au courant. But even Duke was gone, leaving the label in 1971, the same year that label co-founder and famed album cover photographer Francis Wolff died. The label’s corporate parent, Liberty Records, was absorbed by United Artist Records the same year. And A&R executive George Butler took over the label, coming from United Artists, and sponsoring a number of projects aimed at crossing over between the jazz and soul audiences to build more market momentum for the label. Among the artists crossing over in this way were flautist Bobbi Humphrey, guitarist Earl Klugh, trumpeter Donald Byrd, and today’s artist, Ronnie Foster.

Foster grew up in Buffalo, New York and was interested in music from an early age, playing his first show (in a strip club) at age 15. He was not formally educated in jazz, receiving only a month of musical instruction—on the accordion. For this, his first record, he assembled an assortment of musicians that included George Duvivier on bass, Gene Bertoncini on guitar, Gordon Edwards on bass guitar, Jimmy Johnson on drums, Eugene Bianco on harp, George Devens on percussion and vibes, and Arthur Jenkins on congas. Motown producer Wade Marcus, who also had arranged Blue Note sessions for Bobbi Humphrey, Grant Green, Horace Silver, and Marlena Shaw, did the arrangements.

“Chunky” starts out hard with distorted guitar over a four-four beat from Johnson, followed by a syncopated figure from Foster on the Hammond, a long vamp over a four-chord sequence. A sudden shift to a different minor chord provides a quick four-measure bridge and we’re off to the races. Foster’s improvisation is primarily in the right hand, playing runs, venturing out into different tonalities, even quoting the “Love Supreme” progression at one point. His solo goes into runs, chromatic up and down figures that are played so that they smear together, and sustained notes that transition into out-of-tempo arpeggios. The track fades out, leaving us with just a hint of Foster’s rhythmic and improvisational imagination.

“Drowning in the Sea of Love,” a hit written for Joe Simon by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, is played as a straight cover of the bluesy soul hit, with lots of color from Bertoncini and George Devens’ vibes. Foster’s playing shows off his harmonic ear, as he harmonizes with the melody and then gives a couple blasts on the organ to introduce the solo proper. He has a pattern here and in “Chunky” of playing with time and meter in a way that seemingly breaks his improvisation free of the groove, right up until the fade-out.

The introduction to “The Two-Headed Freap” could have been titled “Chunky Pt. 2,” with the same pattern of blasting chords almost to the same rhythm. But the chords are a different progression, almost discordant, and things change quickly into a bluesy salsa-inflected solo with a nine-beat turnaround. Foster’s solo gives us a nasty (in a good way) breakdown in the last minute that calls to mind some of Jimmy Smith’s work.

“Summer Song” is an original with melody played by Bertoncini and Devens, over a growling bass line, before Foster’s solo. Here his technique is very different as he works with sustained suspended notes and chords as well as a right hand solo line that stays in the upper octave. The basic materials are fairly static, with vamps over chords that rock back and forth, but George Duvivier’s bass part (not quite a solo) is worth the price of admission.

“Let’s Stay Together” is a cover of Al Green’s hit, which again benefits from Duvivier’s bass as Foster tosses riff after riff off in his solo. The organ seems to have irrepressible energy, riffing at double speed over the groove, right up to the fade-out. “Don’t Knock My Love” is another cover, this one of Wilson Pickett’s last number one hit. Where the original benefited from a measured funky groove, Foster’s cover seems to lack some of the funk of the original even as it speeds up the tempo by a click or two. The fuzz distortion on the guitar doesn’t help matters here as the band threatens to come unglued during the endless wind out.

The fade-out takes us into “Mystic Brew.” Easily the most memorable track on the album, certainly the most sampled, the track opens with a double bass line from both Duvivier and Gordon Edwards, forming a bedrock for the entire song. Bertoncini and Devens’s vibes repeat the tonic together with Eugene Bianco’s harp. Bertoncini doubles Foster as he plays the relaxed main theme, which seems content to hang out on the tonic as Devens and Bertoncini elaborate around the edges. Foster’s solo is more disciplined here, with the first iteration playing with multi-measure suspensions, the second with syncopated eighths, the third evolving into triplets and then rolling sixteenth and even 32nd notes. The performance, in addition to being a complete pleasure, illustrates the ingenuity and athleticism that Foster brings to the table.

“Kentucky Fried Chicken” closes out with a slightly funky riff on a minor third over a funky bass, then shifts gears over a series of odd suspended chords for a moment. Bertoncini gets a brief solo before Foster plays his games with meter and time, at one point chattering like a hen, changing keys, and ripping through a set of arpeggios. So we end as we began, with Foster improvising straight into the fade-out.

Foster cut a series of albums for Blue Note as a leader, including a pretty great Live at Montreux in 1973. He was less successful after leaving the label for Columbia, recording two albums there and one for Pro Jazz between 1978 and 1986. But he produced almost 100 records and had hundreds of sideman credits, including a collaboration with George Benson that began on 1975’s Good King Bad. We’ll hear from him once more, from later in his career. But next week we’ll hear a famous record from an artist who went through a remarkable shift of his own in the early 1970s.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Foster’s live performances of material from this and other albums are spectacular. You can find some on the officially-released Ronnie Foster Live: Cookin’ with Blue Note at Montreux. Here’s “Chunky”:

BONUS BONUS: “Mystic Brew” became an unlikely standard of sorts through sampling and latter-day covers. Notably, A Tribe Called Quest sampled it for “Electric Relaxation” from their 1993 album Midnight Mauraders:

BONUS BONUS BONUS: Maybe the most unlikely cover of all is the way I first heard “Mystic Brew,” in a version by Vijay Iyer’s trio on his 2009 album Historicity:

Cocktail Friday: Et Vitam Martuni

In which we create a cocktail to accompany Beethoven’s massive Missa Solemnis.

I have gotten something of a reputation among my fellow members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for creating cocktails that go with our major performances. So the speculation started early about what the cocktail would be that would go with this week’s performances of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. This post is an attempt to document my creative process for these cocktails, in case any brave souls want to follow in my footsteps.

Name: Almost always, the name comes first, and almost always it’s a quote or a pun from the text of the piece. (Cf: Promisistini, Veni Creator Spiritous, Aufersteh’n, Sugar Rum Cherry No. 1 and 2.) So with this piece, it had to be “Et Vitam Venturi,” the part of the “Credo” that supports not one, but two fugues. And through the process of elimination, it became “Et Vitam Martuni,” because it was funnier than either “Et Vitam Martini” or “Et Vitam Negroni” (the two leading contenders).

Composition: So what was an “Et Vitam Martuni”? I started out using the Martini as a base, but it turns out that the liqueurs I pulled off my shelf did not go well with the Martini. At first I blamed it on the liqueurs; as I wrote to my collaborators on this cocktail, “The combination of vermouth and Cherry Heering does not work at all. I should have known better; with Beethoven, the Heering is never good.”

But it turns out I was blaming the wrong ingredient, and a shift in focus was beneficial. By reformulating the drink as an approximation of the Martinez—i.e. not requiring white Vermouth—I was able to make the ingredients work, even the Cherry Heering. So here’s to the “Et Vitam Martuni,” the drink so good you’ll want to have it twice, once slow and once damned fast.

Special thanks to my collaborators on this one, the Schlammonds, who suggested the name and were my rubber duck as I thought through the combinations. And special thanks to the TFC and our guest conductor, Anthony Blake Clark, who is the reason that the drink recommends a pair of something for the garnish.

As always, you can use the recipe card with Highball. Enjoy!

Seeing the UVA Madrigal Group?

A potential glimpse of a moment in the history of choral music at the University.

University of Virginia Madrigal Group, early 1940s

Some eleven years ago, I wrote that I was “Seeking the UVA Madrigal Group,” looking for more information about a group of women who formed the University of Virginia’s first known vocal performing group. They are first known to exist in 1943, when they joined the Virginia Glee Club in the annual Christmas Concert. We know about the group thanks to concert programs—Christmas in 1943 and 1944, Spring in 1945 and again in 1957—but otherwise have had no information about the group save their existence and their names.

Until last week, when the photo above turned up on eBay. Under the title “University of Virginia Glee Club,” the photo shows what is supposed to be an image of the UVA Madrigal Group, circa 1944. If true, it would be an incredibly valuable piece of history, filling in a blank not only in the history of the UVA choral experience, but also in the historic experience of women at the University.

I say “if true” because I’m still working to trace the provenance of the photo and date it. There are a few challenges that I’m trying to reconcile:

  • Count of members: There are 16 women in the photo. The 1943 group had 13, and the 1944 group had 30.
  • Location: Rehearsal and performance spaces with stages were rare at UVa in the 1940s, and would likely either have had a painting (The School of Athens in Old Cabell Hall) or a blackboard (any of the Music Department’s practice rooms or any lecture halls) behind the group. Where was this taken?
  • Accompanist: The accompanist in 1943-1944 was none other than Randall Thompson. Edwin Guernsey was the assistant accompanist in 1945, but the blurry photo I have of him from Corks and Curls does not exactly resemble the man in the photo above.

Nevertheless, the photo is a tantalizing piece of history, even if it does raise more questions than it answers.

Note: I wrote about the Madrigal Group in Chapter 16 of Ten Thousand Voices, my history of the Virginia Glee Club. You can find it at your bookstore of choice through the link in the right hand side of this page.

The Glee Club and the “Winter Song”

Randolph-Macon College newspaper from April 1915

Today I learned that the Virginia Glee Club has a far longer history with the “Winter Song” than I originally thought. Modern performance of the song, with its “ice gnomes marching from their Norways,” dates to the John Liepold years in the early 1990s. But today I found a newspaper article that dates the first performance to 1915!!!

The “Winter Song” was on a concert program at Randolph-Macon College on April 17, 1915, some seventy-plus years earlier than previously known. 1914-1915 was the first year that there was a “modern” Glee Club, conducted by a UVA faculty member (Alfred Lawrence Hall-Quest), and took place a day after a concert in Richmond. The concert was well received; the student newspaper mentioned that the concert “turned our minds to music, men and laughter” and that “almost every number was encored.”

The “Winter Song,” written by Frederic Field Bullard, was originally titled “Hanover Winter Song” and first appeared in an 1898 book, Dartmouth Songs.

Chester Thompson, Powerhouse

An interesting debut from an organist who became better known for his work with Santana, and an album that crosses the organ combo format with James Brown funk.

Album of the Week, October 4, 2025

As jazz organ combos led by Jimmy Smith, Johnny Hammond and others notched record sales and hits, there were more and more young musicians who followed the format. Inevitably some of these played jazz and rock; one of these was Chester D. Thompson, a keyboard player from Oklahoma who started on piano at age 5 and is remembered today for his ten-year association with funk group Tower of Power and his 26-year-long tenure as a member of the Santana band (confusingly enough, sometimes alongside drummer Chester C. Thompson!). But he had plenty of sideman credits to his name in pop and jazz, appearing on tracks with Elton John, Freddie Hubbard, John Lee Hooker, Everlast, Eagle-Eye Cherry and others. And at the very beginning of his career, he cut this album, a straight-ahead jazz record in an unusual organ combo format.

Appearing alongside Thompson on this release are Raymond Pounds, a session drummer who performed with Blue Mitchell, Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life), Deniece Williams, Quincy Jones, Chaka Khan, Bob Dylan (Knocked Out Loaded) and others; this was his first recording. Tenor sax Rudolph Johnson had played with Jimmy McGriff (about whom more later) and Bill Cosby. And trombonist Al Hall, also making his debut, would have a career playing with Johnny Hammond, Freddie Hubbard, and other jazz-funk acts.

“Mr. T” starts out as a horn driven tune, with both Johnson and Hall blowing strong solos over Thompson’s organ. Thompson’s solo takes the tune into the blues, with increasingly elaborate improvisations over a steady organ bass line. Pounds takes a flourish on the drums at the end but otherwise is here as support.

“Trip One” alternates between two modes through the verse and shifts into a third on the chorus. The band takes a beat between verse and chorus, just enough for Johnson to wind up his sax into orbit. He’s not quite in “sheets of sound” territory here, but it’s a pretty great solo nevertheless, energizing the entire band and taking it through multiple tonalities. Hall’s trombone follows with a slightly more conventional approach, laying back into a more relaxed tone. It’s Johnson’s conception that Thompson follows for his solo, with chromatic runs that shift to different tonalities. The wrap up is slightly spoiled by uneven harmonies in the horns, putting an odd edge on an otherwise cool tune.

Speaking of Bill Cosby, the second side opens with “Weird Harold.” Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids television show was still a year away when this album was recorded, but Cosby had told stories about his childhood friends for years previously in his standup routines, and Old Weird Harold had debuted in “9th Street Bridge” on Cosby’s Revenge album in 1967. This track shares a little of the funky flavor that Herbie Hancock used for his own take on the Cosby kids in Fat Albert Rotunda, but with a considerably higher James Brown quotient. Pounds is the star on this track; listening to the way he used the cymbals on the two as emphasis, you can imagine his future work with Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones. Johnson’s sax is solidly bluesy and funky throughout, and Thompson’s fiery solo features flourishes and sustained notes that would make Jimmy Smith proud. Hall is confined to the chorus, where he again muffs the harmony parts but plays with great funkiness.

The band as a whole is tighter on “Powerhouse,” triggering off a fiercely funky Pounds drum part and a simmering low organ part. The horns wisely stay in unison and simple harmonies for the head to far greater effect. Johnson’s solo is tight but is only a setup for Thompson, who rips a set of stern modal runs and chords while staying close to the minor third throughout, all while keeping an incredibly tight bass line going in the lower range of the organ.

This was the only recording by the “Powerhouse” band, but Thompson didn’t sit still. By 1973 he had joined Tower of Power during that band’s commercial peak, staying with the band into the early 1980s before joining Carlos Santana’s group in 1983. He kept performing for a long time, turning up at the 2018 40th anniversary celebration of Tower of Power, but primarily stayed outside the organ combo format for rock and roll.

Another young player was about to radically redefine what an “organ combo” could sound like. We’ll hear his debut recording next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: One of Thompson’s better known Tower of Power songs was “Squib Cakes” from the Back to Oakland album; here he is in a small combo playing the song in 2011.

Brother Jack McDuff, Moon Rappin’

Brother Jack gives us an album that’s alternately spacey and bluesy, and hints at where jazz organ was about to go.

Album of the Week, September 27, 2025

By 1969 a few things had changed in the jazz world. Some of the old formulas for how jazz worked on albums like Brother Jack McDuff’s Hot Barbeque had started to morph, influenced by what was happening in rock and roll (and responding to the shift of youth attention from jazz to rock music). In particular, Miles Davis was listening to Jimi Hendrix, and the music he made in response on records like Filles de Kilimanjaro and Bitches Brew brought a different conception of the role of guitar in improvised music. But other genres were colliding with jazz, particularly funk.

We’ve talked about jazz-funk before in the context of CTI Records and of Herbie Hancock’s glorious Fat Albert Rotunda. By 1969, Blue Note Records had started to embrace this sound in a significant way. Jack McDuff had signed to Blue Note after a brief stint with Atlantic Records, and for this, his second album, he brought together a small army of younger musicians, including Joe Dukes on drums (and a guest appearance from Richard Davis on bass for two tracks) and dove into some truly strange, but truly glorious, jazz-funk explorations.

“Flat Backin’” starts us off in fine form, with the melody stated by Richard Davis’ funky, funky bass and a flourish on the drums from Spider Bryce, and a spiraling guitar line from Melvin Sparks that pans right to left. When McDuff enters on the Hammond, he’s right in the middle of everything, including a horn section that appear for a moment and then back away as the cymbal and bass restate the groove. And then—zowie!—it’s as though the track travels back in time at least ten years as the bass groove falls back into a swinging fast four and the band gives us a scampering improvisation, only to fall back to that groovy bass and an echo-laden guitar freak out, followed by a Hammond solo. Structurally the track keeps returning to that bass groove. It’s undeniably cool—not as out there as Bitches Brew but still fun to listen to.

“Oblighetto” is a more straightforward blues, given juice by Sparks’ guitar, right up until we get four measures of unexpected chords from McDuff and a spacey vocal in a minor mode, à la Star Trek. And then we shift gears again into a fast four as McDuff and drummer Vince DiLeonardi give us a little boogaloo, only to return to the minor mode and vocals once more. The band finishes with a return to the boogaloo, and one more minor chord.

“Moon Rappin’” is another jazz-funk workout, with a Richard Davis bass line and a winding chord progression that exercises both McDuff and the horns. After the lead, the band settles into a groove around a fifth, on which the horns unfortunately blow a little out of tune. But the reverby McDuff piano solo makes it all worthwhile. We then get a tasty minor blues that adjusts the bass line melody from “Flat Backin’” into something anticipatory and deeply funky, especially as Melvin Sparks’ guitar seems to reverb into outer space.

“Made in Sweden” threatens to invade “Take Five” territory, but it’s in six rather than five, and the melody goes in a slightly different direction, staying more closely wedded to the groove. Ron Park’s flute is a great addition to the theme, but the real star is McDuff’s Hammond, which threatens to levitate into outer space throughout his solo. A drum break separates the second half of the tune, in which a two-note riff moves from the organ to the horns and back “Loose Foot” picks up where “Made in Sweden” left off, but it’s a more straightahead tune and a showcase for Ron Park’s tenor sax. McDuff gives us a blues-forward solo in which he displays his virtuosic touch on the organ. The band closes out the outer-space album in a most grounded way, with the blues.

McDuff was a survivor; he kept on recording through the ’70s, even as commercial interest in jazz collapsed, and enjoyed a career renaissance in the late 1980s and 1990s, recording albums for Muse and Concord Jazz. He died in January 2001, less than a year after touring Japan at age 73. While he certainly picked up influences from the jazz-funk movement, he never tipped over into the sound wholesale. But other jazz organists did, and in a few weeks we’ll hear one of the most famous examples of the genre. Before we get there, though, there are a few other interesting corners of the jazz organ world to explore; we’ll hear one next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: I included “Flat Backin’” in my “Cooking with Fat” episode of Exfiltration Radio, an hour-long exploration of jazz-funk. You can listen to that radio show below:

Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Nasty!

Another master of the jazz organ gives us a coolly simmering combo record, featuring John Abercrombie’s record debut.

Album of the Week, September 20, 2025

If you are a jazz performer, but there’s already another jazz performer with your name, giving yourself a stage name is a common practice. In the case of Johnny Smith from Louisville, Kentucky, he adopted his instrument of choice as part of his nickname, to avoid being confused with guitarist Johnny Smith from Alabama. His first album appeared in 1958 on small label Arrow Records, followed by two albums on the slightly less small New Jazz label in 1959. On the second New Jazz label, he was Johnny “Hammond” Smith. He moved to Prestige in 1961 and recorded a series of organ combo albums, leading up to today’s album.

For this 1968 session Smith was joined by an interesting group of musicians. We’re very familiar with Grady Tate from his work with Jimmy Smith; he had parted ways with Smith’s group following 1967’s Respect. Saxophonist Houston Person came from Florence, South Carolina, and had been recording as a leader for Prestige for much of the 1960s. And John Abercrombie was an American jazz guitarist who had just graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he had played shows at Paul’s Mall, leading to his meeting Smith; this was his first non-student recording. Abercrombie would go on to have a long career as both sideman and leader, recording for ECM among other labels; we will get to one of those other recordings one of these days.

The opening track, Frank Loesser’s “If I Were a Bell,” is given a very different treatment from Miles Davis’ version on Relaxin’. Here Grady Tate’s syncopated drumming gives the tune a heavy swing feel as Smith outlines the opening “bells” and the melody on the Hammond, with a good amount of ornamentation around the edges. Smith’s opening statement is pretty “cool” and stays in the baritone range. Abercrombie takes the first solo and gives it a cool fire, with a swinging arpeggiated run at the tune. Smith keeps things relaxed and cool at first, but starts to lean into the blue notes at the end of his solo, which Person picks up with a straight-ahead blues. Smith brings things back to a simmer at the end; the listener is surprised to realize that in the relaxed session, a full eight and a half minutes go by.

Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” which we’ll hear again one of these days, is a classic of the post-bop jazz repertoire, with Brazilian rhythms and Cape Verdean Portuguese folk roots. Here Smith gives it a slower, deeper reading, with the melody down in the lower octave and leaning into the grace notes and turns of the descending tune. Tate’s drums and Abercrombie’s guitar provide a solid bed for Silver’s exploration. When Abercrombie’s solo enters, we get a bluesy hybrid between samba and boogie. Person’s solo is R&B flavored but played with great restraint throughout; overall the band keeps the lid on even as the pot nears the boil.

“Speak Low,” Kurt Weill’s ballad to lyrics by Ogden Nash from the musical One Touch of Venus1, is here turbocharged with crashing drums from Tate and a ripping solo from Abercrombie, whose virtuosity is on full display. Smith takes the lid off here and gives us a rollicking turn through the tune. “Unchained Melody,” by contrast, is bright and laid-back, almost conversational, with none of the drama of the 1965 Righteous Brothers version. Weighing in at less than four minutes, the take still has a little room for Smith to be playful as he slips in a quote from Simon and Garfunkel’s “We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’” (!).

“Nasty,” one of two Smith originals on the album, is the standout tune, a forty bar blues (which relaxes into a more conventional twelve bar blues in the solos) featuring a rippling trill in the melody line. Each of the players in turn lean into the blues note hard, earning the name of the tune. Tate’s drums here are a thing to behold, a seamless combination of march rhythm and swing that shuffles along under the solos.

“Four Bowls of Soul” is a more straightforward blues from Smith to close us out. Abercrombie’s solo has a few non-blue notes around the edges but otherwise delivers the promised soul. So does Smith, who sets aside reserve and gives us a solo that, if lacking some of the mojo of Jimmy Smith, still has plenty up its sleeve, including an eyebrow raising detour into waltz time. Person plays the blues, bringing his solo up into the high end of the tenor sax’s range with a satisfying wail. The tune fades out on Smith’s recapitulation, sounding as if he could play these coolly soulful blues forever.

Smith had a long recording career, with over forty albums to his credit as leader, most for Prestige. Later in his career, changing his stage name to Johnny Hammond, he recorded for Creed Taylor’s Kudu label (his album Breakout was the first release on the soul jazz label) and for Milestone, where he made a series of jazz-funk albums including the great Gears. At the core of all his recordings were an impeccable sense of harmony and rhythm. There haven’t been a lot of reissues of his work, so grab it if you find it—I feel lucky I was able to score a copy of Nasty from a used record store in Asheville.

The Hammond players we’ve heard so far have stuck pretty close to the organ combo formula as introduced and perfected by Jimmy Smith. One of the folks we’ve heard before is about to change that in a pretty big way. We’ll listen to that album next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: I would bet money that Sly Stone was listening to this album when he was working on Stand!; just listen to the instrumental break following the opening chorus at about 0:56. (This part of the song shows up in a lot of hip-hop, including “Because I Got It Like That” by the Jungle Brothers.)

  1. It’s sentences like that one that make the history of popular music in the 20th century so great. ↩︎

Jimmy Smith, Respect

Even on an album that seeks to hitch a ride on Aretha Franklin’s rising star, Jimmy Smith brings the heat and some incredibly funky originals.

Album of the Week, September 13, 2025

When you’re Jimmy Smith, making two or three albums a year, sometimes you make masterpieces, and sometimes you make a party album that doesn’t have a huge impact on the musical world, but is fun to listen to anyway. Respect follows two huge releases from Jimmy and guitarist Wes Montgomery (we’ve written about some of the latter’s later work before). With a title like Respect the motivation for the album is pretty clear, recorded as it was not two months after Aretha Franklin’s hit, but it also has some excellent Jimmy originals. It might not quite reach the heights of Organ Grinder Swing or The Cat, but Jimmy Smith was incapable of phoning in a record date, as this hot session shows.

The album was recorded on June 2 and June 14, 1967 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. One session featured Smith’s long-time drummer, Grady Tate, alongside Eric Gale on guitar and the redoubtable Ron Carter on bass. The other had funky drummer Bernard Purdie with Thornel Schwartz on guitar and Bob Bushnell on bass. Regarding the two guitarists, we’ve reviewed some of the work Gale did alongside George Benson, Yusef Lateef and Freddie Hubbard on CTI. Schwartz made a career out of playing in jazz organ combos, working alongside Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Jimmy McGriff, and “Groove” Holmes, about all of whom more later. And Bob Bushnell had a widely varied career, playing on many Verve and Impulse releases, as well as dubbing the bass part on the “electric” hit version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”

“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” is the song for which Joe Zawinul would have been known best, had he not gone on to work with Miles and to found Weather Report. The tune, which he wrote when he was in Cannonball Adderley’s band in 1966, was a hit, going to #2 on the Billboard Soul Chart and all the way to #11 on the Hot 100. Jimmy’s version grooves along in the same relaxed pocket as the original, coming off the simmer with the groove of Bernard Purdie’s funky drumming even before Jimmy starts his solo. Schwartz and Bushnell keep it in the soulful side of things as the band makes its relaxed way through the tune, accompanied by a fair amount of studio chatter from Jimmy.

“Respect” had burned up the charts just months before Smith went into the studio to record these sessions. The 1965 Otis Redding original had been gender-flipped in Aretha Franklin’s burning cover version, released on April 10, 1967, and had spent two weeks atop the Billboard Pop Singles Chart and 10 weeks on the Black Singles Chart. Schwartz and Purdie bring some of the insouciance of the Aretha version to the opening here, and Jimmy’s improvisation blends aspects of both Aretha’s blazing solo vocals and the backing vocals, so brilliantly sung by her sisters Emma and Carolyn that the liner notes for Smith’s album by A.B. Spellman incorrectly assume that Aretha had dubbed her own voice for the back-up part. “Respect” was clearly recorded for single release; it fades out after 2:12, just as Jimmy seems to be getting warmed up!

“Funky Broadway,” a Smith original, is backed by the Carter/Tate/Gale combo, and is an interesting evolution in Smith’s writing. Where many of the originals we’ve heard from him so far have been blues or loose jams, “Funky Broadway” is a tight groove with a slinky guitar line over Ron Carter’s reliable heartbeat, with Eric Gale and Smith taking turns playing syncopated diminished seventh chords under each others’ solos. The whole thing is a pretty magnificent exercise in James Brown-style funk. Smith calls out “Funky Broadway” at the end, I suspect naming the seven-minute-long jam for posterity.

“T-Bone Steak” is the second Jimmy original here, again with the Carter/Gale/Tate group, and we’re back in the twelve-bar blues. But it’s hard to complain about Jimmy returning to this particular well, since he jumps immediately into the deep end from the first notes of his solo. The double-speed runs followed by the hemiola, followed again by his leaning on the tonic for 36 bars or so as he rips improvisation after improvisation, might be some of the hottest, most concentrated brilliance he recorded. Grady Tate sounds a bit like Bernard Purdie here with the power of his hits on the tom, though not with his rhythmic approach.

“Get Out of My Life, Woman” closes the record, with Jimmy yelling, “Ow! Get out my life!” at the top as the band begins the Allen Touissant/Lee Dorsey standard. Here they play it as a tight New Orleans blues—a blues with more than a hint of shuffle underneath. The guitarist (I think this is Schwartz, Purdie and Bushnell, though without credits it’s hard to tell) unreels a steady, controlled funk throughout his solo, leaving Smith to take the lid off the pot as it hits the boil. The track finishes with Smith and the guitarist exchanging ideas right into the fade-out, as if reluctant to let the jam end.

I haven’t talked about the album’s cover so far, mostly because it nonplussed me, but apparently Smith was, in fact, a karate aficionado. In an excerpt from Bill Milkowski’s Rockers, Jazzbos and Visionaries, Smith said he had been into karate for about 25 years and responded to Milkowski calling his gi a “kung fu outfit”: “Not kung fu, motherf–. That’s shotokan. And that means sho-kill-yo’-a–. I studied that particular method.” What is clear is that, even on a collection of mostly R&B covers designed to hit the charts, Jimmy’s playing remains as intense and vital as on the more significant albums in his discography. The commercial success of his work—the album hit Number 60 on the Billboard 200, spending 20 weeks on the chart—continued to attract others to the Hammond, and we’ll hear from another of those players next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Here’s a live rendition of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” in medley with “Country Preacher” by Cannonball Adderley’s band from 1970 , with Zawinul on the Fender Rhodes: