Jimmy Smith‘s ascent to the top of the jazz organ tree was spectacular and meteoric. In 1955, few who followed jazz knew who he was but a year later, after producer Alfred Lion, who was stunned by Smith in concert, had signed him to Blue Note Records, the 30-year-old Hammond B3 virtuoso’s identify was on each fashionable jazz followers’ lips. With Blue Note issuing 5 LPs below Smith’s identify in fast succession throughout 1956 alone, it was onerous to flee the phenomenon that the mustachioed organ grinder from Norristown, Pennsylvania had quickly turn into.
Blue Note knew they’d a novel expertise on their fingers and, understandably, needed to completely exploit his potential. But not like Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nicholls, two singular keyboardists they’d beforehand signed however whose information didn’t promote effectively, Smith possessed enormous industrial attraction and his information – infused with blues and gospel parts – had been shortly devoured, primarily by a hungry African American viewers.
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Smith’s rise to fame continued unabated in 1957, when he launched an astonishing seven LPs in a frenetic flurry of recording exercise. Those making an attempt to maintain up together with his prolific output would have breathed a bit simpler in 1958 when the organist’s productiveness started to decelerate – however solely a bit; he nonetheless launched three LPs that 12 months, together with the traditional reside album Groovin’ At Smalls’ Paradise. By the time he recorded Home Cookin’ in the summertime of 1959, Blue Note had reduce on the variety of his releases, maybe cautious that they had been saturating the market. But at that time, Smith didn’t have to show something – he was a bonafide star whose infectious soul-jazz information had been hands-down one of the best promoting LPs in Blue Note’s catalogue.
The group and the recording
His sixteenth LP in simply three years, Home Cookin’ adopted within the wake of The Sermon!, launched earlier in 1959. Only the Detroit guitarist, the exceptionally gifted Kenny Burrell – who additionally had a Blue Note contract – survived from that session. Joining him had been saxophonist Percy France – a contract tenor participant from Manhattan whose expertise included taking part in with organist Bill Doggett within the first half of the 50s – together with Smith’s common drummer, Donald Bailey. There was no bass participant on the session, after all, as Smith performed the music’s bass notes on his Hammond organ’s foot pedals.
Most Blue Note albums had been reduce in a single three-hour session however Home Cookin’ was a uncommon exception; a mix of two studio dates, from May and June 1959. All seven tracks had been laid down at producer Alfred Lion’s favourite recording location, Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey; a state-of-the-art facility owned and run by the legendary audio engineer, Rudy Van Gelder, who performed a key function in giving Blue Note Records its distinctive sound. (He was additionally thought to be the primary man to convey correct audio experience to jazz recording classes and make musical devices sound life-like).
For these conversant in Smith’s earlier studio recordings, what’s putting about Home Cookin’ is that it’s a way more thought of, laidback report, favoring simmering grooves over the organist’s customary dazzling keyboard pyrotechnics. The opening reduce, a succulent soul-jazz tackle Ma Rainey‘s “See See Rider,” is outlined by organ licks which might be so greasy, you possibly can virtually hear the fats dripping. It units the tone for the remainder of the album; although usually carried out as an upbeat blues shuffle by different performers, Smith slows the track right down to a languorous tempo, permitting area and time for all of the soloists to shine.
Elsewhere, Smith and Burrell every contribute a few songs alongside two notable covers; Ray Charles’ 1955 R&B hit “I Got A Woman” and organist Jimmy McGriff’s “Motorin’ Along,” that are each fantastically reworked with a church revival feeling.
The album cowl
Home Cookin’‘s eye-catching front cover is also worth a mention. By 1960, when the album was released, Blue Note’s LPs had turn into famend for his or her stylized paintings, juxtaposing eye-catching typography with cropped black and white photographs of the musicians. Up to that time, the label hardly ever used full-color pictures of its artists, which is why Francis Wolff‘s vivid photo of Smith captured outside a Harlem soul food diner called Kate’s Home Cooking is so distinctive. The resolution to {photograph} Smith there was not an arbitrary one – in keeping with the album’s liner notice author Ira Gitler, Smith selected to dedicate the LP to the diner’s proprietor, Kate O. Bishop, whose institution was only a stone’s throw from the stage door of the famed Apollo Theater. (Apparently, it was a magnet for musicians and performers who would usually congregate there after reveals).
The legacy of Jimmy Smith’s Home Cookin’
Home Cookin’ confirmed Smith maturing as an artist; firming down the flash solos he had constructed his fame on and as a substitute, ramping up his music’s sense of soulful expression. Significantly, it was launched at a time when jazz was starting to expertise an existential disaster. Ornette Coleman’s free jazz manifesto The Shape Of Jazz To Come had simply come out and was sending seismic shock waves via the jazz world, inflicting the scene to splinter into factions. But whereas some jazz musicians had been creating music that was overtly cerebral, Smith needed to maintain his music grounded and make it accessible for audiences who simply needed to have a very good time; and with Home Cookin’, he skilfully mixed blues and gospel components with a soupcon of onerous bop to create a scrumptious soul-jazz platter that also “tastes” good as we speak.
Listen to Jimmy Smith’s Home Cookin’ now.