Rubber City Review

Recently I took a peek at Google Analytics and noticed that RCR’s readership was up. So I thought, I’ll fix that… Time to do a post on soul jazz.

What exactly is soul jazz? Well, I’ll give you my take and we can argue about it later.

You’ve probably heard terms like acid jazz, hard bop, jazz-funk or jazz fusion. For the most part, they all refer to strains of jazz informed by blues, soul and gospel – as opposed to popular show tunes like I Got Rhythm and Love for Sale that kept swing bands and be-boppers in business through the Thirties and Forties.

But don’t take my word for it… Here’s a definition offered by the good folks at allmusic:

“Although soloists follow the chords as in bop, the basslines (often played by an organist if not a string bassist) dance rather than stick strictly to a four-to-the-bar walking pattern. The musicians build their accompaniment around the bassline and, although there are often strong melodies, it is the catchiness of the groove and the amount of heat generated by the soloists that determine whether the performance is successful.”

Put another way, black jazz artists who were playing predominately black clubs knew what their audiences wanted to hear, and it wasn’t Broadway show tunes. In the Fifties, they were listening to Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. And hard boppers like Nat and Cannonball Adderley were starting to incorporate more blues-based riffs and danceable grooves in their jazz compositions to create classics like this one: Work Song

As soul and funk became the dominant sounds of the next two decades, those influences were often channeled through the organ combo and jazz artists like Jimmy Smith and Grant Green. We touched on the former and a few of his many B3 disciples here, and sang the praises of Green in this post. If you like your jazz served up with a lot of funky guitar, heavy grooves and late-night ambience, you can’t do much better than this next tune, which features Green with organist Big John Patton: Soul Woman

While Green and Patton were laying down this little nugget in ’66, Miles Davis and John Coltrane were heading in far more ethereal and abstract directions – with Coltrane traveling through Interstellar Space the following year before leaving his mortal coil behind in July. But Miles had his ear to the dancefloor and eventually recorded some of the nastiest, funkiest music that can still be tagged (albeit loosely) as jazz. I wouldn’t call this next number “soul jazz,” but it definitely proves that Miles was paying a lot of attention to James Brown and Sly Stone in 1970: Duran (Take 4)

That number features guitarist John McLaughlin, who went on to form the jazz fusion supergroup the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Now I’m not going to head down that path, even though I listened to a fair amount of fusion in my younger days. Some of that stuff makes me cringe today – and I’m not sure the word “soul” can be applied to bands like Return to Forever and The Eleventh House that mainly seemed interested in performing daring feats of technical prowess rather than music with a human essence to it.

But I also won’t suggest that all the great soul jazz was recorded 40 or 50 years ago (although we’ll include a few more classics from the era at the end of this post). In fact, I’d argue that Charlie Hunter, Galactic, Medeski Martin & Wood, The Bad Plus, Garage a Trois and a few other contemporary acts are building on the soul jazz tradition by recognizing the most important lesson from those wayward fusion years: It’s all about the groove, stupid. Case in point: Bear No Hair

As you can tell, the guys in Garage a Trois have chops for days – and I’m sure guitarist Charlie Hunter could play an entire song in 32nd notes if someone put a gun to his head. Hell, he already learned how to play bass and lead guitar at the same time. But why play blazing fast leads if they don’t serve the song? And why write a song that requires a shitload of 32nd notes?

Stanton Moore

OK, I’m done ranting. Here’s another modern soul jazz standout. This one features Stanton Moore, who leads his own band… drives the rhythm section for Galactic, Garage a Trois and a few other bands I’m not even aware of… and remains the most dangerous drummer in a city with many great ones, New Orleans (this cut also features Charlie Hunter on guitar). Tchfunkta

Another first-rate contemporary band in the soul jazz vein just turned 20 – Medeski Martin & Wood. And they’re celebrating the occasion by releasing 20 new tracks (digital only), two per month until the end of the year. The songs are available on iTunes, Amazon, MusicToday and other digital retailers. Before you check those out, I’ll play you a sample from one of the band’s Blue Note releases… must be a tribute to the esteemed label that practically invented soul jazz back in the Fifties and Sixties. Note Bleu

Speaking of Blue Note, let’s head back to the era and touch on a few classics that should be part of any self-respecting soul jazz collection.

Someone at the label (maybe the boss, Alfred Lion) had the bright idea to team up jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell with master conguero Ray Barretto. And the smooth sound of Mr. “Hard Hands” lifts Burrell’s Midnight Blue into the realm of soul jazz nirvana: Midnight Blue

Sonny Stitt

This next track also includes Barretto, but this time with sax legend Sonny Stitt and one of the great B3 players of all time, Brother Jack McDuff. It’s from a sizzling session recorded in 1962 for the Prestige label: Nother Fu’ther

On some of his funkier soul jazz outings, Stitt liked to use an electric sax called a Varitone – which is sort of like putting Charlie Parker through a digital delay or Billie Holiday through Autotune. Interesting, but unnecessary. Still, you can’t deny the greatness of Stitt, especially when he’s settling into a deep groove like this one – with a perfect handoff from guitarist Melvin Sparks: Turn It On

That cut features three unsung heroes of soul jazz – Sparks, organist Leon Spencer and drummer Idris Muhammad. Other standouts of the form include guitarists Boogaloo Joe Jones and Billy Butler, organists Shirley Scott and Charles Earland, and sax man Rusty Bryant (a long-time resident of Columbus, OH). Seasoned musicians who could easily play straight-ahead jazz, but really earned their keep as session players on some of the best soul jazz outings of the Sixties and Seventies. And none of them ever got the recognition they deserved.

Here’s Boogaloo Joe burning through one of his originals, with fine backing from Earland and Bryant: Right On

Idris Muhammad

And here’s Idris Muhammad driving a dance tune originally recorded in 1969 by The Fabulous Counts, a Detroit-area funk band. The leader for this live date from ’71 at Detroit’s Club Mozambique? The one and only Grant Green: Jan Jan

We’ll close with one of the most soulful sounds in all of jazz – the big, bad sax of Gene Ammons. Just ask Texas blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughan, who has an obvious weakness for Ammons-inspired instrumentals with healthy doses of B3. Here Ammons is joined on a ’61 studio date by Brother Jack on organ and our go-to guy for soul jazz conga, Ray Barretto: Twisting the Jug

Birth of a power trio… Enjoy the first 10 minutes of a film by Marie Pierre Jaury on Medeski Martin & Wood – part documentary, part primer on modern soul jazz (or whatever you want to call it). Includes great clips of MMW in action.

Here’s a re-post. See you soon…

In a rare moment of weakness, my brother admitted that his love of Latin music makes for a very lonely existence.

The same can be said of jazz. You just don’t stand around the water cooler on Monday morning talking about the latest Blue Note title remastered by the jazz label’s ace engineer, Rudy Van Gelder.

So while my brother searches for fellow latinophiles, I keep feeding the Blue Note beast – and I’m talking about the entire catalog, from the early boogie-woogie recordings of pianist Albert Ammons to the late-era funk of guitarist Grant Green. I even have a slide show on my iPod with my favorite Blue Note album covers, like this one…

…and this one…

…and this one…

Blue Note is still going strong, buoyed by the success of Norah Jones and the disposable income of Japanese collectors (a recent series of reissues included a “warm analog LP for the home sound system” with every CD). But the label’s glory years are clearly from the late-‘50s to the mid-‘60s. Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley… and maybe the most consistently satisfying artist on their roster, Horace Silver.

Even though I’ve been mining the Blue Note catalog for years, I keep coming across little gems that leave me wondering why some steely eyed jazz cop didn’t force me to sit down and listen to them.

I’ll share a couple I’ve come across recently. Lee Morgan is responsible for what may be the funkiest jazz solo of all time – from Moanin’ by Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers. Morgan’s break has plenty of bite and sass; it’s also a testament to the strong blues influence that he shares with jazz legends like Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. Moanin’

But I’d long been familiar with that number. I wasn’t aware of a tune that shows up some 10 years later in Morgan’s career, Caramba. Maybe I was misled by the goofy, overexposed cover photo – a departure from the stylish covers designed by the great Reid Miles. Might be the fact that Morgan’s recordings at that time were notoriously hit-and-miss. But Caramba’s got it all – a sunny, insistent groove… first-rate soloing from Morgan and Cedar Walton on piano… and cowbell (or at least the jazz equivalent)! What’s not to like?? Caramba

Grant Green is the most-recorded artist in Blue Note history, and you could build a whole blog around him alone. Although he made a name for himself playing straight-ahead jazz, he veered off into the land of funk later in his career — and that didn’t go over too well with jazz purists. But it’s hard to deny the heavy soul factor from this live date at Newark’s Cliche Lounge in 1970, featured on the album Alive!… Sookie Sookie

These last two expose the basic flaws of compilations or retrospectives. Sure, you’re getting a fine sampling of an artist’s career, but you’re also fooled into thinking that you’ve heard the best and don’t need the rest.

Then again, consider the even lonelier existence of the “jazz completist” – seeking out every release by, let’s say, Sonny Stitt, who put out more than 100 records on dozens of labels over four decades… On second thought, the “greatest hits” will do just fine.

After they put out three or four comprehensive box sets – the complete ‘60s recordings of Gordon and Hancock are treasures – Blue Note got smart and began issuing “retrospectives” (once you’ve got the complete set, there’s no reason to come back for more). The Horace Silver Retrospective is excellent, despite some wacky new-age fluff on the last disc.

But it kept me from fully exploring The Cape Verdean Blues – and Silver’s sense of drama and dynamics are especially strong on The African Queen (Bonita, also missing from the Retrospective, is top-shelf too)… The African Queen

Most casual listeners are familiar with Silver’s classic, Song for My Father. After all, Steely Dan appropriated it for the opening of their hit, Rikki Don’t Lose That Number… Song for My Father

But further down on the Rudy Van Gelder remaster of the same-titled CD (yes, the RVGs sound great) is a hidden gem – a trio recording of a tune that gets the full-band treatment earlier, Que Pasa. It’s deep stuff, springing from Silver’s Cape Verdean roots – and it makes the argument that the best jazz is based on the simplest riffs. Que Pasa

Check out more Blue Note goodness here.

More Blue Note covers… This one features an illustration by a young Andy Warhol…

Here’s a Lee Morgan title that created a rare jazz “hit” in 1965 — The Sidewinder…

A classic image — from 1958…

This last one is signature Reid Miles — perfectly cropped photo combined with stylized typography…

Remember the box set? Actually, in a year or two we might be asking ourselves, remember compact discs?

I came fairly late to the CD party – which is probably a good thing, because a research team comprising the world’s leading acousticians recently found that first-generation CDs from the mid-‘80s sound like complete dogshit. All that tinny, undefined high-end noise and hardly any bass. Which is probably fine if you’re listening to tinny, undefined, noisy and baseless pop music from the Eighties, but virtually useless if you’re trying to get your groove on to James Brown and The Fabulous Flames.

Once I started buying CDs, I became one of those maniacal completists who needed to replace virtually his entire record collection with what most of us considered to be a clearly superior format. Yes, I was part of a small army of consumers that kept the major labels propped up about 20 years longer than they deserved.

I won’t even argue that CDs sound better than vinyl. I’ve listened to heavyweight virgin vinyl records played on high-end turntables hooked up to tube-driven amplifiers, and it’s truly a heavenly sound. Just a few weeks ago, nephew Dan convinced me that some 45s actually sound even better than LPs – something about more music data per inch of groove, greater presence and resolution, etc. He played me a French rock ‘n roll single from the early Sixties (might have been Johnny Hallyday), and I couldn’t deny it was sonically superior to the album he had on earlier. Check here for more on this late-breaking news.

But I’m still no audiophile (as evidenced by the term “complete dogshit,” which doesn’t pop up much in Sound and Vision magazine). All things roughly equal – in other words, as long as it wasn’t a Wang Chung CD released in 1984 – I preferred the convenience of slapping a few compact discs in a carousel changer and letting it play all night long. And from there it was just a short walk to endlessly streaming, easily organized mp4 files… preferably played through a tube-driven amp.

Even if CDs become the next casualty in the continued demise of the music industry as we know it, I’ll miss the sheer, tactile pleasures of the box set.

There’s something about those sturdy, attractive booklets with exhaustive information on each recording session – date, studio, producer, engineer, instrumentation, label, chart position, etc… The way everything neatly fits together, like a set of building blocks for kids (appropriate, since we usually give or get box sets for Christmas)… The sense that you’re holding in your hands the most important works of a major recording artist’s entire career – which is probably as enjoyable for me as it is humbling for the artist.

Based on these and other important criteria – like whether I own it – RCR’s research subordinassociates are proud to offer this carefully calibrated list of the 10 Greatest Box Sets of All Time (in no particular order). We’ll apologize in advance for the fact that a few of these are long out of print… and that we’re only covering half of them in this post.

Boogie Uproar: Texas Blues and R&B, 1947-1954… The good Brits who run the JSP label deserve some sort of royal commendation for their consistently first-rate and affordable box sets. If anyone asks me where to start with musical giants like Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt or Louis Jordan, I just tell them to plunk down $30 (or less, depending on where you shop) and buy one of their budget-priced, five-disc sets – you’ll have just about all the Bird, Django or Jordan you need. Granted, most of that stuff had already been available elsewhere… but you’d be hard-pressed to find virtually all of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s classic Peacock recordings in one place. For those who like slashing Texas blues guitar backed by a tough-as-nails horn section, this is the motherlode. Rounder Records gave us a stingy 12-song Peacock collection back in ’92; JSP ups the ante with 38 cuts of prime Gatemouth… PLUS 35 cuts by an even harder-edged Goree Carter… PLUS four by another overlooked and underrated Texan, Zuzu Bollin… PLUS 18 by the virtually unknown but notable blues shouter/guitarist Lester “I can’t lose with the stuff I use” Williams. And, of course, it took a British label to deliver the goods. Here’s just a small taste… That’s Your Daddy Yaddy Yo/Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

Grant Green Retrospective: 1961-1966… Next to JSP, the best source for quality box sets is probably the Blue Note jazz label… but it appears they might have released their last set several years ago (another great box-set label, Rhino Records, seems to be struggling). If you can still find them, I highly recommend virtually all of these collections – the complete Blue Note Sixties sessions of Dexter Gordon and Herbie Hancock, the complete Blue Note and Roost recordings of Bud Powell, the Horace Silver retrospective, etc. But if you follow RCR on a fairly regular basis, you know that all of us get a little light-headed when it comes to guitarist Grant Green. We believe every young guitar-shredder in America should be required to listen to Blue Note’s Grant Green Retrospective. It may not stick, but at least they’ll know what a true master sounds like. The first two discs feature some of the best organ-combo tunes ever recorded, including this funky workout featuring the great Big John Patton: Soul Woman And the last two discs show off Green’s prodigious jazz chops in a number of different settings, including one he used to play spirituals (love Hancock’s churchy piano on this one… some jazz is meant to be played loud): Go Down Moses This is beautifully recorded, deeply satisfying stuff – and once you get hooked, you may end up sounding as evangelical as we are about the real pride of St. Louis.

Sonny Boy Williamson: The Chess Years… This is one of my most prized possessions – all of Sonny Boy II’s Chess recordings (originally released on its Checker subsidiary), with a bonus disc of alternate takes and studio chatter. There’s just so much to savor on these discs – the dazzling guitar of eventual Cleveland resident Robert Lockwood Jr., the amazing piano of Otis Spann, the world’s greatest blues rhythm section – Willie Dixon on bass and Fred Below on drums… and, of course, Sonny Boy. His worst stuff sounds better than most of the blues recorded since the mid-‘60s. Sonny Boy always gets his due for his deeply soulful harp playing, but I keep coming back to his voice, which is unlike any other in blues. That little vibrato he’d throw in, especially on the lower notes, gets me every time. It’s like he’s mimicking the same guttural sound he gets out of his harp, which blew away the competition (except for Little Walter, of course) with no amplification at all: Help Me On one tune, he even mimics the howl of dogs on the hunt. And hard-core blues hounds always like to bring up the famous exchange with Leonard Chess on Little Village (hey, I’ve already shared it with you twice… check it here). Unfortunately, this set is long gone – but you can pick up most of the pieces as part of various Chess re-releases, like the Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (on mp3).

Five Guys Walk Into A Bar (Faces)… At RCR, we like our rock ‘n roll ragged but right, with no overdubs or apologies. And in this case, amazingly, it involves the same guy who spent much of the last decade snuggling up to the Great American Songbook. Hard to believe that Rod Stewart was once among the world’s pre-eminent rockers. And he had one hell of a band to keep him honest – Ian McLagan on keyboards, Ron Wood on guitar, Ronnie Lane on bass and Kenney Jones on drums. The beauty of “Five Guys” is that it goes far beyond a glorified collection of greatest hits. Sure, you get the best of their studio recordings, like Cindy Incidentally, Ooh La La and Miss Judy’s Farm. But this set is packed with live recordings, rehearsal tapes, BBC broadcasts and other oddities that showcase the Faces in all their drunken glory – just letting it rip like a red-hot bar band near the end of a long night. Most of the credit for “Five Guys” goes to McLagan, who selected the songs (some from his own archives) and sequenced them out of chronological order for a better listening experience. He also gets extra points for coming across in interviews as one of the coolest guys on the planet. And he’s a pretty damn good player to boot: Miss Judy’s Farm (live)/Faces

The Complete Stax-Volt Singles: 1959-1968… If Memphis soul is America’s greatest musical treasure, then this is Fort Knox. I borrowed this box set from a friend of mine, a fellow musician who played keyboards and sax. We spent hours studying these arrangements and even worked a few Stax-Volt nuggets into our band’s set list. Then he passed away suddenly at the young age of 44, which somehow gave greater meaning to a cardboard box and nine shiny discs that both of us already revered, in an unhealthy, music-nerd kind of way. So this one’s dedicated to J.D., who truly was the coolest guy on the planet. And getting back to the subject at hand, it’s hard to hold back the superlatives. Sure, you get the tunes that all of us know and love, like Green Onions and Soul Man and Try A Little Tenderness and Knock On Wood. But there’s also a lot of unsung soul on these discs – shockingly good material that remains almost completely overlooked, probably even by a few people who actually own this collection. I’ll leave you with samples of three hidden gems… and I’m proud to say J.D. and I came close to nailing the third one (R.I.P., John). I’m Glad To Do It/C.L. Blast Able Mable/Mable John I’m Going Home/Prince Conley

To be continued…

Sam and Dave on video… The first clip, from the 1967 Stax-Volt Revue in Europe, shows why none of the other performers wanted to follow Sam and Dave. By ’69, they’d gotten the whole band in on the act.

So this guy sends me a couple of comments… How could you overlook this tune? Why didn’t you include this artist? And I tell him, write your own damn post. Well, he did… and I’m pleased to report it meets RCR’s high standards for thought-filled, fact-based music criticism. Here’s Kevin Swan’s take on the forgotten genius of jazz guitar – Grant Green.

When I fled the hills of Summit County, Ohio, for a small college nestled in the mountains of southeastern Vermont in the mid ’70s, I carried with me a few clothes, my Martin D-18 and three wooden produce crates full of vinyl LPs. Everyone I knew had at least one of those lettuce boxes (pre-iPod), as they were the perfect size for record albums yet barely light enough to be carried by one person.

I eventually found my way to the basement college radio station there, and after a semester of providing menial off-air intern work, I landed a late-night disc jockey spot. At 37 watts, the station’s transmitter could hardly be called a “flame-thrower,” but in that neck of the woods, it was the only station at the far left of the dial (and of the political spectrum). After sundown, it beamed a few miles west into Vermont, east into New Hampshire and barely crossed the border of Massachusetts.

I had been playing in garage bands for a few years and was nutty for modern music, especially jazz-tinged experimenters like Gary Burton, Frank Zappa and Steely Dan. They were hip, smart and geeky all at the same time, and when I played their music I often also aired their “primary sources.” I would play a song from a big-time rock band, followed by a cut from an artist that influenced them in some way. So, Steely Dan’s cover of Ellington’s East St. Louis Toodle-oo was followed by the real, original deal: Black and Tan Fantasy, a song co-written by Sir Duke and Bubber Miley.

Decades later, I heard Walter Becker, the guitarist and one-half of Steely Dan, reveal in an interview with Marian McPartland that his primary influence as a guitar player had been Grant Green. In the era of Guitar Hero and the ubiquitous, aimless noodling of gear rats at Guitar Center – drunk on Hendrix and Stevie Ray – the subtle playing style of Green can be a challenging change of pace. It is classic literature versus pulp fiction, the full complexity of a Cabernet compared with the bum’s rush of Thunderbird.

Grant Green played blues and boogie-woogie music in St. Louis in the late 1950s before transitioning to “hard bop” jazz, performing with drummer Elvin Jones. New York was the jazz magnet, though, and Green was drawn there in 1961 to record his first organ trio side for the legendary Blue Note label. He was both group leader and session man, eventually becoming the label’s most prolific recording musician.

With Baby Face Willette at the Hammond B-3 and Ben Dixon on the kit, Green’s deft touch and staccato phrasing is whimsical yet artistic on Miss Ann’s Tempo: Miss Ann’s Tempo

My heart was first stolen by Grant Green, though, in nearly 15 minutes of contemplative piano and guitar sketching on Idle Moments. (This could serve as a one-song textbook for any musician trying to play slowly, quietly and fully, all at the same time.) Less influenced by chord-based guitarists (think Wes Montgomery), Green chose horn phrasing, emulating Charley Parker’s sax and Miles’ trumpet: Idle Moments

On the Blue Note release “Up at Minton’s,” Green doubles Turrentine’s swinging sax runs with grace and wit, throws in a few countermelodies, and then launches into a tasty solo: Broadway/Stanley Turrentine with Grant Green

He grew as a composer and session player, drawing style and breadth from his mid-’60s work with diverse talents such as Herbie Hancock, Stanley Turrentine and the hugely underrated piano player Sonny Clark. Green also didn’t shy away from the obligatory reinvention of a show-tune standard – although this one, from the posthumously released “Matador,” is probably more of a tribute to Coltrane (in fact, Green stole half of the sax great’s band – pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones – to record this album). I love how Green playfully scoots around and through the melody: My Favorite Things

His choices (if indeed they were his) of material to cover on recordings weren’t always top-notch. I have to skip right past the vapid I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Ease Back falls flat on my ear as somewhat contrived. While Green’s guitar is kept high in the mix, it lacks originality and seems less interesting, especially when he throws in more repetitive riffs. Better to spend a few minutes with the groove-laden dexterity of Sookie Sookie or his live recording of Maiden Voyage: Maiden Voyage

Personal problems, not the least being heroin addiction, side-tracked Green for most of the late 1960s, and his return in 1969 as a funk and groove player reflected the changing landscape of music and recording. On The Windjammer he seems less introspective, more willing to experiment with new sounds and techniques than in his earlier and more straight-ahead recordings: The Windjammer

So how is it that Green’s name rarely comes up in a late-night Great Guitarists Discussion? Taking nothing away from the obvious artistry, my feeling is that his impassive stage presence – sitting stock still, looking at his hands while playing – didn’t click with his live audiences. Green also skipped around the style book, recording ballads, covers, gospel, Latin and groove – all in a single decade. And his style of playing, which relied on vocal- or horn-based melody, was, until recently, considered anachronistic.

In 1979, Green’s heart gave out at age 43, in part due to his heroin use. His son, Grant Green, Jr., carries on the family tradition (albeit left-handed), recording and touring with his guitar- and organ-anchored Masters of Groove. To come full circle, I should note that Steely Dan session drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie plays drums for Junior.

Green on Blue… Some of our favorite Grant Green album covers on the Blue Note label:

Here’s a little taste of “The Latin Bit” – muy sabroso! My Little Suede Shoes

Grant Green on video… Only one that we’re aware of on youtube. Here’s an excerpt from a jam session with fellow jazz guitarists Barney Kessel and Kenny Burrell.

I love the sound of a Hammond B3 doing a slow-boil under the bluesy guitar of Grant Green or Kenny Burrell, or wrapped around a warm, soulful sax.  But there’s a thin line between the best of these recordings and pure schmaltz, which is probably why the organ combo remains a criminally ignored sub-genre of American roots music.

The Hammond organ was invented in 1934 by mechanical engineer Laurens Hammond, who also invented the technology behind 3-D glasses (maybe he was a numerologist too).  And his namesake instrument was destined to remain a staple at churches, hockey rinks and old-timey movie theaters until Jimmy Smith transformed it into the “new sound of jazz” back in the 1950s.

Jimmy recorded for the Blue Note label, which found itself in a bit of a rut after a string of jazz albums that didn’t exactly light up the charts.  Upon hearing Smith for the first time at a New York City jazz club, the label’s mercurial front man, Alfred Lion, decided right then and there to sign him.  Lion eventually confessed that he wanted to sell the label to become Smith’s tour manager, just so he could hear him play every night.

Smith quickly revitalized the label by taking advantage of the new LP format with extended workouts like his take on Dizzy Gillespie’s The Champ… The Champ

At this point, it would be useful to explain that Smith is playing intricate bebop figures on top with his right hand, chording with the left, and kicking out a rock-solid bass with the instrument’s foot pedals.  So essentially, all Smith needed to fill a small club with a wall of sound was a drummer – but he created the classic B3 trio by adding a guitar, with that chair initially held by the very capable Thornel Schwartz.

But my favorite Jimmy Smith recordings are the ones that create a smoky, late-night vibe, usually with the exceptional Kenny Burrell on guitar and Stanley Turrentine on sax.  And classics like “Back at the Chicken Shack,” “Midnight Special” and “Home Cookin’” still serve as the gold standards for those who prefer the “less is more” approach.  Listen to Burrell’s perfect hand-off to Turrentine on Midnight Special… Midnight Special

Inspired by Smith’s success, many other keyboard players jumped on the B3 bandwagon and recorded their own soul-jazz classics during the ‘50s through ‘70s – most notably, “Brother” Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Shirley Scott and Dr. Lonnie Smith.  Here’s McDuff jamming with a young George Benson on guitar, before Benson moved on to his own unique brand of pop-schmaltz… Scuffin’

Even jazz greats like Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt decided they’d had enough of half-full jazz clubs and abandoned more traditional acoustic bands in favor of organ-driven soul-jazz.  And one of the finest examples of the genre features Ammons and Stitt trading riffs on this standout cut from 1971… You Talk That Talk

The organist on this cut is Leon Spencer, one of the unsung heroes of the instrument.  And his experience underscores the thin line I alluded to earlier.  Back in the day, guys like Spencer, Don Patterson, Charles Kynard, Sonny Phillips and other more obscure artists played their fair share of inner-city clubs in places like Detroit and Newark, where getting asses on the dance floor was just as important as getting your own stuff across to a new audience.  And even the best organ combo records I’ve picked up over the years have at least one tune that sounds like a second-rate version of a pop or soul standard.  Here’s Spencer cookin’ up one of his fine originals… First Gravy

And here’s Spencer toying with a watered-down version of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me… Mercy Mercy Me

Hey, I’m not going to begrudge anyone trying to make a decent living – but I’ll take Gravy over reheated Motown any day of the week.

If there is such a thing as a desert-island organ combo playlist, it would have at least four or five cuts with Grant Green on guitar and Big John Patton on organ.  And it would lead off with this little slice of soul-jazz nirvana from “Got a Good Thing Goin,’” a 1966 Blue Note release (the disc’s second tune, Soul Woman, is just as good)… The Yodel

On these and other cuts by accomplished players like Green and Patton, you get the overwhelming attitude that “yeah, I can burn my way through any jazz standard you throw at me… but this is what I really want to play.”

The organ combo is far from finished.  Just pick up a recent release by Medeski, Martin & Wood or even Texas blues guitar great Jimmie Vaughan, who seems to always find a way to sneak an organ-driven instrumental into the mix.  In interviews, Vaughan has expressed his admiration of Gene Ammons and other soul-jazz giants – and his own band features Bill Willis, a former house bassist for Cincinnati’s legendary King Records who learned how to play organ from Mr. Honky Tonk himself, Bill Doggett.  On this cut from Vaughan’s first solo CD, Willis uses his left hand to play bass notes on the B3… Tilt A Whirl

I’ll leave you with this cut from Medeski, Martin & Wood’s third release, “Friday Afternoon in the Universe,” from back in 1995.  If you ever find yourself kicking back with a cocktail at the space station, you definitely want to slap this one on the interplanetary hi-fi… The Lover

Blue Note Soul-Jazz Album Covers… A few favorites:

The Doctor is In… Couldn’t resist adding this youtube video of a resplendent Dr. Lonnie Smith plying his craft on the B3… I like how he dives down to play a bass solo on the foot pedals with his hands.  He may be a Doctor, but he’s not above engaging in a little schtick!