Listening to Prestige 403: Johnny "Hammond" Smith

The trouble with putting a label on a form of music is that it creates the temptation not to listen to it too closely. "Oh, yeah, that's [fill in the blank -- trad, bebop, hard bop, soul jazz], with all the clichés of the genre." What clichés? "Oh, you, know...just listen." But if you really just listen, without burdening yourself with a label, maybe they aren't clichés. Maybe every time a group of talented musicians go into a recording studio, they're there to find something that makes their getting together, and getting it down on wax or vinyl or tape or digital, worth the doing. That's why Cannonball Adderley so firmly resisted having his music called "soul jazz," for all the good it did him. Or, for that matter, why so many musicians resist having their music called "jazz."

Johnny "Hammond" Smith plays soul jazz. It's gotta be. For a start, it's got that organ, right? Like Jimmy Smith. He even has Jimmy Smith's guitar player. And he's got that bluesy-gospely feeling like Ray Charles, right? He even does a jazzy version of "Swanee River," just like Ray.

Well, yeah, except no. As the new decade found its voice, the organ was a large part of that voice, and jazz labels were signing up organists because people wanted to hear them, but they no more sounded alike or played the same clichés than did tenor saxophone players in the 1940s and 1950s.

And OK, the label is not so bad. If someone came to you and said they wanted to start a soul jazz collection, and who are some of the musicians they should collect, you'd certainly include Johnny "Hammond" Smith. But hopefully you would tell the neophyte collector, "Once you've started to pull your collection together, sit down and listen to each record separately." Just as, if you listen closely to a boxed set of Tito Puente, you'll quickly realize that no two rhythms are alike, in your soul jazz collection you'll hear some virtuosi of the Hammond organ, each of them finding his or her own way to explore it. And there are a lot of possibilities in that organ.

All but "Swanee River," on this album, are Smith originals, and "Swanee River" might as well be, in its unique deviations from anything that Stephen Foster or Ray Charles had in mind. Smith can do it as a composer, from catchy melodic hooks to intriguing development, to opening up avenues for his bandmates to explore, to finding, like Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott and other premiere organists of the day, his own intricacies of tonality and percussive experimentation.

Smith worked for the first time here with Eddie McFadden, who had come from working with Jimmy Smith, and had come from the soul jazz cauldron of Philadelphia, where, like Thornel Schwartz, he had developed a great sense of what a guitar and organ could do together. And he worked for the only time with Lem Winchester, who came from just a hop and a jump south of Philadelphia. How much Winchester might have continued to explore the soul jazz idiom we'll never know.

Smith tosses him right into the cauldron with "Dementia," giving

him the first chorus, then following him with a McFadden solo, before entering with his own. Jazz is many things, but always it's hospitable to soloists, and with "Dementia," the first tune of the day although not the first on the album, Smith serves notice that a range of solo voices, and the flexibility to play off each other, will be what he's looking for. I liked "Dementia" a lot--the way it developed, and the part that each musician played in that development. And I found the same thing happening, in different ways, through each tune on the album.

Yes, original. Yes, unique voices finding ways to challenge and blend with each other. And...soul jazz to the bone, and to the marrow in the bone. That seductive sound that tells you you're gonna dig this. You're gonna tap your feet, you're gonna get up and dance, you're gonna--in Charles Mingus's phrase--git it in your soul.

Esmond Edwards produced. The album was called Gettin' the Message and the 45 off it was "Swanee River Parts 1 and 2."