Listen to Prestige 435: Johnny "Hammond" Smith

Organ, vibes, guitar. This time the organist is Johnny "Hammond" Smith, and except for bassist Wendell Marshall, all the other musicians are new to Prestige.

And pretty new all around. Freddie McCoy, 28 years old at the time of this session, was making his recording debut. Were the vibes a good fit for the soul jazz sound? Prestige had begun to explore the possibility with Lem Winchester, but his untimely death brought an end to that. Was organ-vibes the way

to go, and was McCoy the answer? Bob Weinstock had always had a thing for vibes, according to Bob Porter, Prestige soul jazz producer and author of Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975. And McCoy? Perhaps the answer, but not right away. He was used on this and one other Smith session, then did no further recording until 1965, when he became one of the label's hot acts for remainder of the decade, after which he left the music scene.

Eddie McFadden, like Thornel Schwartz (with whom Smith also recorded), was a Philadelphia soul jazz guitarist who mainly worked with organ combos. He was actually one of the pioneers of the sound, having worked with Jimmy Smith and recorded 12 albums with him between 1957-58. As with McCoy, his career rose and set with the soul jazz organ combo. After his work with Johnny Smith ended in 1966, he would work some more with Jimmy Smith but not record again with him. He returned to Philadelphia, where he lived with his mother, a former jazz singer, played local clubs, and was a fixture on the Philadepphia scene. He made two small label albums in 1977 and 1978 with two other organists.

Leo Stevens came up with Johnny Smith and worked as his drummer on nearly all of his albums, and those albums are the full extent of his discography.

This was the first of two sessions that Smith and this same group recorded for Prestige in early 1961 (the second would come on on May 12), and the two sessions were combined and released on two different albums, Stimulation, which came out in 1961, and Opus de Funk, which was held back unti 1966.

During this turn-of-the-decade period, Prestige seems to not have been entirely sure what they had with Smith, in terms of packaging and marketing. Bob Porter recalls that he was considered the best ballad player among jazz organists. If the organ wasn't taken seriously as a jazz instrument until Jimmy Smith shined a spotlight on it, it had certainly developed a niche in the pop world of the 1950s, with balladeers like Lenny Dee, but that wasn't the way Weinstock and Esmond Edwards saw Johnny Smith, either. If they had, his records would have been released on Moodsville.

Instead, they were released on New Jazz, which had a very different cachet in these years: described as specializing in emerging artists, they tended toward the more experimental. less commercial. And putting him with the likes of Oliver Nelson certainly suggested that direction.

Gettin' the Message, the album pairing Smith and Lem Winchester, was the first of Smith's recording sessions to get the Prestige label, but Stimulation was actually the first to be released on Prestige, so it can be said to be the beginning of Smith's soul jazz career.

Of the four songs on this session that made it to Stimulation, three of them are ballads not normally associated with soul jazz. "Cry Me a River" is the torchiest of torch songs. "Spring is Here," by Rodgers and Hart, and "Invitation," by Bronislaw Kaper (best known in jazz circles for "On Green Dolphin Street") both became jazz standards when recorded by John Coltrane in a 1958 session for Prestige. The one Smith original is "Ribs an' Chips," and it's interesting how often food, especially soul food,  gets into the titles of funky music, from early rhythm and blues instrumentals like "Cornbread" to Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's forays into the kitchen, and "Ribs an' Chips" has all the ingredients that went into those earlier recipes, the catchy riff, the rhythmic propulsion, the funky blues notes. It's mostly Mr. Hammond on the Hammond, as is the whole session, but Freddie McCoy really starts to get into the possibilities of soul jazz vibes.

"Autumn Leaves" and "Almost Like Being in Love," which were held back for the second album, are also ballads, so it definitely would appear that Johnny "Hammond" Smith as funkster was an idea that was slow developing.

The other funky track from this session, which became the title track of the later-released album and also a 45 RPM single, is Horace Silver's "Opus de Funk," first recorded by Silver in 1953, then by Milt Jackson for Prestige in 1954. It was widely recorded throughout the 1950s, though mostly not by groups that you'd immediately associate with funk: several Swedish combos, and a group of Nashville session musicians.

Esmond Edwards produced this and the May session. The album was released on Prestige. Later, both sessions would be conjoined in a CD reissue.