Listening to Prestige 459: Johnny "Hammond" Smith

If Don Ellis gave us an album in which virtually everything was unexpected, Prestige brings us back to familiar ground with Johnny "Hammond" Smith. In those days, it seemed that people couldn't get enough of that soul jazz organ sound, and Smith was one of the most reliable of the bunch, solid for listening or dancing. He used the same Philadelphia cohorts he'd been using, came up once again with a nicely chosen mixture of originals and standards--and, in point of fact, distributed the results of this session over the same two albums as the last session, Stimulation, which was released right away, and Opus de Funk, which waited until 1966.

So I don't have a lot to add to my commentary on the February 14th session. This is an extension of that one, and it's still good music.

Esmond Edwards produced both dates. "Sticks and Stones" became the flip side of "The End of a Love Affair." from the February session, as the first 45 RPM single off the album. "Sad Eyes" was the A side of a 45 with "Opus de Funk," released in tandem with the 1966 release of the second album.

There comes a time in every long book, novel or nonfiction, when you're trapped in the middle. You can barely remember starting it, you can't imagine ever finishing it, you can no longer imagine why anyone would want to read it. I guess I'm pretty much at that stage now. It's been five years of my life, twelve years in the history of Prestige. And yet my enthusiasm hasn't flagged. I can thank the music for that, and the incredible musicians who made it.  I still look forward to every session, and I still find myself spurred to write about it by the freshness of the music, the stories of the unique individuals who made the music, my own memories of who I was when I first heard it or the excitement of hearing it and discovering it for the first time.

The 1960s, which we are just nosing into here, were a time of great social change, and a time when a number of musicians chafed at calling the music they were playing "jazz." It was a name that grew out of a music that was disrespected, a name associated with back-alley sexual encounters, a name that does not reflect on the importance of what many have called "America's classical music." But to me, whatever its origins, the name has been hallowed by Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, consecrated by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, immortalized by Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz...and Don Ellis and Johnny "Hammond" Smith and Shirley Scott and Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson and Walt Dickerson and people like Al Francis or Eddie McFadden who made brief contributions and disappeared, and the name of "jazz" is ennobled by their presence.