Billboard : 10/27/1956
Score of 79

Smith’s first two LPs have restored the legitimacy of the organ as a jazz instrument – and also have established Smith as one of the truly brilliant innovators of the day. Volume 3 is full of new surprises. Take the opening selection, Judo Mambo, as an example. The striking sound effect Smith achieves by his manipulation of stops, with Latin rhythm added, and with a judicious pinch of atonal harmonies for seasoning – all makes for quite a heady brew. As Smith gets better known, this volume will be in brisk demand.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 10/07/1956

Jimmy Smith at The Organ has aroused a lot of controversy among jazz critics in the east, centering, first, on the question of whether an organ can play jazz at all and, second, on whether Smith’s organ work is or is not the reincarnation of Charlie Parker‘s work on alto. So far as I am concerned, the answer is “no” – but there are better critics who seriously say “yes.”

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Down Beat : 11/28/1956
Nat Hentoff : 3 stars

Hammond organist Smith’s third LP reunderlines the virtues and faults of the first two. The sturdy accompaniment is by drummer Donald Bailey and guitarist Thornel Schwartz. I expect Bailey does as well as can be expected in this context since there are few more ungrateful assignments than playing percussionist to an instrument with as much power of its own as the Hammond, and its execrable, all-swallowing sound. Schwartz is basic, has a deep sound. Schwartz is basic, has a deep beat, and does provide from time to time a modicum of relief from the battering-ram that is the protagonist of this overweighted trio.

As for Smith, he again cooks steamily on up-tempos with a conception that is admittedly more horn-like modern than almost anyone else has been able to achieve on the organ (but let’s not forget Les Strand). Smith also swings as hard as even the whole Basie band might desire. But at base, it’s a matter of his not having as yet consistently good taste. (Annotator Leonard Feather is surprised that Jesse Crawford is one of Jimmy’s favorite organists. I’m not at all.) Jimmy’s ballads are still marked in places by Joan Crawford-like sentimentality (Autumn Leaves) and always (through no fault of Jimmy) that underwater Hammond sound.

Even on the up-tempos, there is not as much flow, as much of a feeling of long, building lines as would be desirable – by my criteria anyway. There is a choppiness, a constant punching that gets rather wearying. A final note: the coy irrelevancies that Smith works into Waterfront are embarrassing musically and are the reason why this is the lowest rated of the series.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

One of the highlights of the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival was a panel discussion regarding the future of jazz. A group of musicians, including a well-known concert conductor and several jazzmen, expounded weightily on the nature of things to come.

After many ideas had been expressed and several theories advanced, one of the panelists, Quincy Jones, shocked the audience as well as his fellow panelists by declaring that the entire idea for arguing about the future of jazz was basically insignificant; for if such a forum had been held in 1940, he pointed out, before any of the panelists had heard Charlie Parker, many erudite opinions might have been expressed, all of which would have been completely negated after the speakers had had their ears opened by Bird. “The same thing can happen again,” said Quincy. “Here we sit talking about the future of jazz, and maybe next week or next year some cat will come swinging out of Chittlin’ Switch who is so great that this symposium will have been a waste of time.”

These heretical remarks come to mind when one considers the case of one James Oscar Smith. Just as Parker and Gillespie accomplished something completely unpredictable on the sax and trumpet, just as Blanton and Christian reduced the status of all their predecessors through a new approach to their instruments, so has Jimmy Smith revolutionized the concept of jazz on the Hammond organ. Now that it has happened, it is easy to say, “Why didn’t it happen before?” But just as easy to answer, “Because nobody else had the imagination, or at least nobody else applied it in this particular direction.” In other words, Jimmy Smith simply got there first with the most.

It took only a few days after Jimmy’s arrival for his first gig at the Café Bohemia for the word to spread among leading modern jazzmen that something unique had arrived on the scene; but it took many years of frustration and preparation for Jimmy to reach this initial recognition, which soon after was consolidated when Alfred Lion arranged his trio debut on BLP 1512 and 1514. Born December 8, 1926 in Norristown, Pa., Jimmy first studied with his father, a pianist and teacher; his mother also sang and played. He attended the Orenstein School of Music in Philadelphia from 1947 to 1949, studying piano, bass fiddle, harmony and theory.

Jimmy’s professional debut began formally in 1942, when James, Sr. and James, Jr. had a father and son dance team at the Coconut Grove in Norristown. He continued to gig around locally during most of the 1940s, except for a war-time interlude that took him as far afield as U.S.O. posts in Sydney, Australia, Pearl Harbor and Guam. By 1949, he was playing dates in Newark, N.J. with Bobby Edwards’ Dial Tones and the Herb Scott quintet; the next year he was in Philadelphia with Johnny Sparrow and His Bows and Arrows, and from 1951-4 he was around the eastern seaboard with Donald Gardner and the Sonotones.

It was not until 1953, after hearing Wild Bill Davis, that Jimmy switched from piano to organ, a change that had to be accomplished slowly in view of the morass of rhythm and blues combo work in which he had so long been sunk. (Jimmy names Bill Davis and, of all people, Jesse Crawford as his favorite organists.)

By 1955, his course was clearly charted: he had to have his own group and had to stick to modern jazz and the Hammond organ, in order to fulfill his ambition to become an outstanding exponent of the contemporary idioms on an instrument whose jazz possibilities until that time had been less than fully explored. The setting he established for himself was an instrumentation that has now become standardized for Hammond organ trios, though the Smith trio use of the format is far from conventional. Thornel Schwartz, Jr., the guitarist, born in Philadelphia May 29, 1927, has a background not unlike Jimmy’s own, having begun with a small rhythm combo and progressed to the Chris Powell rhythm and blues group (which then included the late Clifford Brown) and the Donald Gardner combo. From 1952-5 he played with Freddie Cole, Nat Cole’s brother, joining Jimmy in the fall of ‘55. An admirer of Kenny Burrell and Tal Farlow, Thornel says, “My ambition is to combine the speed of Johnny Smith, the ideas of Tal Farlow and the feeling of Charlie Christian.”

Jimmy‘s drummer, Donald Orlando Bailey, also known as “Donald Duck”, is another Philadelphian born March 26, 1934. Though his brother plays good tenor sax and his father is an excellent drummer, Donald has never studied; his first major inspiration derived from some Max Roach records he heard in 1949. He worked with Lee Morgan and various Philadelphia combos before joining Smith. Donald says that Specs Wright helped him gain coordination and that Max Roach and Art Blakey are responsible for his style; he names Philly Joe Jones as an additional inspiration.

The first side opens with a characteristically original item, Judo Mambo, in which Jimmy’s resourceful use of a variety of stops, the frog-like effect at the opening and closing, the use of Latin percussion effects, the exciting drum solo and the gradual fade to an atonal ending combine to make what one might call one of his most unusual performances, were not all of his performances unusual. Willow Weep for Me is played very slow, but with a double-time feel and attractive use of the guitar. Lover Come Back to Me is taken at a racehorse pace, with a long organ solo that builds tremendous tension, followed by some inspired solo work by Thornel.

The old Thelonious Monk tune, Well, You Needn’t, a simple riff tune based mainly on the chords of F and G-flat, moves at a medium swinging pace with Jimmy and Thornel at their funkiest and Bailey taking some effective breaks. Fiddlin’ the Minors, a fast riff opus, again shows how effectively Jimmy makes use of minor keys.

Autumn Leaves, with the guitar in a melodic mood, shows Jimmy on a more grandioso kick and provides an interesting change of mood. I Cover the Waterfront, taken faster than one might expect, is a completely different and original interpretation, from its slightly humorous opening all the way to the flatted-fifth ending.

I don’t know how long it will be before there are a dozen other organists of whom it will be said that they play in the Jimmy Smith style, but it is the surest tribute to Jimmy that this probably is an inevitable development; for the mark of originality is unmistakably present here, and in originality, no less in jazz than in the other arts, lies the key to greatness.