Billboard : 08/24/1959
Four stars

Smith applies some interesting organ effects to his stylings of a flock of stands and original tunes. All the Things You Are, is given an especially good outing. Some surprising tempo changes also mark the artist’s attractive approach. He continues to grow, and with exposure this could be his biggest yet.

—–

Cashbox : 08/29/1959

By far the most accomplished jazz organist, Smith is able to swing with an instrument that at most times seems cumbersome. Smith’s sidemen are Eddie McFadden, guitar, and Donald Bailey, drums, replaced by Art Blakey on Zing Went The Strings of My Heart, which make it the outstanding track in the album. Other numbers include All The Things You Are and The Fight (unaccompanied organ solos) and Somebody Loves Me. Highly evocative package.

—–

Down Beat : 10/01/1959
Don DeMichael : 2 stars

Smith is an organist of considerable technical skill, but this skill runs away with him on this LP.

All the tracks except All the Things are infected with either a wobble-wobble vibrato, a wild plethora of meaningless notes, or affected Garnerisms. The Fight and All the Things are unaccompanied organ solos. The former is an original totally lacking in restraint or form, while the latter is a sensitive Bachian interpretation. Such disparity is amazing.

Zing is marred by an unintentional duel between Blakey and Smith during Smith’s solo. Smith affects a Garner approach to Moon and You, combining it with an irritatingly fast vibrato. Somebody, on the other hand, blends guitar with straight-tone organ to good effect.

Smith is a formidable and important organist; and although this LP is not up to his previous ones, it should not detract from his artistic standing.

—–

Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

Looking at Jimmy Smith in the daytime, his legs straddling a piano bench as he listens to his latest LP, his business suit enveloping a white turtleneck sweater, you might sooner place him as a bantam-weight contender than as the world’s greatest jazz organist. Watching him work at night, crouched over the organ, fingers and feet moving at incredible speed, you know him for what he is – a musician dedicated, inspired, possessed, a craftsman in whom the spirit moves with baffling celerity and entrancing complexity.

If a parallel must be drawn, and I doubt it, Jimmy Smith may be called the Bud Powell of the organ. There could be logic in the analogy, for his own home town, Norristown, Pa., is a few miles from the Powell family demesne in Willow Grove. “I knew Bud and his brother well; in fact, Richie and I used to play cowboys together. I would go over to their place every day and Bud would make fun of Richie and me, saying we wouldn’t learn. But he thought I had more spunk than Richie, because Richie was dilatory and I at least wanted to learn. But I watched Bud, and dug his hands, and marveled at that unique attack he always had.”

As a pianist Jimmy developed a not inconsiderable attack and technique of his own, which went to waste in the dreary tours of rhythm and blues gigs that engaged too much of his time during the first decade of his career.

His career as a Hammond organist did not begin until 1955, when he was 28. “I’d split the band I was with,” he recalls, “and I was on my own, not working anyplace as a pianist. I tried to get others to teach me organ, but either they didn’t have time or they were going out of town or something, so I had no training at all, formal or informal. I taught myself.”

Jimmy’s approach to self-tuition was an impressive demonstration of perseverance. “I made a deal with a studio in Philadelphia where they sell organs, and they let me practice there for a dollar an hour. Finally I got enough money for a down-payment on my own organ. I got a Hammond B-2 model, which cost about $3,600. Today I have a B-3, which has four extra percussion stops.

“Well, when I finally got my own organ I put it in a warehouse and I took a big sheet of paper and drew a floor plan of the pedals, the same as you would draw a chart of the vibes. Anytime I wanted the gauge the spaces and where to drop my foot down on which pedal, I’d look at the chart.

“I was paying a guy about five bucks to let me spend three hours a day stuck in the back of that warehouse, because I couldn’t take the organ anywhere else in the neighborhood. Sometimes I would stay there for four hours, or maybe all day long if I’d luck up on something and get some new ideas, using different stops. I was staying alone in a hotel in Philadelphia at Broad and Poplar. I’d eat breakfast and then take my lunch to the warehouse with me and stay there until I was satisfied that I’d done what I need to for that day.

“You know, you just don’t sit down at the organ and play it simply because you happen to know how to play piano; because the main thing is keeping a good bass line, just like a good bass fiddle would play. I had two years of double bass in school, so I knew just how that bass line is supposed to run and how to make it come out even with my solo. Everything has to tell a story, and the bass and the hands have to mesh.”

After emerging from close to three months’ isolation in the warehouse, Jimmy felt he was ready, and before long he opened at a night spot in Atlantic City. Now he had to face the additional problems of physical transportation for his cumbersome plaything. At first he had no facilities at all. Today he has an elaborate truck with hi-fi, radio, two speakers and all necessary comforts. He is enough of an engineer to save service charges and take care of emergencies himself if a tube blows out or a wire needs soldering on the organ.

“I worked as a single at first,” he says, “then the word began to get around, and soon I was able to carry a guitar player and drummer along with me. What I had was more or less a different approach. I wanted to play the same style I played piano, and keep my contrary-bass motions running. Another thing about my identity – you know how Bags plays, he has that very slow vibrato. Well, I have three different vibratos I can use, and I have to cut all three of them down to get close to that sound of Bags’.”

Another of the unique Smith sound effects is achieved by use of the drawbars, whose eight extensions raise the overtones a fourth or a fifth at a time. Jimmy will often use, say, three flutes and one string stop, with four overtones on top, and, pulling the drawbars all the way out, he will get the effect of a four-octave unison, which to the untrained ear sounds like a ghostly parallel line to his solos, so high as to be almost at the edge of aural observance.

There Will Never Be Another You, which opens this session, mainly employs four string stops and one flute stop, with an attractive trill effect. Dramatic use of brass tops heightens the excitement toward the end.

The Fight is one of the most unusual and provocative of Jimmy’s experiments. An unaccompanied organ solo, it encompasses a bewildering variety of harmonic effects. One of the passages, with the whole-tone scale implications against the pedal-point seconds, originally suggest the title The Elf’s Dance. “It’s easy,” smiles Jimmy. “The whole thing was just built around a bunch of progressions. There’s a chant, then something that’s more like a march, and if it sounds like a church organ at times here, that’s because I am using more or less a churchy vibrato, a C-3, which gives you that chamber effect. The piece wasn’t written completely in advance; I just set a pattern of chords in my mind and worked around them.”

Blue Moon returns to the trio format, using stops similar to those employed on the first track. Again the sympathetic cooperation of Eddie McFadden, the Baltimore-born guitarist who joined the Smith trio in January, 1957, is an important factor in both solo and ensemble capacities.

All the Things You Are is another astonishingly unaccompanied Smith performance. “I took a part of the introduction from Ravel, with a touch of Johann Sebastian for flavor,” he explains. After the long and suspenseful introduction the melody is played in 3/4; the second chorus eases into four, though there is a generally ad lib atmosphere that makes time values secondary. Jimmy’s capacity for dramatically surprising endings is again demonstrated as he concludes this A-Flat performance with an F major seventh.

Zing Went the Strings of My Heart has the piquant added attraction of Art Blakey in place of Jimmy’s regular drummer, Donald Bailey. Taken at the kind of gait (Babs Gonzales called it “pure Nashua tempo”) that constitutes a challenge few musicians since Charlie Parker have been able to meet successfully, it uses three flutes and one string stop with the four-octave overtone unison described previously. That Jimmy can improvise, and improve creatively at this tempo, becomes even more incredible if you try tapping your foot to it, and bearing in mind the fact that his own left foot was going in four throughout. A highlight of the performance is a series of eight-bar trades with guitar and drums; another is the sudden crash-landing at the end.

Somebody Love Me returns to the regular trio personnel at a tempo that is actually medium-fast, though after Zing it seems practically funereal. Jimmy used just three flute stops and no strings on the first chorus.

I have taken the liberty of divulging a few technical secrets, for the first time, in these notes, because it would appear to me that nobody, even when equipped with the technical know-how, is likely to catch up with Jimmy, who’s off to something considerably more advantageous than a head start. Nevertheless he has already given rise to the inevitable flock of imitators, and has some philosophical comments of his own on them. “So many guys are having trouble, because a lot of them are trying my style on the organ now. I worked in Columbus, Ohio, and when I went back there they had about 18 organ players.”

The past year has seen the beginning of an era of esthetic and economic security for Jimmy. Though his television and radio exposure has been virtually nil, the fast-expanding library of his Blue Note records has served both as the cause and effect of his increasing audiences. Along with public acceptance come personal security; last March, Jimmy was married to a Germantown, Pa. high school music director, who has also had several years of voice coaching and does concert work.

In November of 1957 his van stopped outside Birdland and deposited the organ there for a triumphant two-week engagement. Jimmy Smith’s philosophy has reaped the returns he predicted for it when he first withdrew into the seclusion of that Philadelphia warehouse less than three years ago. “Some people called me crazy,” he says, “they said I’d never get anywhere with it, but I stuck with it. I’m sure glad I did!”