JIMMY SMITH / HOME COOKIN - The Incredible Jimmy Smith was a self-taught keyboard virtuoso who gave up the piano in 1954 in favor of the Hammond B3 organ, setting up shop in a warehouse in Philadelphia and woodshedding for a year before emerging with a revolutionary approach to the instrument that immediately caught the ear Alfred Lion. The Blue Note founder recorded the B3 innovator as often as he could between 1956-1963 in a range of different settings and released a tremendous run of albums that laid the foundation for the Soul Jazz movement. Drawn from three different sessions recorded in 1958-1959, Home Cookin' featured Smith in a quartet with tenor saxophonist Percy France, guitarist Kenny Burrell, and drummer Donald Bailey, and it stands as one of the most deeply soulful albums Smith ever made. The band gives a soul jazz symposium on this seven-song set that includes covers of tunes by Ma Rainey, Ray Charles, and Jimmy McGriff along with originals by Smith and Burrell.
The supremely swinging pianist Sonny Clark hit the Blue Note scene in 1957 with a burst of creativity, first appearing as a sideman on the excellent Hank Mobley session and quickly returning to Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio to record three albums as a leader over the next three months: his debut Dial 'S' for Sonny, Sonny's Crib featuring John Coltrane, and the sublime Sonny Clark Trio featuring bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones. - Presented without horns for the first time, the six-song set of bebop themes and standards puts the emphasis on Clark's pianism. The album opens with a blistering take of Dizzy Gillespie's tune "Be-Bop" that demonstrates Clark's dexterity before downshifting into a medium tempo swing through Rogers and Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time It Was." Two more bop themes follow with excellent renditions of Gillespie and John Lewis' "Two Bass Hit" and "Tadd's Delight" by Tadd Dameron. Clark's profound lyricism and inventive lines are evident on an excellent version of "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" and the album closes with an exquisite solo performance of "I'll Remember April."
Bud Powell - Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 4 - In the late 1940s, Blue Note founder Alfred Lion became enthralled with the modern sounds of bebop and began recording several of the new music's innovators including the brilliant pianist Bud Powell, who Lion dubbed The Amazing Bud Powell. Powell could be erratic, but as a producer Lion always seemed to draw the best out of the piano master, and cut numerous classic sides including "Un Poco Loco" and "Bouncing with Bud." The fourth volume of The Amazing Bud Powell series, titled Time Waits, was recorded in 1958 and found Powell in particularly fine form on an ebullient set of his original tunes including "Buster Rides Again," "Monopoly," and "John's Abbey." Powell's playing is endlessly inventive as he takes flight in a trio setting with bassist Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones, who elevates the session with some of his most inspired drumming on record.
