Jimmy smith big band charts7/31/2023 ![]() Like Lalo Schifrin, Oliver Nelson's charts are big, bold, brash and sumptuously tacky which serve to frame Smith's bluesy eloquence against a suitably populist backdrop. No matter how sophisticated and angular Jimmy's rapid monophonic bop inflected runs can get, there is always a shed load of groove underneath to help the medicine go down. On first acquaintance, this will strike the casual listener as plain vanilla blues plus horns, but on closer inspection is revealed a hard bop sensibility wedded to a very attractive and accessible soul-jazz style. Jimmy's glut of trio albums are a tad predictable and often retread a well beaten path so the big band albums soon became my favourites. 'Come on man, that's old geezer's music' I persisted and discovered a brand new world had opened its doors wide to me. ![]() (His name cropped up constantly whenever my Prog Rock hero Keith Emerson was asked to name-check his formative influences) Despite the teasing of my buddies in exploring Smith's output e.g. Jimmy Smith is the only reason I started to listen to jazz and he represents an attractive portal for many other newbies to dip their tootsies into what can seem a huge and forbidding pool.
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