A New Sound ... A New Star ...

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A New Sound… A New Star…
Studio album by Jimmy Smith

Publication
(s)

March 1956

admission

February 18, 1956

Label (s) Blue note

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

9

running time

40:17

occupation
  • Jimmy Smith - electronic organ
  • Thornell Schwartz - guitar
  • Bay Perry - drums

production

Alfred Lion

Studio (s)

Rudy Van Gelder Studio

Location (s)

Hackensack (New Jersey)

chronology
- A New Sound… A New Star… A New Sound A New Star: Jimmy Smith at the Organ Volume 2 (1956)
Jimmy Smith (1994)

A New Sound… A New Star… (subtitled Jimmy Smith at the Organ Vol. 1 ) is the debut album by the American jazz organist Jimmy Smith , which he recorded together with guitarist Thornell Schwartz ( guitar ) and drummer Bay Perry (drums ) has recorded.

album

Recording and publication

All nine tracks on the album were recorded on February 18, 1956 in the music studio of Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack, New Jersey . Most of the tracks were jazz standards that were common at the time , such as The Way You Look Tonight , Midnight Sun, Oh, Lady Be Good! , The High and the Mighty , But Not for Me, and Tenderly . The remaining three tracks are improvisations on an original composition by Jimmy Smith ( You Get 'Cha) , a seldom played composition by Horace Silver ( The Preacher ) and a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach ( Joy ).

The studio album was released in March 1956 as a long-playing record on the Blue Note label. It was first published on CD in 1995 in Japan .

background

Jimmy Smith, who today is “an important representative of hard bop and soul jazz”, actually wanted to pursue a musical career as a pianist or bassist . At the beginning of the 1950s, his interest was “directed by a performance by Wild Bill Davis to an instrument that until then had played a rather subordinate role in jazz: the Hammond B3 organ . From then on, in an almost obsessive manner, he devoted himself to the sonic research of this monster ”, which“ was not originally designed for jazz clubs ”,“ but for churches that could not afford a full-fledged organ. ”

"I tried out all the stops and fiddled with this beast."

- Jimmy Smith : quoted from www.universal-music.de

As a result of his "research" Smith was able to present his debut album, which was followed by a second LP in the same year with A New Sound ... A New Star ... (subtitled Jimmy Smith at the Organ Vol. 2 ). When he played the organ, Smith used “three fundamentally different styles of playing, which he used depending on the character of his songs. For fast pieces he placed the bass line in his left hand and only used the organ's pedals to create short accents on the quarter notes or to mark the bass passages to be emphasized. With the improvisation of the right hand, he set melody lines against it, which derive their tension from the contrast between long sustained recumbent tones and rapid drive. The chords of the middle voices in such pieces were mainly carried by the guitarist. In slower pieces, the bass line fell completely on the pedal, freeing up the left hand for playing short, percussive accents with just a few notes. Jimmy Smith used an individual style that was confusing at first sight in very slow ballads ...: since polyphonic chords in the left hand position sound uncomfortable, Smith shifted these chords into his right hand and led the melody with his left hand. Other jazz organists achieve the same effect by crossing their hands. ”“ According to legend, record producer and owner of Blue Note Alfred Lion was so enthusiastic about Jimmy Smith's music that he said he wanted to quit his job. Instead, he wanted to tour around with the organist in the future so that he could hear him play every evening. He didn’t act on his threat. ”Instead, he produced more than 30 LPs for Blue Note with Jimmy Smith.

“The Hammond has body… It's got depth — and resonance. It's got clarity — and quality. And you can feel it. It's not so much that you can hear it. It's the feeling that's important. You see, it's like a drummer. You don't want to hear him. You want to feel him ... With the Hammond, you feel it in your bones. "

“The Hammond (organ) has body ... It has depth and resonance. It has clarity - and quality. And you can feel it. It's not so much that you can hear them. It is the feeling that matters. It's like a drummer. You don't want to hear him. You want to feel it ... With the Hammond you can feel it in your bones. "

- Jimmy Smith : 1994 interviewed Dan Ouellette at www.bluenote.com

Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann characterize the importance of Jimmy Smith in jazz history as follows: “Smith won for the organ what Charlie Christian won for the guitar: emancipation. Only through him did the organ become an instrument that is on an equal footing with the other instruments of jazz. […] Jimmy Smith can also be compared with Charlie Christian because - like Christian in the transition from acoustic to electric guitar - he consciously played the organ as an electronic instrument for the first time. [...] It was only Smith who realized that the Hammond B3 organ is a separate, new, independent instrument that at most has the keyboard in common with the piano or the conventional church organ . " Brian Priestley sees it similarly when he writes:" In the late 50s and 60s, Jimmy Smith set standards that are still valid today for handling the organ in jazz. He took over the trio format with organ, guitar and drums [...] from Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner , but replaced their big band- style tone sequences with faster, more agile runs that had their roots in bebop. "

Track list

  1. The Way You Look Tonight ( Dorothy Fields , Jerome Kern ) - 5:04
  2. You Get 'Cha (Jimmy Smith) - 4:23
  3. Midnight Sun ( Sonny Burke , Lionel Hampton , Johnny Mercer ) - 4:26
  4. Oh, Lady Be Good! ( George Gershwin , Ira Gershwin ) - 5:49
  5. The High and the Mighty ( Dimitri Tiomkin , Ned Washington ) - 4:21
  6. But Not for Me ( George Gershwin , Ira Gershwin ) - 4:30
  7. The Preacher ( Horace Silver ) - 4:35
  8. Tenderly ( Walter Gross , Jack Lawrence) - 3:56
  9. Joy ( Johann Sebastian Bach ) - 3:13

Contributors

Musicians and their instruments

Production staff

reception

The review at Allmusic by Scott Yanow evaluated the album 4½ out of 5 stars and said: "The debut of organist Jimmy Smith on record (he was 30) was an important event, because he introduced a completely new and influential style on the Organ, one that practically changed the way the instrument was played. ”In his review for All About Jazz , Marc Davis writes,“ Listening to Jimmy Smith's early recordings is like hearing Chuck Berry when he's' Johnny B. Goode 'plays. Today everyone knows rock guitarist of the junior high school the reef and it can play by heart. But Chuck Berry did it first, and arguably best. There weren't any big rock guitar licks before Chuck Berry. He created the template. It's the same with Jimmy Smith. Today there are dozens of jazz organists who can play bop, blues, and more. They're all funky, they're all good at playing. But without Jimmy Smith there would be no jazz organ. ”After Jimmy Smith's death (on February 8, 2005) the Universal Musik Group wrote :“ He was the head guru of all Hammond B3 organ players, the ancestor of jazz radio, godfather of acid jazz, a bold innovator, unsurpassable improviser and a legend even in his lifetime. […] When the organist released his debut album 'A New Sound… A New Star… Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Volume 1' on Blue Note in 1956, a new star actually rose on the jazz firmament. And he also presented a new sound: irresistible percussive and with fat basses as well as nimble melody lines, as otherwise played by saxophonists or trumpeters, and an improvisational agility that you would not have expected on this instrument. ”And in their compilation The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World notes, Jazzwise magazine , “It's simple: Jimmy Smith invented the modern jazz organ, and this is the album (actually the first of two albums released in rapid succession from the same recording session in February 1956) in to which he proved this. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f A New Star… A New Sound… In: discogs.com. Retrieved August 8, 2017 .
  2. ↑ A New Star… A New Sound… In: jazzdisco.org. Retrieved August 8, 2017 .
  3. ↑ A New Sound… A New Star… (CD). In: discogs.com. Retrieved August 10, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Jimmy Smith. In: jazz-fun.de. Retrieved August 11, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b On the death of Jimmy Smith. In: universal-music.de. February 11, 2005, accessed August 8, 2017 .
  6. ↑ 50 great moments in jazz: Jimmy Smith and the Hammond organ. Retrieved August 11, 2017 : "The Hammond organ wasn't originally designed for jazz clubs, but for churches that couldn't afford a full-blown pipe organ."
  7. ↑ a b A New Sound… A New Star… Vol.2. Retrieved August 11, 2017 .
  8. ^ Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann: Das Jazzbuch . 2nd Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 , pp. 511 .
  9. ^ Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley: Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz music. 1700 artists and bands from the beginning until today. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-476-01584-X , p. 596.
  10. ↑ A New Star… A New Sound… In: allmusic.com. Retrieved August 8, 2017 : "The debut of organist Jimmy Smith on records (he was already 30) was a major event, for he introduced a completely new and very influential style on the organ, one that virtually changed the way the instrument is played. "
  11. ↑ A New Star… A New Sound… In: allaboutjazz.com. Retrieved August 8, 2017 (English): "Listening to Jimmy Smith's early recordings is like listening to Chuck Berry play" Johnny B. Goode. " Today, every rock guitarist from junior high school on knows the riff and can play it by heart. But Chuck Berry did it first, and arguably best. There were no great rock guitar licks before Chuck Berry. He created the template. It's the same with Jimmy Smith. Today, there are dozens of jazz organists who can play bop, blues and beyond. They're all funky, they all have chops. But without Jimmy Smith, there would be no jazz organ. "
  12. ↑ A New Star… A New Sound… In: jazzwisemagazine.com. Retrieved on August 8, 2017 (English): “It's that simple: Jimmy Smith invented modern jazz organ and this is the album (in fact, volume one of two quickly-released volumes recorded at the same February 1956 sessions) where he announced his arrival. "