"Home Cookin'", "Crazy! Baby", "Midnight Special", "Back At The Chicken Shack", "Softly As A Summer Breeze".
A pioneer of soul-jazz who revolutionized the Hammond organ, turning it into one of the most incisive, dynamic jazz instruments of its time. Jimmy Smith wasn't the first organ player in jazz, but no one had a greater influence with the instrument than he did; Smith coaxed a rich, grooving tone from the Hammond B-3, and his sound and style made him a top instrumentalist in the 1950s and '60s, while a number of rock and R&B keyboardists would learn valuable lessons from Smith's example.
Dust to Digital always does an impressive job of providing compelling thematic material in artfully designed packaging. This has been true since their debut offering, Goodbye, Babylon, that showcased Southern sacred song and oratory. Baby, How Can It Be? Songs of Love Lust and Contempt from the 1920s and 1930s (the label's 16th release), follows suit. Assembled from the 78 collection of John Heneghan, this three-disc, 66-track set looks at its title subjects from all sides. It travels disc by disc from the first flush and ardor of romance, through the heat and passion of eros, to the tales of terror, depression, and violence that occur when the flower of belladonna replaces the rose's bloom.
The ultimate compendium of a half century of the best music, now revised and updated. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die is a highly readable list of the best, the most important, and the most influential pop albums from 1955 through today. Carefully selected by a team of international critics and some of the best-known music reviewers and commentators, each album is a groundbreaking work seminal to the understanding and appreciation of music from the 1950s to the present. Included with each entry are production details and credits as well as reproductions of original album cover art. Perhaps most important of all, each album featured comes with an authoritative description of its importance and influence.
This DRG two-fer brings together two worthy and neglected Louis Prima/Keely Smith Capitol albums from the late '50s. Hey Boy! Hey Girl! is the soundtrack album from the lounge duo's 1959 film of the same name. Not as cheesy as it might sound at first, it features Louis and Keely (and Sam Butera & the Witnesses) at their Las Vegas peak. The title track is a brisk, lightly swinging duet from the pair while "Oh Marie" almost delicately reprises Prima's Sicilian heavoly scatting classic from the previous year's The Wildest! Saxophonist Butera gets his own hipster vocal on "Fever," and Keely sings at least two ballads, "You Are My Love" and "Autumn Leaves," to lend the proceedings a little class…
Jazz pioneer and Hammond Organ s most acclaimed practitioner, Jimmy Smith bridged the gap between soul and jazz, and along with the likes of Ray Charles, forged a sound that appealed to a wide ranging cross-section of music fans during the 50s and 60s. Smith s instrument of choice, the Hammond B-3 with its unique sound and unusual range, adapted well to the genre s flexible leanings, and while Smith was far from the first jazz musician to utilise the organ - legends Count Basie and Fats Waller had both done so in an earlier era - Smith applied the instrument in such a way as to attract the mainstream; he was rewarded for this by becoming one of jazz music s household names and by having his albums fly high on the Billboard Chart in the early 1960s - an unusual feat for a jazz man. This 4CD compilation brings together eight of Jimmy Smith s finest albums, recorded for the Verve label between 1962 and 1964. Including a number of his most successful and critically acclaimed works, all of which originate from this hugely accomplished musician s golden age, this release will serve as both the perfect introduction to Smith s music for the less well versed, and as the ultimate collection for everyone else.
The Hammond organ, named after its inventor Laurens Hammond, debuted in 1935 as a cost-effective electro-acoustic alternative to the gigantic pipe organs mainly installed in churches. Among Hammond’s first customers were George Gershwin and Count Basie. Jazz pianists like Basie, Fats Waller, Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner were the founding fathers of the instrument’s international conquest, which led across all styles of popular music, from jazz to progressive rock, with its heyday in the 1960s and '70s…