Terry Smith

If's first album came out in the summer of 1970, while most horn-driven jazz-rock bands were still mimicking the successful formula employed by Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. If was different, with more of a jazz feel on both the instrumental and the vocal ends. The material on If provides plenty of room for reedmen Dave Quincy and Dick Morrissey, plus guitarist Terry Smith, to stretch out. Though not particularly deep or profound, the lyrics nonetheless express the positive, optimistic sentiments prevalent at the time.

Smith’s new album, Laugh Ash, is perhaps his most startling and remarkable to date, a breathtakingly original set of music whose touchstones are myriad but ultimately meaningless in the face of an inventive and stunningly unfamiliar expression. Due out February 2, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, the album makes thrilling use of disorientation and juxtaposition: starkly beautiful chamber melodies coexist with synthetic rhythms, explosive bursts of improvisation with elusive song forms, austere ambience with thundering complexity. Eclectic, undoubtedly, but in a paradoxical way that is defiantly cohesive while never losing sight of the fact that none of it should be.

This blues-oriented Pablo recording has an ideal matchup: flugelhornist Clark Terry and altoist Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. Both musicians take a good-humored vocal apiece, but the emphasis is on their playing. The complementary stylists, backed by pianist Art Hillery, bassist John Heard and drummer Roy McCurdy, work together very well on their originals, plus "Swingin' the Blues," and create some memorable, if fairly basic, music straddling the boundaries between swing, bop and early R&B.

It begins with the sound of the bell that gives the album its title, and the music seems to flow outward from there. 'The Bell' was one of the first pieces Ches Smith wrote for his new trio and almost a blueprint for what follows, in this album of chamber music for master improvisers of wide experience. "The best thing I caught all weekend," said critic Peter Margasak of the 2014 New York Winter Jazzfest, "was a superb trio led by drummer Ches Smith with pianist Craig Taborn and violist Mat Maneri, which expertly infused seductively narcotic writing with a mixture of brooding melody and rich texture."

Leon Payne's country classic "I Love You Because" was one of Carl Smith's last Top 20 hits in 1969. "Good Deal, Lucille," the Cajun song popularized by Al Terry, also made the Top 20 for Smith, and both songs are included on the album I Love You Because. The raucous twin-guitar attack of "Good Deal, Lucille" is a little uncharacteristic for Smith, but "I Love You Because" and the rest of the album is exactly in line with his established '60s sound: hard country music for the honky tonk hardwood floor. The album is practically a tribute to country music's past, with renditions of well-known songs like "Kaw-Liga," "This Cold War With You," and "Please Help Me I'm Falling." Don Gibson's "Blue, Blue Day" gets a complete overhaul in Smith's hands, but the highlight among the album tracks is the funny "Mister, Come and Get Your Wife." Smith's term at Columbia was winding down at this point, but he could still fire off a few good ones.