Johnny "Hammond" Smith – Black Feeling! (recorded December 22, 1969)
The stellar title track to one of the great jazz organist's final albums on Prestige became an acid jazz classic, written by tenor saxophonist Leo Johnson.
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On December 22, 1969, jazz organist Johnny “Hammond” Smith was at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, recording his Black Feeling! LP for Prestige Records.
Released in 1970, it was one of his last albums for Prestige before switching labels to producer Creed Taylor’s new Kudu imprint, a subsidiary of CTI Records. Smith’s 1971 LP Breakout was the very first record issued on Kudu, which Taylor set up as a soul-jazz sub-label to capitalize on sounds that appealed to both the jazz and R&B markets.
His band in the studio that day consisted of Virgil Jones on trumpet, Leo Johnson on tenor sax, Wally Richardson on guitar, Rusty Bryant on tenor and alto sax, Jimmy Lewis on electric bass, and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie on drums. The LP was produced by Prestige’s prolific producer Bob Porter (the second album they collaborated on), and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.
The masterpiece cut on Black Feeling! was arguably its stellar title track, written by Leo Johnson and featuring him on tenor sax.
Other highlights were the funky cuts “Dig On It,” also written by Johnson, and “Johnny Hammond Boogaloo,” written by guitarist Wally Richardson.
Smith wrote the album's superb closing cut, “Soul Talk - 1970,” an updated version of the title track to his previous album, which had been recorded in May, 1969 and released later that year.
Several of Smith’s albums from this time period were destined to become early acid jazz and jazz-funk classics, and Black Feeling! was no exception.
Further info:
“Johnny Hammond: let’s start from the start,” Organissimo.org, 2013.
#jazz #soul #funk #JohnnyHammondSmith
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