By the start of 1957 Jimmy Smith had made a string of records for Blue Note, the last of them At Club "Baby Grand". In February Alfred Lion tried something new and put horns in the room with him. Ira Gitler, in the original notes, says this was Smith's first album with horns, and that the horn players were the ones who asked.
The cats wanted to blow with Jimmy and a blowing session it is.
Ira Gitler, original liner notes
The room was not Van Gelder's in Hackensack. It was Manhattan Towers in New York, and Smith stayed there for three days, February 11 to 13, 1957. Over four sessions he cut enough music for five records: this one, Volume 2, the two At the Organ albums and The Sounds of Jimmy Smith. The horns came on the first day, Monday, February 11: Donald Byrd on trumpet, Lou Donaldson on alto and Hank Mobley on tenor, with Smith's guitarist Eddie McFadden and Art Blakey on drums. Gitler explains that McFadden, born in Baltimore in 1928, had been in Smith's trio only since January. He took up the guitar after hearing Oscar Moore with the King Cole Trio at a USO show in 1946.
Gitler gives a lot of the credit for the day's lift to the drummer.
Blakey's drums have one of the most lifting, joyous pulses in jazz.
Ira Gitler, original liner notes
Side one opens with "Falling in Love with Love," stretched past 12 minutes. Byrd and Donaldson split the theme, Mobley takes the first solo, and near the end Blakey trades with the horns. "How High the Moon" comes from the third day, a trio with Donald Bailey on drums in place of Blakey. Gitler thought it the track where McFadden stands out most. It went out on a single that year.
Side two is all "Funk's Oats," Smith's riff blues, close to 16 minutes long. Donaldson goes first, and Gitler points out a bit of "Sabre Dance" in his solo. Then come Mobley, McFadden and Smith himself. It was cut into two parts for a 45 as well.
The sleeve was designed by Reid Miles, with a photograph by Francis Wolff.
Not every critic was won over. Don Gold, in Down Beat, found the horn playing uneven and the organ's sound heavy. Wikipedia notes that AllMusic later gave it three stars. Volume 2, made from the same first two days, came out later in 1957. Three tunes from the run, among them "First Night Blues" and "Cherokee," stayed unissued until Mosaic's box of the February sessions in 1994.
