Jimmy Smith came to the organ late. He grew up in Norristown, outside Philadelphia, and started on piano. Leonard Feather, in the original notes, says he took up the Hammond in 1955, at 28, with no lessons at all. He rented time in a Philadelphia organ store, then bought his own and kept it in a warehouse, where he drew a plan of the pedals on paper to learn where his feet should go. He practiced there for close to three months before taking a job in Atlantic City.
"Some people called me crazy," he says, "they said I'd never get anywhere with it, but I stuck with it."
Leonard Feather, original liner notes
By early 1957 he was recording for Blue Note in bulk. On three days running, February 11, 12 and 13, 1957, he recorded at Manhattan Towers in New York, with Eddie McFadden on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums, plus a larger band on the first day. That run filled five records. This one is the trio, and Smith alone.
Side one opens with "There'll Never Be Another You." Feather lists the stops Smith pulled for it, four strings and a flute. "The Fight" is Smith unaccompanied, on a piece of his own once meant to be called "The Elf's Dance." He told Feather how he made it:
The piece wasn't written completely in advance; I just set a pattern of chords in my mind and worked around them.
Jimmy Smith, in Leonard Feather's original liner notes
"Blue Moon" is the trio, and Feather points to McFadden, from Baltimore, who had joined Smith that January. Side two opens with another solo, "All the Things You Are." Feather hears Ravel, with a touch of Bach, in the introduction, and the melody comes in waltz time before the second chorus moves to four. On "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," from the first day, Art Blakey sits in for Bailey at a very fast tempo, and organ, guitar and drums trade eight bars. "Somebody Loves Me" brings back the regular trio.
The cover photograph is by Harold Feinstein.
The record sat for a while. Feather's notes mention a Birdland booking in November 1957, and the reviews in Billboard and Cashbox came in August 1959. The Jazz Discography Project dates the release to 1959; Wikipedia gives 1957. Scott Yanow, for AllMusic, called it "Excellent straightahead jazz from the innovative organist." The Sermon!, recorded in August 1957, came out the same year.
