Soul Stream

I'm not out to convince anybody. This is just my ears talking. I'll never convince anybody that it's not John Patton on Iron City and I'll never convince anybody that there was some trane/jimmy connection either.... Just my ears and I'm fine with all that too...

Guy, I guess I'm just putting JOS in the musical context of the time. Who else was playing music that SOUNDED like what Smith was doing on Groovin At Small's Paradise. To me, the only one that is doing that sort of thing at the time was Trane. The fact that Coltrane left Jimmy Smith's group to join Miles' band just makes that musical connection that much stronger. I'm not saying who influenced who...but I hear some similar territory not shared by many at the time. Monk's harmonic sense was heavy on Jimmy too at this point...

Man, what I wouldn't give to have this little session as a nice Rare Groove to dig this summer... Lou Donaldson Quintet Lou Donaldson (as) Leon Spencer (org, p) Melvin Sparks (g) Jimmy Lewis (el-b) Buddy Caldwell (d) Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 25, 1972 Songbird Blue Note rejected Coonskin - Our Day Will Come - Warm Breeze - What Now, My Love?

Oh Hell....! THAT HAS GOT TO COME OUT! I've never heard of this session....Wow... God, I'd love to hear that.

Yes, Clem...that was me. On a musical note, if you listen to Groovin' At Small's Paradise...Coltrane would even have to have sharpened his pencil for what Jimmy was laying down on that. Yeah, Jimmy was the Moses that led everyone to the promise land in more ways than one....

If you haven't heard this CD...drop everything and get it. I've loved it since it first came out...pulled it out tonight and remembered how incredible this session was. Jimmy Smith live in the 80's w/Eddie Harris and no guitar player. It really exposes Jimmy's genius. Maybe at the peak of his powers in many ways. What a great CD...

How so Chuck?

I ran across this organist's site, Vanessa Rondriges, on myspace. Apparently she lived with Lonnie Smith for a month and he taught her how to play. Here's her account of it...pretty cool... Lessons with Dr. Smith ... where to start ... ?? Well, at first he didn't let me play the real organ, so we started on the Korg CX3. He said "Your right hand is good ... your left hand is very bad!" -- and proceeded to make me play bass lines PAINFULLY slowly ... "Play it slow ... SLOW!!!" for the first few days. Every morning he would wake me up by swatting me with my wallet strap and saying "Get yo yase off that couch!" I would wander sleepily into the front of the house where he's got 4 hammond organs crammed into one little room, and sit in my PJs watching him practice, play, noodle around just for the fun of it -- and it was amazing. Of course I recorded it with my mini-disc player. "I know you've got that thing on ... I cannot stand you - you get on my last nerve!" Sometimes we'd play duets, sometimes I'd just play alone for him and he'd give me suggestions. It was very un-structured. "Practice makes terrible" Sometimes I'd be watching TV and he'd come into the den and launch into some crazy story about touring with Joe Dukes, or some encounter with Jimmy Smith, or some outrageous argument he'd had with an ex-girlfriend. Of course I'd turn the TV off faster than you could say "it's your fault", and listen up good. He would also often take me out for dinner/lunch/visits with his friends, my grandparents, other students of his, and since his kitchen was being renovated I taught him how to cook rice & beans (Caribbean style) in the microwave. I told him a story about how I once tried to poach an egg in the microwave and when I brought it out I poked it and it exploded all over my face and hair. He laughed so hard and said "Hey, we should do that -- blow up some eggs and potatos and things, and then we'll PLAY that! You've got to PLAY LIFE!!!" "Practice makes terrible" is what Lonnie used to say ... he'd come in the room while I was practicing bass lines really SLOW, and he'd laugh and say "Practice! Practice makes terrible!" (not laughing at me in a malicious way or anything, though I'm sure I really did suck, but he always says stuff like that, like "I do not like you", "It's your fault", and "You get on my last nerve" ... you just have to meet him to understand, it's really hard to try to describe his personality to people who have never met him ... I hope that gives you an idea of what my time there was like ... very hard to put into words, but I did my best.

O.k...let's get down to some real bid'ness... How come nobody talks about Freddie Roach...that guy was a MONSTER. (plus I read he was a great vibes player as well).

Yes, I think that's the main point I'm trying to make. The general theory that there was Jimmy Smith and then everyone else just seems to make a little less sense the more I learn about jazz organ history. Jazz organists now are clones of at least one of the innovators or the third generation thereof (ie..Jimmy Smith, Larry Goldings, ect.) But back in the day...there was a LOT more originality going on because I think there was just a lot of "shit, I have to figure out how to play organ so I can gig..." A lot of interesting things happened because of that. More general music influences seem to have come into play from piano, standup bass, horns, ect...

Jim, I think if you read Patton's bio on the myspace you'll see just how he arrived at playing the organ. I know it's hard for us to imagine since we've got a stacks of great Jimmy Smith records to sit down and listen to. But when the first wave of post-Smith jazz organists appeared, they arrived under different circumstances than later organists did. The demand for jazz organ popped up almost overnight due to Jimmy. But the guys who filled that initial demand didn't have the time to sit and study Jimmy Smith records...they had gigs to play! The reason why Baby Face Willette, Freddie Roach and John Patton sound so different is because they weren't aping the style or even the registrations exactly as guys later would do like Lonnie Smith, Leon Spencer Jr, Caeser Frazier and Joey Defrancesco, ect. Here's what Patton had to say about how he learned to set up the organ.. When I was in Washington, I met this musician. His name was [Harold] Butts...he showed me how to set up the organ [adjust the tone], the B-3 and everything."[57] Butts, an organist who was active locally in the Washington area, obviously put Patton on the right track to finding a sound from the organ I guess my point is, that to me...some of those early guys just didn't have the time to be influnced by Smith's records to a huge degree although McDuff admitted to the switch after seeing Jimmy perform, as did Charles Earland. Larry Young is definatley in a Smith mode on those Prestige sides. Shirley Scott, to my ears, never seemed that under the influence of Jimmy. You have to remember that Wild Bill Davis came up with the idea of left hand bass, not Jimmy. That was already out there as far as the basslines with the left hand. To have someone solo in a pianistic style with the right was going to happen. Jimmy Smith was the genius, like Charlie Parker, that brought it all together. Would Sonny Stitt have happened without Parker? Progress would have been made by someone. I can honestly tell you from asking Patton firsthand, that he did not sit and study Jimmy records. He wanted to sound like a bass player and a piano player. Ben Dixon and others pushed him towards the organ because THEY knew Jimmy Smith was hitting and selling lots of records and getting lots of gigs. Patton says he was already playing with Lou before he heard Smith in a meaningful way. I think Baby Face Willette is perhaps the most interesting case. He's always intrigued me as he was the first organist after Smith on Blue Note and he was just so different sounding. How much some of these guys got from Smith is a grey area to my ears. But if it's really the SOUND that you're talking about, then even Jimmy struggled with that one for a long time. On Bubbis and stuff like that from a NEW STAR LP, he really sounds like he's using Wild Bill Davis registrations a lot. The first 3 or 4 bars out Jimmy hit on and stuck with is what, more or less, became the sound of jazz organ single note playing. I think it would have happened anyway. It's like a law of attrition that once you sit down at the organ and play single notes...you have to start pushing drawbars in and not out. It's a piano sound, especially with the B3's percussion that came out and conveniently at that time. But the sound of mixing blues and bebop and swinging your ass off....yeah, Jimmy invented that mold. THAT is jazz organ. I've probably contradicted myself a lot so far. And that's only because the evolution of Jazz organ to me is a constant source of wonderment. How Jimmy and Wild Bill and Eddie Buster and Patton and Baby Face and Johnny Hammond Smith and Larry Young all fit together is quite a puzzle in the soup of immediate huge public demand for jazz organ in a post smith music environment. Jimmy Smith changed it all, but how it changed in real time is interesting to discuss....

Here's some information on how Patton became an organist. Smith's influence seemed to not have much to do with it initially... The inspiration to play the organ came on its own to Patton, who, unlike other pianists who turned to the organ, were inspired to make the switch upon listening to Jimmy Smith. A portion of one of my interviews on the subject of Jimmy Smith: JG: Off the top of your head, do you remember the first time you heard Jimmy Smith? JP: First time I heard him, not in person, but on records was with Lou. JG: So you were already playing the organ. You had no idea what Jimmy Smith sounded like until then? JP: Just a little bit. But I mean, to really listen to him and put the album on, and go to sleep with it on, you know. They said, "Hey John, you've got to listen to this cat here, so on and so on." And everybody was talking about Jimmy because Jimmy was gettin' over, man. He had that, they were really crazy...at that particular time the organ bass line...they had to learn how to get that bass line out of the organ. You could always get the highs, but you know...to get them [the highs and lows] together. They were talking about that part of it, you know what I mean. And that really, really sunk in. I said, "Well, I've got to find a way to this [looking at left hand], to coordinate with this [looking at right hand], with both hands, you know." There were two key factors that got Patton to switch to the organ once and for all, in the summer of 1961. The first was a bit of persuasive talking by his friend and colleague, Ben Dixon, who encouraged the switch. Dixon recalls, " I'd encouraged John to get on the organ because...well, John, we used to practice a lot, you know. And John would walk the piano with his left hand, you kow and he was tremendous. I was saying, 'Man, you should start playing the organ, man. You know...' So I just encouraged him and encouraged him all the time because we always practiced and rehearsed together, you know...regardless of where we were. And so I thought it was a great thing for him to do. [laughs] And the rest is history as they say."[67] Patton reiterates the point as he told Terry Martin in 1986, "Eventually, musicians were saying 'why don't you play organ, man, 'cause you got this good bass line." Of his early influences, Patton told Martin, "When I started to play organ I didn't kow about Milt Buckner, Bill Davis...I had heard Bill Doggett because of the honky tonks. It didn't mean anything to me at that time, I was listening to piano players and Hampton Hawes, Horace (Silver) and Wynton Kelly were my favorites."

some more from Patton's bio that might shed some light on things... The inclusion of a white model on the cover of Patton's record, That Certain Feeling, (Blue Note 84281, 1968) was directly at odds with Patton's Muslim beliefs at the time. Blue Note, no longer a small company, but now a subsidiary of Liberty Records, was not sympathetic to Patton's own feelings or beliefs about the matter and went ahead with the cover. Before Lion and Wolff's sale of Blue Note to Liberty, Patton would have a say in the final look of his album covers. The ensuing argument between Patton and Blue Note was heated, and was, presumably, a contributing factor to Patton only getting one more of his sessions, Accent on the Blues (Blue Note 84340, 1969) released by Blue Note at that time.

And that might be part of why that was his last BN album. That's definately true. As you can tell by the issuing of Memphis To New York Spirit and the bonus tracks on the CD of Accent....that's 2 LPs worth of wonderful material that never came out. From the bio... Not surprisingly, Patton was extremely upset about the situation with Blue Note. "I was going to go with Epic Records," but he was unable to free himself from his contract with Blue Note, and it never happened. As late as 1976, Patton was still bound by contract to Blue Note, though because of his disgust with his situation with them, he refused to record for them again after Memphis To New York Spirit. What followed was a period of disillusionment with the music business that was so great, that Patton went "underground." What Patton means by "underground" is that, "you drop out of sight as far as anything being commercially happening. You're not really on the scene

John was a good selling artist for Blue Note all along I suspect. However, after That Certain Feeling...there was a huge falling out between John and Blue Note. For 2 reasons...one was (and remember this was during the time John was a practicing Muslim) John was very upset that Blue Note/Liberty put a white woman on the cover of That Certain Feeling. The other was John wanted to put his original songs in his own publishing company, BN refused. That's why on Accent, there were none of his songs on it. He let Marvin Cabell write that album. If you read the bio, it explains it all.

Yes, I've really grown to enjoy the show. Not so much for the show itself, as that it's the one program that we sit down together as an entire family and watch....laugh...discuss.... The kids love it and look forward to that family time. I look forward to it every week for that reason and will miss it until it returns in January. Pancho Sanchez and his group were at my gig a few weeks back, and the trombone player said he did a lot of arrangements for the latin show they did this year. I do enjoy hearing the band and listening to some of the arrangements. I also thought Tony Bennett captured the audience like no other in the final show. So other than the usual 'pop' trappings you'd expect, there are things I genuinely enjoy about watching the show.

Nice insights MG. The more I become aware of the working conditions of organ groups in the 60's, the more amazed I am at the ART that came out of some of these artists. John Patton was playing Coltrane-influenced music to working class folks who wanted to hear the bluuuuueeees. He paid a price for that. Read the bio on the JP Myspace blog. He and Grant went seperate ways basically because Grant wanted to keep the clubowners and audience happy and Patton wanted to make a different statement. Hell, JP was working a guitar-less trio with Harold Alexander screeching his ass off! How do you think that went down in clubs?! It didn't, as JP said...clubowners thought the band was going to far out and work became scarce. Guys like Patton and Young in particular were not giving the organ audience what they wanted. As Patton said, Larry Young had a place to play his experimentations since his father owned an organ room in Newark. Patton's trio was up there in Dashikis playing far reaching music...not the norm at that time.

Hey MG....I didn't ever say that. Was it Jim? However, I think JOS' domination in the reader's poll is well deserved. Without Jimmy, there would not have been a Larry or Shirley, Don or Jack. So yeah, I give it up to Jimmy with respect. Also, The Dynamic Duo and The Boss are two of his greatest musical statements imho. But back to the results. It's clear there's just some knucklehead voting going on. I'd like to see the critic's poll if there is one for organists at that time. And yeah Chewy...Accent On The Blues and Christmas Cooking are two of the finest organ records of all time!

That's funny about the banner then...a little 'selective' marketing campaign by Lonnie's management or bn i guess.

Thanks Chuck! Being the BJP fan that I am, it's devestating to me to see than he didn't even show up in the '69 poll. At this point, That Certain Feeling was certainly had made it's mark....clearly it didn't make an impression which is amazing. I consider that LP one of the greatest organ records of all time. Luckily, history has shown he was much more deserving than this poll indicates.

Still wondered if anyone could find the organ listing for '69 and '70. Seems to me like Lonnie Smith actually won the reader's poll in 69.... Jimmy reigned the critics poll I think forever until Joey knocked him off...

Thanks everyone! I'm posting these results in the JP Blog on MySpace. If you find anymore, I'd appreciate it. Looks like Patton's dropping fast and might not even make the list after 1968. Hell, he was beaten out by Ray Manzerek~! Hard to believe Patton placed so low in what was his most creative and visible years of music making....

Coltrane "Crescent" followed by Sonny Clark "Cool Struttin'"

The problem American Idol runs into is that it's purely a "singing competiton." It's not looking for artists that write their own material or have a concept of their own. I do notice they're starting a band competition now....

Yes, welcome to the music business! Sad to think John had another offer from a major label but BN wouldn't release him. It really put John's career on hold. He even became a music teacher at a NYC public school specializing in troubled children for a while. Something Thelma told me he really hated. BJP paid dues.