The Soulful Blues

Chronique

Soulful Blues combines Johnny Smith's Ebb Tide LP from 1967 and Nasty from 1968 onto one CD of decent soul-jazz, albeit often sounding predictably like what you'd expect Prestige soul-jazz from this era to sound like. For Ebb Tide, Smith came right out and declared it in the liner notes: "I'm thinking more commercially and I don't care what the critics say." That meant covering soul hits like "Knock on Wood," "Stand By Me," and "The 'In' Crowd," presumably, in addition to throwing in standards like the title cut and "Summertime," as well as three Smith originals. So what does this critic say? Good job, Johnny! This is superior organ-soul-jazz with a feistier edge than much of the genre, evident right from the opening "The Sin-In," which has riffs worthy of a TV detective show and some fine stuttering keys from the leader. The feistiness in this combo is in large part down to drummer John Harris, who really bashes it out; on "Knock on Wood," for instance, he sounds rather more like a rock drummer than a jazz drummer. Prestige stalwart Houston Person is on hand with tenor sax, while Virgil Jones' trumpet lends the arrangements some good complementary color. In some respects this is more of the same as far as mid- to late-'60s soul-jazz goes, particularly in repertoire ("Summertime" certainly isn't the most imaginative cover choice), but there's a brash energy that makes it a cut or two above the norm for the genre. On the quartet session comprising Nasty, Smith was accompanied by a young John Abercrombie on guitar, Grady Tate on drums, and Prestige mainstay Houston Person on tenor sax. With the exception of "Unchained Melody," the musicians gave the tunes space, with all of the other five tracks clocking in at about seven to nine minutes. Yeah, in a sense it's more run-of-the-mill Prestige late-'60s soul-jazz: quite fine grooves, a dependable yet somewhat predictable house sound, and a reliance upon cover versions for much of the material (two-thirds of the songs, in this case). It's solidly executed, though, in a lean fashion that, to its credit, runs counter to the more excessive arrangements that were creeping into soul-jazz around this time. Smith hits a comely slow-burn groove on his version of Horace Silver's classic "Song for My Father," does a surprisingly swaggering and infectious job with the overdone "Unchained Melody," and gets down into his funkiest and bluesiest mode on the title cut, a nine-minute original composition.

© Richie Unterberger /TiVo