Category: Music

Charles Mingus, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

We begin our survey of the great bassist and composer in midstream, with a spectacular performance from the last days of one of his best bands.

Album of the Week, January 3, 2026

There is a danger, with larger-than-life musicians (or really any public figures), that you remember them as caricatures, not for the balance of what made them great but for the quirks that stand them out from the crowd. Such a figure is Charles Mingus, about some of whose albums we’ll write about for the next little bit. Undeniably a genius and a great composer and performer, it’s tempting to remember him for his rages1, for the impenetrability of his performances,2 and for his wild Epicureanism that launched such monuments of excess as his legendary eggnog recipe. As always, the curative is simple: let’s listen.

As I’ve lamented before, the scope of this series of posts about music is limited, by design, to the contents of my vinyl collection. If that were not the case, we might start with a different Mingus recording: Pithecanthropus Erectus, for instance, or certainly his 1959 masterpiece for Columbia Records, Mingus Ah Um. But neither of those records is on my shelf at present, so we’re going to start with a slightly unconventional choice, a record that Mingus made at a time when both Atlantic and Columbia were releasing his albums but that he chose to release on the small Candid Records label, to give a less filtered view of his work.

Candid, founded in early 1960 by parent label Cadence Records owner Archie Bleyer, had as its A&R director jazz writer and critic, and civil rights activist, Nat Hentoff. He sought out sounds that, to him, reflected the jazz of the dawning 1960s. The second album the fledgling label released was Max Roach’s milestone civil rights suite We Insist!; Mingus, Roach’s former rhythm section partner in Charlie Parker’s combo, released the fifth album in the series with a pianoless quartet consisting of multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Ted Curson, and drummer Dannie Richmond. Though recorded in the studio in October 1960, Mingus sought to present the illusion that the performance was happening live in a nightclub, going so far as to introduce the first tune with the admonition not to applaud between tracks and to refrain from ordering food and drink during the recording. Generally speaking, his approach to the album (as indicated by the title) was to take control of the way his own music was typically presented to the public.

The first tune is titled “Folk Forms, No. 1;” the “folk form” in question is the blues. Mingus had a complicated relationship with the blues; he was clearly conversant with the form and the feel of the blues, but just as clearly resented the insistent demands that he play more blues and less of his own music.3 However he felt about it, this is a deep blues. Mingus starts the song solo, with a rhythmic figure in the bass that is slightly reminiscent of the opening to his great tune “Better Get Hit In Yo’ Soul.” Richmond follows him, listening to his rhythm and replicating it in snare and hi-hat. Dolphy follows with an essay at the melody, and Ted Curson plays a counterpoint to the melody; the two horns trade ideas and thoughts as though executing a complex fugue, but the lines are all improvised, the group turning on a dime as Mingus proposes different phrases and rhythms in his solos.

“Original Faubus Fables,” a retitling of the 1959 “Fables of Faubus” for contractual reasons, is the most clear case of Mingus presenting his music the way he wanted it to be heard. The original version of the tune had lyrics that were highly critical of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who legendarily called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent Blacks from enrolling in Little Rock High School following the 1957 federally mandated desegregation order. Columbia Records was legendarily cowardly about putting out any records that would offend the Southern buyer, and requested that Mingus present the song as an instrumental; this conflict and others possibly led to Mingus not extending his recording contract with Columbia beyond the two records released in 1959. The lyrics are not exactly epic poetry, but they resonate:

Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won’t permit us in his schools!
Then he’s a fool!

Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (With your Jim Crow plan)

Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond
Bilbo, Thomas, Faubus, Russel, Rockefeller, Byrd, Eisenhower!

Don Heckman has commented that Mingus doesn’t let his portrait of Faubus give the politician too much power; he keeps the music on a light, satirical level, poking fun at Faubus rather than demonizing him.

“What Love?” is an original composition that approximately combines “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “What Is This Thing Called Love?” Hentoff’s liner notes position this deep dark ballad as being inspired by a personnel crisis in the band; after many months together, both Dolphy and Curson had decided to move on from Mingus’ band, and Hentoff cites some of the melodic choices in “What Love?” as conversations between the bandleader and his saxophonist, alternately cursing the choice to leave and imploring him to stay. Dolphy plays some far-out music on the bass clarinet in this number in conversation with Mingus’s angry, imploring, and ultimately resigned pizzicato solo.

The final track, “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother,” is a complete free-for-all, introduced by a complex melody played by both Dolphy and Curson in harmony before the trumpeter takes the first solo, followed by Dolphy, with Richmond banging things out underneath both. This performance shows Mingus at his most far-out. There isn’t much of his genius for melody or harmony here, just him and his three players going flat-out in a wunderkammer of improvisational magic.

Mingus’s many facets as a musician included the ability to collectively improvise with his band at the highest order, and …Presents Charles Mingus is a great example of that. But he might have been even more effective and innovative as a composer of longer works, and we’ll hear one of those next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: This quartet doesn’t seem to have too many live shows recorded, but an expanded version of the band, adding Booker Ervin on tenor and the amazing Bud Powell on piano, played the Antibes Jazz Festival on July 13, 1960, five days before the quartet entered the studio to record …Presents…. It’s a monster of a live recording; here’s “I’ll Remember April” from the French TV presentation of the concert.

  1. Mingus was legendarily fired from Duke Ellington’s band in 1953 over a confrontation with trombonist Juan Tizol. Accounts differ as to what happened exactly; Mingus’s autobiography Beneath the Underdog claims Tizol impugned his musical abilities while using the N-word, while other onlookers claim Mingus was insulted when Tizol called him out for flubbing a note. It is pretty clear from all accounts, though, that Mingus rushed after Tizol with either a pipe or a fire axe in his hand. ↩︎
  2. Mingus premiered his major work Epitaph in 1962 at Town Hall in New York City to mixed reception. Again, accounts differ as to what happened, but poor sound at the venue and a general state of under-rehearsedness on the part of the band appear to have doomed the original performance. The concert was later released on Blue Note Records in the 1990s, when I was first expanding my jazz horizons; I thought it was pretty good. ↩︎
  3. In the liner notes to his 1960 Atlantic Records session Blues and Roots, Mingus noted, “This record is unusual— it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegün suggested that I record an entire blues album in the style of ‘Haitian Fight Song,’ because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn’t swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I’ve grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.” ↩︎

Mingus on eggnog

I can’t believe that in all the time I’ve been blogging about music and cocktails, I’ve never written about Charles Mingus’ eggnog recipe. Pointed to it, a few times, but never discussed it.

That might be because it’s A Lot. Two shots of liquor per serving, plus whatever 151-proof rum makes it through the preparation of the eggs. One begins to understand why Mingus was prone to firing shotguns inside his apartment.

Still, aside from the sheer volume of booze to be had in each glass, the rest of the recipe—eggs, milk, cream, nutmeg—doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Well, except for the addition of ice cream at the end, but that only if you set it out at a party, to keep it chilled.

The recipe, as it was transcribed by Mingus’ biographer:

  • Separate one egg for one person.  Each person gets an egg.
  • Two sugars for each egg, each person.
  • One shot of rum, one shot of brandy per person.
  • Put all the yolks into one big pan, with some milk.
  • That’s where the 151 proof rum goes.  Put it in gradually or it’ll burn the eggs,
  • OK. The whites are separate and the cream is separate.
  • In another pot– depending on how many people– put in one shot of each, rum and brandy. (This is after you whip your whites and your cream.)
  • Pour it over the top of the milk and yolks.
  • One teaspoon of sugar.  Brandy and rum.
  • Actually you mix it all together.
  • Yes, a lot of nutmeg.  Fresh nutmeg.  And stir it up.
  • You don’t need ice cream unless you’ve got people coming and you need to keep it cold.  Vanilla ice cream.  You can use eggnog.  I use vanilla ice cream.
  • Right, taste for flavor.  Bourbon? I use Jamaica Rum in there. Jamaican Rums. Or I’ll put rye in it.  Scotch. It depends.
  • See, it depends on how drunk I get while I’m tasting it.

We’ll see if I get sufficiently inspired this holiday to actually make a batch of the stuff. But I think I’ll leave the experiment until we have a working dishwasher again (ours having bit the dust just before Christmas).

Amanda Whiting, A Christmas Cwtch

Gather your eggnog and sit by a warm fire. This latter-day classic has all the warmth of its namesake and an impeccable lineup of Christmas presents for the listener.

Album of the Week, December 27, 2025

A Christmas what? Well, the Welsh word cwtch means a hug, but also a hidey-hole—it’s something close and intimate with implications of protection as well as comfort. It’s a perfect name for this modern Christmas jazz album, which combines covers of Christmas songs with some Christmas-adjacent jazz material—Vince Guaraldi but also Bill Evans—in a dreamy harp reverie.

Yes, harp. Amanda Whiting came across my radar with her albums for Jazzman Records; if you’ve read my music reviews, you know that a cover of Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” is always going to get my attention, and her first Jazzman EP starts there. Before beginning her jazz career in 2013 with her earliest solo release, the Welsh musician had trained as a classical harpist, and her attention to performance and composition stands out in this set of Christmas and Christmas-adjacent tunes.

The album starts and ends with solo harp renditions of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” but fairly quickly settles into a fireside mood with “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Amanda’s arrangement settles into a minor mood, riding diminished chords to strike a Guaraldi-like mood accompanied by cellist Lucia Capellaro, a meditative bass line from Aidan Thorne, and brushed cymbals courtesy of drummer Mark O’Connor.

The mood continues with a pair of Guaraldi covers, with “Christmas is Coming” striking a brisker note with the trio and “Christmas Time is Here” a more meditative counterpart. “Christmas is Coming” gets a proper harp solo that does more than just echo the improvisations that Guaraldi performed on the original, as Whiting’s harp seems to float up to a suspended ninth and stay there for an extended time, rocking back and forth across chordal boundaries and settling into an extended groove. Meanwhile, “Christmas Time is Here” gets more of a late night chat feeling with the dialog between the harp and Thorne’s bass—also a feature of Guaraldi’s original performance with bassist Monty Budwig.

Whiting picks up other threads of Christmas harp-lore, providing a meditative trio “Sugar Plum” à la Tchaikovsky. (It’s worth noting, for those budding harpists out there, that this and other tracks are based on harp arrangements that Whiting has published and that featured in her harp classes at Trinity College London.) Her arrangement doesn’t swing as hard as Ellington, but it definitely still swings and pulses with Thorne’s high bass solo and the rolling rhythms that O’Connor sets up.

Guaraldi’s “Happiness Theme” predates the Christmas special; it was one of the first Peanuts tunes that he wrote, alongside “Linus and Lucy,” “Oh, Good Grief” and “Pebble Beach,” all of which made repeated appearances as character themes and motifs throughout the animated specials. I have always had a soft spot for this wistfully beautiful tune, which here gets an atmospheric workout that evokes “Christmas Time is Here” and the notes of sleet against the windowpane.

“Little Elfy” is a brief original, a romp through snow drifts with someone who’s as likely to pelt you with a snowball as to bring you a present; it’s a good feature for the harp and an imaginative landscape to close out side 1. With “Skating” we return to Guaraldi once more, with the arpeggiated runs that gave even the pianist trouble seemingly unrolling without a ruffled hair from Whiting’s fingers.

Whiting released the next track, a cover of Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece,” as a single—never an unwelcome request. Here the meditative opening notes, so familiar from Evans and Miles Davis’ recasting of them for “Flamenco Sketches,” seem to spin an aleatory reverie as though they are spreading ripples in an open pond. The pond seems to freeze and crack in the air as Whiting digs deeper into the simple alternating chords. This one could have gone on forever for me.

The second half has a run of more ordinary Christmas carols that drift into reveries. The harp solo in “Deck the Halls” seems to take a side step toward a brown study for a while, while “The Christmas Song” pulls one inside just with the strength of the Mel Tormé/Robert Wells melody. “O Christmas Tree” bridges the ordinary and the Guaraldian worlds with its evocation of the pianist’s cover version, the bass and drums providing welcome rhythmic structure. And “We Three Kings” gives us a McCoy Tyner inflected take on the old carol, with plenty of low end to back it up. At the end we drift away with Santa Claus once more.

The thing about jazz harp albums is that the good ones contain unfathomable depths. You can think you’ve just put on a record to de-stress you and accompany that second glass of eggnog, when suddenly you find yourself contemplating the interplay between bass, harp and drums as a clue to the rhythmic foundations of the universe. Or maybe that’s just the eggnog! Next week we’ll pick up a new series on a notorious musician who would be sure to tell you that it’s both his music and his eggnog talking.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

The album is also streamable from Bandcamp:

BONUS: Amanda did a live charity concert earlier this month featuring much of the music on this album and from her other works; you can watch that here:

A musical lookback over 22 years

Two years ago today, I was writing about the Virginia Women’s Chorus Candlelight Christmas album.

Three years ago today, I unleashed one of my most recent Christmas playlists, “Tinsel covered Christmas blues.” You can check out my Christmas playlists (three hours worth!) on SoundCloud today if you want to have some music to wrap presents by:

Fifteen years ago, I wrote about some Glee Club research (I was still putting the history together and hadn’t started writing Ten Thousand Voices). “The impracticability of carrying out successfully any college enterprise without the cordial support of all the students!” Indeed.

The Virginia University Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 3 (December 1891), p. 270.

Sixteen years ago, I posted a handful of pointers to some useful Excel statistical tricks, and some intriguing looking font games that alas don’t seem to be around any more. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Seventeen years ago, some useful networking tips and tricks and more links to a bunch of stuff including wishes for Larry Grogan at Funky16Corners. Larry no longer posts to that blog but is still doing radio shows for WFMU. Respect.

Twenty years ago, I had just finished my very first run of Holiday Pops with the Boston Pops and we were hosting my sister for Christmas.

Twenty-one years ago, I was apologizing for not blogging. I had missed three days. If only I knew… More or less the same message twenty-two years ago.

And twenty-two years ago, I was eulogizing Joe Strummer.

That I’m still writing on this blog all these years later still feels like something of a Christmas miracle to me, even if the frequency has diminished and the word count per post has gone way up. Hope you all have great holidays! There will be at least one more post between now and the end of the year.

Boston Camerata, A Renaissance Christmas (1986)

A childhood favorite Christmas record, filled with songs familiar and strange and featuring the voice of an old friend.

Album of the Week, December 20, 2025

I have written about several Boston Camerata Christmas records: Sing We Noel, A Medieval Christmas, even an early A Renaissance Christmas from 1974. And each time I do, my friend Frank Albinder, formerly director of the Washington Men’s Camerata and member of Chanticleer, and current director of the Virginia Glee Club, says, “I used to sing with them! I recorded a Christmas album with them!” And: Yes, Frank, you did! This week’s post is for you.

Frank’s sojourn in Boston as a music grad student came in handy when Joel Cohen was assembling the musical forces for the 1986 release A Renaissance Christmas (true to the group’s name, the album was a local Boston production, recorded in Trinity Church in Copley Square in December 1985). Vocally speaking, there are no carryovers from Sing We Noel, the Camerata’s prior Christmas album—but there’s an eight-year gap between those two recordings, and one presumes that a great many Camerata members were, like Frank, graduate students who were passing through Boston on their way. One notable exception to the rule is soprano Anne Azéma, who began her recording career with the Boston Camerata with 1984’s La Primavera and is still with the Camerata today as its artistic director. (Along the way she married Joel Cohen.)

It is Azéma’s voice that leads off the album, with the 15th century English carol “Nowell: Dieus vous garde.” (Yes, English: Richard Smert wrote the carol in a mixture of English and Norman, as was appropriate for the court at the time.) The quartet of voices plus viol sings one of my favorite non-traditional Christmas carols, an early invocation of Father Christmas, with purity and compelling melodic line. The reverie is followed by “Gaudete, gaudete”, sung with vigor by the ensemble; this is one of the carols from the album that can be widely heard on other recordings, but the performance here blends expertise with vigor in a hallmark of these Camerata recordings.

Following a recitation in broad Middle English (here the narrator is tenor Edmund Brownless) that gave my family the in-joke “Hail, Mary, full of fescue,” we get the Kyrie from Guilliame Dufay’s “Ecce ancilla Domini” Mass, with Brownless, countertenor Kenneth Fitch, and bass Albinder providing the solos. Fitch’s voice is delightfully balanced and resonant, lacking some of the eccentricities of the countertenors on the 1970s Camerata recordings, and the overall impression is magnetic, particularly, when the ensemble cuts out at the end leaving the trio to provide the final “Kyrie.” We make our first stop in Spain with “E la don don,” performed with sparkling briskness, and then return to France with two instrumental settings of “Une jeune fillette.”

“Une jeune fillette” (in alteration with “Joseph est bien marìe”) leads us into the next set, with the women’s voices led by Azéma singing the latter carol with interludes of the former in a beguiling arrangement. A brief instrumental bridge of “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein” leads to the highlight of the first half, a performance of Joseph Galliculus’s “Magnificat quinti toni.” Sung bits of chant alternate with hypnotically fugueing renditions of familiar Christmas tunes in an astonishing reverie.

The second half is much more carol-focused, with Frank’s unaccompanied solo on “Esprits divins” leading off, followed by a reading and the original harmonization of “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” with lute and voice. An appropriately swaggering “Riu, riu chiu” follows, unaccompanied save for antiphonal handclaps until the final choruses.

Cohen constructs a mini-Praetorius set (Michael and Hieronymous) around the visit of the Magi. Michael Praetorius contributes the more familiar “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” followed by a reading and the Hieronymous P. setting of “O vos omnes,” mourning Herod’s crime against the firstborn.

The set that follows celebrates the shepherds at the cradle, and is in some ways the most adventurous part of this adventurous record. Opening with a reading and a 16th century Italian dance played on the ocarina by Marilyn Boenau, the ensemble then plays a set of vigorous music from the French, Catalan and Provençal traditions. Nicholas Martin’s “Nouvelles, nouvelles” gives us a beautiful melody led by Azéma, while the Catalan “Tau garçó, la durundera” is all rhythm and close harmonies. Finally, the Provençal “Tura lura lura, lo gau canta” provides a high spirited and faintly comic call-and-response between Cohen and the men of the ensemble as they tell the story of a shepherd afraid to make the pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

Lastly, we get a trio of Renaissance masterworks, beginning with the final reading from Luke and the Tómas Luis de Victoria “O magnum mysterium.” The latter is far and away the most famous of the liturgical music on the record and is given a gorgeous reading by the Camerata. A pair of works by Michael Praetorius concludes the record, with Azéma trading phrases in call and response with soprano Roberta Anderson in “Singet und klinget, ihr Kinderlein” and the ensemble singing a Provençal text from 17th century Avignon to a dance melody by Praetorius in the final setting, “Bransle de Poictou/La bona novella.”

The Boston Camerata at this stage of their development was a remarkable ensemble, doing their own research and constructing programs that both instructed and enlivened the ear. A good many recordings have followed, even after Cohen’s retirement, and the ensemble itself carries on. (In fact, I’m taking the family to hear them perform some early American Christmas music tomorrow.) The individual musicians on this recording also had a variety of careers; viol and recorder player Jane Hershey recorded for many years with Hesperus, soprano Roberta Anderson with Boston Baroque, and both countertenor Ken Fitch and bass-baritone Albinder would go on to greater fame and fortune with Chanticleer.

Next week we’ll swerve back to something closer to jazz as we draw the mystery of the holiday to a close.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

Samara Joy, A Joyful Holiday

A contemporary Christmas jazz classic from a young vocalist with an old soul.

Album of the Week, December 13, 2025

In my memory it was the middle of the pandemic (it actually turns out it was January 2022), and I was doomscrolling through TikTok. And I stopped in my tracks, because here was a TikTok user who was singing jazz. And she was good. A low alto, her phrasing reminded me of Ella, and she knew classic ballads. I just scrolled through her whole timeline, and with each video I grew more convinced that she was the real thing. She seemed impossibly talented, and impossibly young.

I was a little late to the bandwagon, because her first album, Samara Joy, had come out the previous summer, and Joy (then performing as Samara McLendon) had won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2019, when Christian McBride described her as a “once-in-a-generation talent.” But I got on the bandwagon before she got to the majors; she signed with Verve Records later in 2022 and released her second album, Linger Awhile, which won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album and won her a Best New Artist award (beating out Wet Leg, among others). And that winter she released this EP, featuring guest Sullivan Fortner (whom we’ve seen accompanying Cécile McLorin Salvant) on piano and Hammond organ, drummers Kenny Washington and Charles Haynes, bassists David Wong and Eric Wheeler, pianist Shedrick Mitchell, and Antonio McLendon.

“Warm in December” is a lesser-known composition by Bob Russell, better known for co-writing “Concerto for Cootie” with Duke Ellington as well as lyrics to dozens of tunes including his last hit “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” With Sullivan Fortner, Kenny Washington and David Wong backing Samara Joy on this performance, a strong argument is made that the song ought to enter the holiday repertoire. A gentle out-of-tempo introduction by Joy and Fortner is followed by a swinging verse with Washington and Wong in cheeky form. Samara Joy’s vocals are at once intimate, requiring the listener to lean in, and knowingly smiling in the way of the best of Ella’s performances. Sullivan Fortner again proves he is the best living accompanist of great jazz vocalists with his sensitive introduction and jubilant solo.

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Me,” co-written by Ron Miller and William O’Malley and originally performed by the Supremes in 1965 and Stevie Wonder in 1967, is here performed by Samara Joy and Sullivan Fortner as an aching ballad. Joy’s vocal control is marvelous, with a single high note underscoring the promise “If you give unselfishly/I’ll always shine for you.” It’s no wonder this performance won Joy and Fortner the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance.

“The Christmas Song” is as warm a performance of the Mel Tormé/Bob Wells classic as you’re likely to find. Joy’s vocal style here demonstrates several signatures of her style, including her quiet volume, careful use of glissando, masterful control of her low range, and phrasing behind the beat in the best possible way, to say nothing of her sense for the finely timed key change at the very end. It also offers an opportunity to hear the steady, forthright sensibility that young bassist David Wong brings to the session; nothing extraneous, just forward motion with his deeply resonant notes.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is the last of the numbers featuring Washington and Wong, here joined by Italian guitarist Pasquale Grasso, who collaborated with Joy on her first two albums. He proves every inch as sensitive an accompanist as Fortner, easily following her shift from a slow waltz time into a swinging double-time across the song’s bridge. On the last verse, as she sings “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow,” she imperceptibly crescendoes to her loudest forte of all the small-combo numbers, then finishes on a stunning barely-sung high note sustained with impossible clarity.

I am not the world’s biggest fan of “O Holy Night”; I find most performances overwrought and triumphalist in a way that feels inappropriate for the hushed miracle of Christmas Eve. In that regard, Joy’s choice to perform here with her father Antonio McLendon (who brings a gospel richness to their harmonies) and her gospel-singing legend grandfather (Goldwire McLendon co-founded the Philadelphia gospel group the Savettes) seems inspired. The outro, with its modal choir building slowly to a climax and a rare Samara Joy high note, might be my favorite part of this Christmas album. She finishes the EP with another collaboration with Antonio, “The Christmas Song (Live Duet),” with Charles Haynes, Eric Wheeler and Shedrick Mitchell backing, which is lovely for many reasons, including father and daughter shouting each other out during the applause at the song’s end.

Not everything on A Joyful Holiday is an instant Christmas classic, but enough of it is great that it’s well worth seeking out. Also: great1 new Christmas albums from young artists are rare enough that I recommend grabbing them when you find them. And going to hear them perform, as well. (You can imagine my dismay when I was unable to perform this year’s Boston Pops concert for corporate sponsors, only to learn that the guest artist was none other than Ms. Samara Joy.)

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Here’s a version of Joy with Antonio McLendon and pianist Luther Allison performing “O Holy Night” live for Vevo:

BONUS BONUS: A slightly funkier live version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me” from Joy’s YouTube channel still carries the intimacy of the recorded version:

  1. Mediocre ones, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen. ↩︎

Jimmy Smith, Christmas ’64

One more organ record—maybe the best known of them all—brings us into this year’s holiday season.

November 29, 2025

Remember how I signed off last week saying we were going to “take a break for some seasonal music,” bringing this run of articles on the jazz organ to a close? Wanna know who our first purveyor of seasonal music is? (Squints) Oh yeah, Jimmy Smith. Had I planned better I could have set this up as a great segue from the organ combo articles into the holidays, but as it is you’ll have to settle for an absolutely spectacular album of both jazz organ and holiday music.

Jimmy Smith in 1964, on Verve, was at the height of both his musical powers and his bankability, and Creed Taylor was not the sort of producer who was above stretching the popularity of his artist for some additional revenue via the time-honored tradition of the Christmas album. Coming off his one-two punch of The Cat and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, you’d be forgiven for expecting that Smith would take things easier on this holiday album. But with a band consisting of many of the musicians who made those great recordings, including Kenny Burrell (and Quentin Warren) on guitar, Art Davis on bass, Grady Tate (and Billy Hart) on drums—plus a whole orchestra that included Jimmy Cleveland on trombone and the elusive Margaret Ross on harp, among others—and charts by Billy Byers and Al Cohn, there was no room for slacking here. This is a seriously hot record, and a fantastic Christmas album to boot.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Big Band version)” begins in big band fashion indeed, with a low-brass processional full of pomp and accompanied by the timpani, right up until “tidings of comfort and joy.” At which point the trumpets call a blue fanfare and Jimmy rolls in. The band continues with a “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” style take on the tune for one more verse, but then Jimmy takes the reins and plays a clean organ trio verse with Kenny Burrell and Grady Tate that is telepathically tight and funky. The horns rise up behind the trio like an incipient ambush until they take one more verse, but Jimmy gets the last word.

“Jingle Bells” is a fine and mellow tune for the trio. Check Grady Tate’s subtle explosions behind the band as well as Jimmy’s understated organ part. The slow crescendos on the two held arpeggios are the only loud part of the arrangement, which fades out just as it gets going. It’s cool—something that can’t be said for the opening of “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” which sports a full symphonic brass arrangement that’s well-nigh Mahlerian, courtesy of saxophonist/arranger Al Cohn. But then it turns the corner into a gospel shouter and we’re really off and running. I would have been pleased to hear a side-long take on the middle bit of the arrangement, but here it’s bookended by an outro version of that opening.

“The Christmas Song” is more swinging, with both Jimmy and the band in a laid back mood. The horns are swinging so hard they’re practically a beat behind, and Jimmy happily burbles bits of mood before playing a doggedly on-model melodic solo as the horns provide chromatically oracular pronouncements. A high chorus of trumpets brings us into a double-time solo wherein Jimmy stretches out over a frantic bit of Grady Tate drumming, then back to the chorus which slowly builds to a massive climax, punctuated by a chime before the final chorus.

The trumpets give us a “White Christmas” opening that could be played by the Boston Pops, key change and all, before Grady Tate takes us into bossa nova land. Jimmy’s solo is low key, in the baritone range, at least until the horns take it up a notch, at which point we get a little happy double time arpeggio, a final chorus, and a little “Jingle Bells” quote to wrap it up.

“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is a trio number with Quentin Wells and Billy Hart, featuring Jimmy and Quentin trading off licks. The stereo separation (guitar in the left channel, organ in the right) is the only thing that helps to piece apart the players at the beginning, so close is the harmony, especially since Jimmy is soloing without much vibrato. Quentin Wells is a bluesier player than Kenny Burrell and he leans into that here, both in his solo and in the stabs of chords he plays under Jimmy’s solo. Jimmy starts out mellow but builds intensity through his usual tricks, particularly leaning on the tonic and playing bursts of arpeggios around the edges of his solo, all the way into the fade-out.

It’s another Pops-style arrangement for “Silent Night,” complete with bells and flugelhorn, then a handoff to Jimmy and the trio who do what they do best, a brisk, unsentimental swing through the tune. The horns make like “The Cat,” briefly, in the climax of their accompaniment to Jimmy’s solo—indeed, the only thing to criticize here is that they actually overwhelm the organ for the only time on record.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Trio Version)” starts right in, sounding a bit like Jimmy’s version of “Greensleeves.” The trio with Quentin Warren and Billy Hart swings convincingly, with Billy’s snare work so powerful that it causes a secondary rattle somewhere between the snares and the ride cymbal. Jimmy spools off riff after riff in his solo, as Quentin Warren walks around the chords, keeping the rhythm going strong. At several points, it sounds as though the group will fade out, but the producers wisely keep rolling tape as the trio lands the hottest number on the whole record at the very end. Finally as the trio returns to the opening vamp, the engineers bring down the sliders and fade it out into the dark.

About the only thing wrong with Christmas ‘64 is the title; though it wasn’t the only Verve album to include the year in the title, it was clearly not a good choice for a title for a holiday album, which tend to sell between Thanksgiving and Christmas but can continue to rack up sales for many years. Retitled and with a new cover, the album had a long life under its new name, Christmas Cookin’, including in its CD reissue which included two other tracks, “Greensleeves” from Organ Grinder Swing and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” from Jimmy and Wes: The Dynamic Duo.

The better known cover and title for this week’s album as reissued in 1966, courtesy Discogs.

Next week we’ll stay in the jazz lane, with a holiday album by one of the players on this week’s set. You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: This album and its related tracks cast a long shadow over holiday jazz records. The late great Joey DeFrancesco included a rearrangement of Jimmy’s “Greensleeves,” as “What Child is This,” on his superb 2014 album Home for the Holidays:

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Cold as Weiss

A tight set of organ trio funk with some sunny spots of soul.

Album of the Week, November 22, 2025

Another DLO3 album, another drummer. But the band felt so good about the arrival of Seattle drummer Dan Weiss that they named the album after him. Weiss was young—he recorded his first session, with the soul group The Sextones, in 2017—but in demand, also recording with soul band Object Heavy and with reggae artist Clinton Fearon. The band cut another originals-heavy album with Weiss, releasing it in 2022 on Colemine Records.

“Pull Your Pants Up” starts us off with that funk-soul hybrid that the group was getting so good at, and with a single crack of the snare from Weiss before he and the group launch into a stuttering strut of a tune. A screaming Hammond solo from Delvon Lamar over a Meters-style guitar line from Jimmy James: what more could you want? If your answer is “more Jimmy,” the next cut, “Don’t Worry ’Bout What I Do,” has you covered, with a crying guitar solo that manages to evoke Clapton, Hendrix, and Mick Ronson.

“I Wanna Be Where You Are,” a cover of a 1972 Michael Jackson hit by Arthur “T Boy” Ross and Leon Ware, brings back some of the early 1970s soul sound, with an unusual arrangement in the head: melody on the organ, no chords, quiet pedal bass, over James and Weiss. It’s a great tune; pumping up the bass would balance out the sound a lot more, at the cost of losing some of the fragile beauty of the original arrangement. As it is, the room in the arrangement gives the band more space to play into, and the result is something a bit like an Al Green tune, which is never a bad thing. The side closes out with “Big TT’s Blues,” which is what it says on the tin: a guitar-forward blues with early-1960s Jimmy Smith style organ solo. The swampy guitar solo from Jimmy James is worth the price of admission.

Side two opens with “Get Da Steppin’,” a pure funk tune with a slippery key signature with lots of sustained organ notes and crunchy chords. Delvon’s solo takes off, with some triple meter and more suspensions heightening the tension over the boom-bap of the drums.

“Uncertainty” is an original ballad in the early 1970s soul spirit, a gorgeous tune that stayed in the band’s live repertoire. They don’t try to blow this one out, keeping to the tune and even adding an unusual key change that takes it down a half step. The band segues to “Keep On Keepin’ On,” a solitary writing credit for Lamarr’s wife (and the band’s manager) Amy Novo and a funky tune with some stretched time in the chorus and an almost-out-of-time ascending line in the guitar in the verse.

“Slip ‘N’ Slide” is a fun soul strutter, uncomplicated and easy, a cool little instrumental with a proper chorus. The closer “This is Who I Is” is way more ambitious, with a squelchy guitar line over a bouncy drum beat anchoring Lamarr’s solo. Jimmy James sounds as if someone let him out of a cage, and he takes a raging reverb-heavy solo that stretches against Lamarr’s chords, the two spurring each other on all the way to the end.

Alas, the plan that Weiss would be the permanent drummer for the DLO3 was not to be. After recording and touring behind Cold as Weiss, founding guitarist Jimmy James took off to focus on his other band The True Loves, and Weiss left some time later. The band currently features Brice Calvin on guitar and Ashley Ickes on drums, and they’re still out there touring. Here’s hoping for another album someday—or at least that some of the other tracks they recorded along the way see the light of day. (The band’s last release, 2022’s Live in Loveland, was an archival release of another concert done the same day as Live at KEXP!, and apparently the band banked another dozen or more tracks during the recording of I Told You So.)

But speaking of cold as things, it’s getting kind of chilly around here! Next week we take a break for some seasonal music, which will carry us through the new year before we shift gears once more.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Colemine Records released the title track as a 45; the b-side was this little gem, “Fried Soul”:

BONUS BONUS: This band might not have been around for long, but they left a mighty impact. Here’s the band in an hour-plus long live performance, recorded before the album’s release, at Relix Studios in New York:

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, I Told You So

This incarnation of the DLO3 gives us a different drummer and a funkier edge.

Album of the Week, November 15, 2025

I hinted at it when we wrote about Delvon Lamarr’s first album, Close But No Cigar: the drummer seat in the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio (or DLO3 for short) is rarely filled by the same musician for long. After recording the demos that became the first album and the game-changing Live at KEXP, founding DLO3 drummer David McGraw left the group to focus on his other soul-funk group, The True Loves. In his place: soul drummer Grant Schroff, who joined specifically as an interim drummer for a tour of Europe and recorded the second album with them. What’s remarkable is how little the change in one-third of the band ended up affecting the sound on their third official release, which remains a highly skillful blend of jazz and party-time soul even as the focus shifts to more originals and fewer covers.

“Hole in One” starts off in a 1969-1970 James Brown mood thanks to James’ fierce rhythm guitar part and a virtuosic Bootsy-style bass line courtesy of Lamarr’s left foot. The band lets the groove steep for a few reps before Lamarr takes a high-octave solo, wailing over a sustained tonic note in the left hand all while keeping that bass line going. A sudden dip into the relative minor key through the bridge is brief but also reminiscent of the Godfather of Soul.

“Call Your Mom,” co-written by Lamarr and guitarist Jimmy James, keeps the funk going. Here James’ guitar states the melody with an impeccable late-1960s—early–1970s soul vibe. “Girly Face” also has a sixties soul groove courtesy of Schroff and James and seamless transitions between organ and guitar solos. It feels like it could have been a sixties pop song; there’s moderate improvisation throughout but this one is mostly about the groove. Mind the chair dancing; it’s inevitable.

“From the Streets” has a vaguely 1990s hip-hop sound to it, thanks to the beat and the repetitive bass line. We get to hear that boom-bap beat by itself as a completely in-the-pocket drum break. There’s not much organ to this one other than the bass line; it’s really more of a soul instrumental, but a head-nodding one. “Fo Sho” brings in the whole sound of the band to close the first half with a Booker T vibe. Jimmy James slips the leash for a bit with a psychedelic guitar solo that spurs Delvon to similar heights as the two trade eights. The band builds to a mighty mighty climax before cutting out in a moment of suspense.

“Aces” keeps the funk party going, with another tune that gives us a drum break to soak in Schroff’s technique. There’s a little more bounce in Schroff’s style than McGraw’s; both men are tight on the drum kit and hold their corners down well, but there’s a touch more dynamic range in Schroff’s playing. Jimmy James takes a solo that comes in over the treetops, guns blazing, before the band comes back down into the groove.

At this point in the playback when I played this record for my family, it was my daughter who said, “Wait a minute! I know that song” at the same time my wife laughed with recognition. “Careless Whisper” is a true intergenerational classic even if you hear it without the iconic saxophone part (here played by James instead). It’s also another track that is more soul instrumental than jazz, but there’s some subtle improvisation on the verses that takes the melody to different places, keeping the fires hot underneath the simmering tune.

“Right Place, Right Time” is co-written by Seattle guitarist Ben Bloom, who sits in for Jimmy James on this number. Starting off with a bit of studio chatter, this one wakes up with a more nimble, less psychedelic-soul sound and a rhythm complex enough that for a minute you wonder if they’re playing in six. In this combo and guitar-forward arrangement, you can hear the rock-solid bassline and soulful chords that Lamarr leverages to keep the groove moving forward even with a completely different set of musicians. “I Don’t Know” closes us out with a funky blues and a tight interplay between Lamarr and Jimmy James, who demonstrates the relaxed but psychically close connection between himself and the organist that is the hallmark of the band.

This record shows off the band’s ability to keep rolling even as personnel changes and the repertoire becomes more funk-forward. It also brings Lamarr and James’ writing to the front, giving a nice slate of modern organ jazz/funk/soul to add to our collection of classics. Next week we’ll hear one more from the DLO3, bringing a few more changes along the way.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Here’s this incarnation of the DLO3 doing a live version of “Fo Sho” on Adult Swim, of all places.

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio: Live at KEXP!

Sometimes the best way to build an audience is just to show people what you do.

Album of the Week, November 8, 2025

Delvon Lamarr is one of many artists who have benefited from exposure on KEXP (about which I’ve written many times before). In this particular case, though, his career was significantly boosted. The band had a set they were playing on KEXP’s Upstream Festival in May 2017, and they stopped by the studio to warm up. KEXP’s camera crew happened to catch the warm up session, and posted it to YouTube. Eleven million views later, the band’s trajectory was in a new orbit. Sometimes it happens like that.

KEXP came on board with Colemine Records to issue the record of the live performance, which debuted on Record Store Day in 2018. It features a few of the performances from that live video plus some more, and stands as a gripping testament of the power of R&B powered funk to “move… and remove, dig?”

“Move On Up” is one of the tracks from the warm-up show; in the audio from YouTube, Lamarr notes “We’re going to start with a tune that should be familiar to most of you guys” before launching with the band into the Curtis Mayfield banger. The tune starts with just Jimmy James, sketching out the chords, before Lamarr enters on a crescendoing chord and David McGraw crashes out the beat. The playing is energetic and forthright; it’s impossible to hear and not dance.

“Memphis” is a laid-back version of the original from Close But No Cigar. Where the original could occasionally feel formulaic, here the band is tight and relaxed, not giving the guitar lick on the chorus until the second repetition. Lamarr’s solo swerves up into the upper range of the instrument, embracing different tempi (at one point almost grinding to a stop even as the guitar and drums carry forward) and generally laying down the funk. And then there’s Jimmy James. The guitar solo on “Memphis” is probably worth four to six million of the 11 million YouTube views that this performance racked up. Starting out with a staccato riff, James runs through triplets and eighth note runs before taking off into outer space. At one point you can clearly hear what sounds for all the world like a power bass player; the YouTube video pans down from the keyboard to show Lamarr knocking that bass line out with his left stockinged foot on the pedals. The whole thing is a piece of casually funky brilliance.

“South Leo St. Stomp,” called “Untitled” in the YouTube video, starts out immediately from “Memphis” with a steady four-four beat from McGraw, turning into a little cha-cha and syncopated funk as Lamarr and James enter. This is the video that prompted a YouTube commenter to post, “My watch just asked the drummer what the time is”—he’s so in the pocket, so flawlessly on, that it’s like hearing a funky, funky metronome. Jimmy James sounds more like Jimi Hendrix on this one, with the guitar threatening to take off at one point, but everything circles back to the relaxed beat once more to bring it to a close. The whole time, there have been more and more people coming up outside the windows of the performance space to listen, including a couple of very young listeners excitedly talking with their grown-ups about the sound.

The second half is devoted to the band’s actual Upstream Festival set, starting with “Concussion.” This version of the band’s debut single clocks in at a tight 4:27 but feels more laid back than the record version, between McGraw’s deeply in-the-pocket drumming and James’ mellow but focused guitar. Lamarr’s organ still has that perfect rhythm underneath, but he finds more melodic room in the solo. Jimmy James gives us a perfectly executed single-verse solo that comes in like a helicopter over the jungle to lay down bursts of funk. He’s in, freaky, and right back out. It feels like a well-worn pair of jeans.

Lamarr introduces “I Don’t Want to Play That” as “another new song, brand new… like Monday new.” The original is a deeply groovy ballad that feels like a tango in hip-huggers, thanks to the intersection between the band’s tight rhythm and the bluesy minor melodic solo from Lamarr. The band rolls right into “Tacoma Black Party,” an original named after a slip of the lip from Lamarr’s manager (and wife) Amy Novo. A feature for Jimmy James, the tune builds to a climax in the first chorus with his guitar climbing to the fifth and sixth of the scale, and then the whole band dropping out save for a few quiet notes in the organ, climbing up the scales. James melts the guitar, and our faces, with another Hendrix solo that crashes down octaves, briefly becomes polychordal, and slides all the way down to the bottom of his range until the band circles back around to the close.

The band closes with a properly funky version of Freddie Wilson’s “Top Going Down, Bottom Going Up,” originally made famous by Nathan Bartell. The band is totally locked in, with James giving a tight riff around the edges of the chorus but otherwise staying in support mode for this one. A monstrous solo from Lamarr has the crowd dancing all the way to the end, when James closes with a minor-key nod to “Jingle Bells.”

YouTube took the solidly soulful throwback sound of Lamarr and his band and made them minor stars. We’ll hear more from the band next week as things start to change.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: There can’t be any bonus better than that 2017 warm-up session, so here it is! The first half of the record was recorded as one single video (the 11-million view one, now up above 15 million), but the second half performances are available as individual videos as well. Watch ’em in order for the whole show, minus a little of the linking chatter.

Exfiltration Radio: Byrne Unit

David Byrne—Talking Head, art pop auteur, Broadway star, prolific collaborator—arguably has more side quests in his career than anyone else. I’ve been collecting some of these for years, starting with a good friend hipping me to The Catherine Wheel and Forestry, and picking up a copy of the LP of Music from the Knee Plays many years ago.

This playlist has a bunch of odds and ends, obscure and not. There are no Talking Heads tracks here, but there’s a lot of everything else—classical compositions, collaborations with Brian Eno, De La Soul and St. Vincent, concert performances, remixes, and straight up weird stuff.

Balanescu Quartet, “High life for nine instruments” (Byrne, Moran, Lurie & Torke): David Byrne the classical composer is a hat he doesn’t wear often anymore, but his exercises in writing for traditional ensembles brought about this pretty great African-inspired string work, performed by the avant-garde quartet led by Alexander Bălănescu. I found this CD release on the Argo label when I was in college, which is how long I’ve been trying to figure out how to squeeze it into a mix.

Brian Eno & David Byrne, “America is Waiting” (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts): This track and “The Jezebel Spirit” (which I sourced as a remix from the 12″ EP release The Jezebel Spirit) come from the seminal electronic collaboration between Eno & Byrne, which we’ve talked about before and which has appeared on past Exfiltration Radio shows. Both tracks sample radio broadcasts which I haven’t seen identified, though other tracks on the album have turned out to have identifiable samples.

David Byrne, “Dinosaur”/“The Red House” (The Catherine Wheel): Byrne wrote and performed this score for the titular performance by Twyla Tharp; Bernie Worrell, Adrian Belew, Jerry Harrison, and Dolette McDonald all appear elsewhere on the album, but not in these songs (or “Big Blue Plymouth”; see below). Some mindbending sonic fun here.

David Byrne, “Things To Do (I’ve Tried)” (Music for the Knee Plays): I’ve written about this project before—a score for the plays that hang around the outside of Robert Wilson’s opera the CIVIL warS, the project was inspired by the sound of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and features New Orleans jazz-inspired songs, together with incredibly strange spoken word work from Byrne. Also appears on a past Exfiltration Radio show and an old mix.

David Byrne, “Strange Overtones (live)” (Everything That Happens Will Happen On This Tour): Byrne and Eno reunited on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which was unexpectedly joyful, in 2008. This version of the lead-off single came from a live performance recording and is pretty great, subtracting synths and adding in other instrumentation. Great Byrne vocal on this song-about-writing-a-song, which also features Mark De Gli Antoni (of Soul Coughing fame) on keyboards.

David Byrne, “Great Intoxication (live)” (Live From Austin, TX): Another live track, this one from an Austin City Limits performance that backed Byrne with the Austin-based tango string quartet Tosca. A great full-throated performance of this track from Byrne’s Look Into the Eyeball.

David Byrne feat. Ghost Train Orchestra, “Everybody Laughs” (Who Is the Sky?): The lead off track from Byrne’s latest album finds him in familiar lyrical and musical territory, which is to say in fine form.

De La Soul, “Snoopies (with David Byrne)” (and the Anonymous Nobody…): Until I started catching up with later day De La Soul, I had no idea Byrne had collaborated with them. A great song with a fantastic Trugoy the Dove verse.

David Byrne, “The Jezebel Spirit (remix)” (The Jezebel Spirit): See notes regarding My Life in the Bush of Ghosts above.

David Byrne, “Ava (Nu Wage Remix)” (Forestry EP): So you’re going to write a full orchestra classical score for a Robert Wilson theatre piece. What’s the right way to do a single from such a project? Well, getting Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto to do this remix is a pretty good start. One I found in college and listened to a lot.

Otto, “Accident” (Little Pieces): An odd composition of Byrne’s on this 2008 release, that I found while digging for a different work of his. Otto is an interesting ensemble, featuring cello, vibraphone, reeds, and slide guitar, and this work of Byrne’s fits in with much of his soundtrack work from this period.

David Byrne, “Don’t Fence Me In” (Red Hot + Blue): One of the all-time great charity collections, Red Hot + Blue launched a whole series, but it all began with this one covering the compositions of Cole Porter. Byrne’s performance incorporates the Brazilian rhythms he was working with in the late 1980s and early 1990s and a lot of subtext about the human pain surrounding the AIDS crisis.

David Byrne, “Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)” (3 Big Songs): See notes about The Catherine Wheel above. This mix of the song came from a twelve-inch EP that was released from the original album, with the songs that ended up being included in Stop Making Sense.

David Byrne & St. Vincent, “Road to Nowhere (live)” (Brass Tactics EP): I love this EP, which pairs the two collaborators with a brass ensemble. This version of “Road to Nowhere” is about as joyous as anything on record.

David Byrne, “City of Steel” (Sounds from True Stories): The short true story about True Stories is that Byrne wanted to release a soundtrack to his film of the same name, and ended up having to release a Talking Heads album; Sounds from True Stories features all the stuff that ended on the cutting room floor. Recommended for all the performances, especially this steel guitar rendition of “City of Dreams.”

Do not attempt to adjust your set!

BONUS: Still love the video for “Don’t Fence Me In,” which was profoundly moving when I saw it for the first time many years ago:

Exfiltration Radio: can’t we smile?

An hour of bliss at the intersection of spiritual jazz and jazz-funk, circa 1969-1976.

Detail from Betye Saar’s “Window of Ancient Sirens,” 1979

Not enough people talk about the through-line from spiritual jazz to smooth jazz.

That may seem like a strange, almost nonsensical thing to say, to compare Coltrane’s A Love Supreme to Grover Washington or Kenny G. Nevertheless, there’s a path there, and it runs through some artists that I’ve talked about on this blog many times before. Generally speaking, the sound I’m talking about, and that I explore in this hour of Exfiltration Radio, blends the soaring messages of hope of Pharoah Sanders’ Karma with the more cosmic sounds of the Fender Rhodes. Many of the works are more audibly optimistic, i.e. in a major key; many of them have lyrics; several have full-blown string arrangements. Some are more spiritual in focus, while others just enjoy the groove. And they almost all seem to come from the late 1960s to around the mid-1970s, with the sweet spot being from about 1969 to 1973.

That said, the overall driving force for this mix was definitely tunes that put a smile on the face and lower the blood pressure. So enjoy! The track listing:

Lonnie Liston Smith, “Expansions” (Expansions): The title cut from Smith’s 1975 album on the Flying Dutchman label, this is a darker groove than most of the songs on the show, but with that deep plea for peace at the heart of it: “Expand your mind to understand/we all must live in peace.” With a great band comprised of Cecil McBee on bass, brother Donald Smith on flute and vocals, Dave Hubbard on saxophones and Michael Carvin on drums.

Ramsey Lewis, “Bold and Black” (Another Voyage): This track from the perennially sunny improviser’s 1969 album points toward more smooth experiments, like 1974’s Sun Goddess, while providing a sunray of musical joy. Classic top-down, driving around music.

Norman Connors, “Carlos II” (Love From the Sun): Drummer, composer and arranger Connors spent most of his career in R&B and smooth jazz, but this, his third album as leader, is a fascinating, fantastic collection of straight ahead jazz with hints of spirituality poking through around the corners. A great line-up of players, including Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes, Gary Bartz on saxophones, Buster Williams on bass, Hubert Laws on flute, Kenneth Nash on percussion, Eddie Henderson on trumpet, and Carlos Garnett, who wrote this track, on tenor sax. Dee Dee Bridgewater guests on two tracks. The whole album is a great listen.

Azar Lawrence, “Theme for a New Day” (People Moving): Lawrence played on McCoy Tyner’s Enlightenment, Sama Layuca and Atlantis before recording his first album as leader. By 1976’s People Moving he was producing fully orchestrated sonic experiences that were full of spiritual energy and deep grooves.

Donald Byrd, “Places and Spaces” (Places and Spaces): By 1975, Donald Byrd was in a very different place than when he played on Herbie Hancock’s second album, or even his mid-1960s spiritual jazz outings for Blue Note. His 1973 album Black Byrd, produced by Larry and Fonce Mizell, was a jazz-funk fusion high point that for many years was Blue Note’s biggest selling album. Places and Spaces is the fourth of Byrd’s Mizell-produced albums, and cranks much of what made that album successful up to 11, including swooning strings and a guitar-driven hook that wouldn’t be out of place on an O’Jays record. The chant that drives the record isn’t quite P-Funk quality, but it gets the job done, and Byrd sneaks in a fully respectable trumpet solo amid the rest of the funk.

Bobbi Humphrey, “Harlem River Drive” (Blacks and Blues): Humphrey, a hugely talented flautist, also benefited from the Mizell brothers’ production on the 1973 Blue Note album Blacks and Blues, including their writing this ode to summertime cruising. The band here is mostly session players, including Jerry Peters on keyboards, Chuck Rainey on bass and the great Harvey Mason on drums, but Humphrey’s flute solo is the main thing here, a work of searing beauty in an otherwise light track.

Johnny Hammond, “Can’t We Smile?” (Gears): This work, by keyboardist and sometime jazz organist Johnny Hammond, née Johnny “Hammond” Smith, not only gave me the title for this hour but kicked off the process of putting it together, after Lisa asked me why I was listening to smooth jazz; defending the track made me realize how much I liked it and how much depth lurked beneath its smooth exterior. Released in 1975 on Milestone Records, it’s another Mizell Brothers joint with Mason, Rainey, Peters, and Nash, along with trombonist Julian Priester (from Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band) and avant-spiritual violinist Michael White.

Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes, “Rejuvenation” (Astral Traveling): Before there was Expansions there was Astral Traveling. Smith’s first album with the Cosmic Echoes was recognizably straight-ahead jazz, with much the same crew as on Expansions, but again Smith’s composition leaned forward to the optimistic and hopeful, particularly in the ebullience of George Barron’s saxophone melody. Smith’s solo similarly feels extroverted in an almost soul-shouter kind of way.

Alphonse Mouzon, “Thank You Lord” (The Essence of Mystery): Mouzon’s first album, in 1973, has tinges of the same mystery that the drummer brought to the first incarnation of Weather Report, combined with a melodic and compositional sensibility that feels akin to with Smith was doing at the same time. It also feels like some of Keith Jarrett’s 1970s work, broadly anchored in major-key tonality with a swooping saxophone shining a light in the darkness.

Pharoah Sanders, “Astral Traveling” (Thembi): Before there was Astral Traveling, there was … “Astral Traveling.” The first track on Sanders’ 1971 album, his last with Smith, was legendarily composed by the band as Smith sat and played a Fender Rhodes for the first time ever in the studio. I like this version better than the one on Smith’s later album because I feel more wonder in the playing, as though the band is together exploring a new world. It’s also a welcome view of a side of Pharoah Sanders that we don’t often think of, but he could be as gentle as he was often fiery.

Leon Thomas, “The Creator Has a Master Plan” (Spirits Known and Unknown): This brings us to the last track. Vocalist and composer Leon Thomas collaborated with Sanders on the composition of “Creator,” and both Sanders and Smith are here on this recording. This version from Thomas’s debut album gives a good view of his approach: a wide-eyed spirituality, still with some of the ululating vocal flourishes of Sanders’s recording, but overall less cosmic brimstone and more bliss.

There is nothing wrong. We have taken control as to bring you this special show and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Close But No Cigar

A revival of the jazz organ combo draws on masters from that tradition, as well as soul and funk, and brings us a party.

Album of the Week, November 1, 2025

After fusion and jazz-funk took some of the steam out of the organ combo market in the 1970s, the neo-trad movement spearheaded by Wynton Marsalis similarly had the jazz-record-buying public focused elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s. But the organ combo never went away, and new players continued to emerge, including the late great Joey DeFrancesco in the late 1980s through the 2010s. New players continued to emerge, including today’s artist.

During this period, something else was happening: internet distribution of music. Music blogs and recommendation feeds helped formerly niche artists find audiences. And distribution platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp helped musicians get access to their music, whether streaming or via vinyl. Into this market (and onto Bandcamp) stepped Delvon Lamarr and his organ trio. Based in Seattle, Lamarr had played in a number of bands including the now-defunct jazz-funk combo Megatron before forming his organ trio in 2015 with guitarist Jimmy James and what would turn out (spoiler alert) to be a revolving door of drummers. For the first album, that was Seattle-based David McGraw.

The band’s manager (and Lamarr’s wife) Amy Novo learned about Loveland, Ohio’s Colemine records and its founder Terry Cole from another Colemine act, and McGraw brought their tracks over. Cole tested the tracks in his record shop, and decided to release the album after seeing fifteen or twenty patrons bob their heads to the music and then ask “Who is this?” 

“Concussion” comes out of the gates swinging hard. Lamarr plays the melody in the mid to low range, as Jimmy Smith did, but unlike his predecessor gives a strong voice to guitarist Jimmy James in the arrangement. The two play in a tight combo, closing the head out with two single notes. Lamarr’s solo stays in the midrange, iterating over the bluesy chord changes and powering up on his second repetition to something more fiery but still very much in the pocket. Jimmy James’ guitar solo, on the other hand, takes off like the shuddering rotors of a helicopter, playing with time over the bursts of sound from the organ and McGraw’s drums. 

“Little Booker T”  is a nod to one of Lamarr’s major non-jazz influences, Booker T and the MGs. The combo gives a good impression of the laid-back vibes of the great Stax house band, complete with a pretty great bass line courtesy of Lamarr’s organ.  The laid-back vibe continues with a completely different beat in “Ain’t It Funky,” a tribute to the great 1970 line-up of James Brown’s JBs. Jimmy James plays a great Catfish Collins impression, and Lamarr picks up the groove as James takes a ripping solo. The only minus is McGraw’s drumming—while in the pocket, it lacks some of the originality and bounce of a Bernard Purdie.

“Close But No Cigar” takes Stax as its inspiration, with a melody slightly reminiscent of Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff.” Lamarr slows the melody down in the chorus even as the groove continues. There’s a little melodic development here but that’s almost beside the point; this is grimy, funky good-time dance music, and the syncopated B melody that seems designed for whiplash-inducing head-nodding only reinforces the point. The John Patton classic “Memphis” (from a 1969-1970 album that went unreleased until 1996) is an opportunity for McGraw to show off his skills, and he rises to the occasion, with a funky, bouncy beat. We’re back in Stax territory again, as the name suggests, and the chorus, alternating between the tonic and supertonic chords, reinforces the funky energy.

“Al Greenery” tips the hat to the Reverend Al circa “Love and Happiness”—in fact, making a groove out of the first four measures of the song. This one definitely leans more pop; Jimmy James doesn’t get much of a chance to go off the reservation here. That’s reserved for Lamarr in “Can I Change My Mind,” a bright and sunny number written by Carl Wolfolk and Barry Despenza and debuted by Tyrone Davis in 1969 that allows both organist and guitarist to add a little sunny soul to the mix, with Lamarr giving by far the most joyous expression on the record.

“Between the Mustard and the Mayo” references both the infamous “sandwich cover” of Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo and a bit of the mid-1960s arrangements by both Oliver Nelson and Lalo Schifrin that we have heard in earlier columns. Lamarr is flat out here, improvising at maximum velocity as James and McGraw groove hard underneath him. “Raymond Brings the Greens” gets a fiercely greasy groove courtesy of James and a stumbling McGraw drum beat, but the band isn’t above a wink as James tosses in a riff from “The Man Who Sold the World” in his solo.

The Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic “Walk On By” closes us out with an end-of-the-evening vibe: no crazy solos, no Isaac Hayes psychedelic soul, just the band giving their best groove over a bashing drum part from McGraw. Lamarr is the best part of this album closer, leaning into the chords at the chorus with a weeping expressiveness. It’s time to go, he seems to say, but you’ll be back.

Delvon Lamarr and his band hit something just right with this debut album, proving that there was an audience for just plain fun jazz and soul played with heart. The trio would go on to record more; we’ll hear a live show from them next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Along with the aforementioned live show, the band hit the road to promote the album. You can skip the first 2:50, though the interview is interesting enough, to watch the band tear into “Close but No Cigar” live:

Jimmy McGriff and Groove Holmes, Dueling Organs

If one Hammond organist is good, two are somethin’ else.

Album of the Week, October 25, 2025

The way I have structured this series is inherently unfair to some of the artists I write about. Basically, unless I have the album on vinyl, I don’t write about it. This means that I’ll never write about some artists, and others will be represented by albums that don’t represent their most significant work.

Such is the case with this week’s album. Originally released in 1973 on the famed Groove Merchant label as Giants of the Organ Come Together, it was gifted with a bizarre cover illustration and a much shorter (and inadvertently suggestive…) title when Pickwick’s subsidiary label Quintessence re-released it as part of their Quintessence Jazz Series. Both organists featured on the record had long careers of their own. Jimmy McGriff cut over sixty records on a variety of labels from the early 1960s to the early 2000s, including Blues for Mister Jimmy and Groove Grease. He got his start with the Hammond B-3 organ when he heard one played at his sister’s wedding by a man who turned out to be Richard “Groove” Holmes. Holmes had about forty records to his own credit, from 1961 to 1991 when he passed away from a heart attack; his most famous was a 1965 version of “Misty” that hit the Hot 100.

The liner notes correctly point out that recording two Hammond organs at the same time is challenging; the instrument isn’t subtle (or light), and a two-organ setup would have been challenging to mike in the studio—but still easier than getting two organs into the average nightclub or concert hall. But the producer, Sonny Lester, persevered. He placed Groove Holmes and his guitarist, George Freeman, in the left channel, and Jimmy McGriff and his guitarist, O’Donel Levy, in the right. Straight down the middle were conga player Kwasi Jayourba and redoubtable funky drummer Bernard Purdie.

“Licks A’Plenty” is what it says on the package, a battle of dueling voices. Here we hear both organists start out, followed by the mellow tones of Jimmy McGriff’s instrument and O’Donel Levy. It’s interesting to compare their approach to Jimmy Smith with Kenny Burrell; where Burrell answered Smith’s licks, Levy plays alongside McGriff, playing runs and chords as a kind of counter-solo and showing why the organist brought his own guitarist. Groove Holmes plays a series of chords and then lets George Freeman take a solo, while McGriff supports with rhythm from the other channel. Holmes returns the favor for Levy’s solo as well. There’s lots of back and forth here, with some supportive work as well as spotlights for Purdie and Jayourba, and even an Acme siren whistle at one point. Everyone appears to be simultaneously having a great time and trying to outdo his neighbor, which is what the best cutting contests are all about.

“Out of Nowhere” starts with a Jimmy McGriff solo and rolls from there, with Holmes supporting him with chord stabs at the turns of each phrase. Freeman takes a laid-back solo with repeated notes on the dominant that builds through the repetition; Levy’s no-nonsense solo is more rapid but similarly relaxed. Groove Holmes takes a solo in a higher octave that builds tension through sustained notes; McGriff does a blast of rapid vibrato that eggs him on.

“The Squirrel” is one of two tunes credited to Holmes and McGriff. It’s a tune that features the band with McGriff playing what almost amounts to commentary after each phrase. Again, Freeman builds a minimalist solo with repeated licks; Levy is positively extroverted by comparison, with notes scampering over the fretboard.

“Finger Lickin’ Good,” the other original on the album, is sadly not the song sampled by the Beastie Boys in their song of the same name, though they clearly had this album in the studio given that Check Your Head also features a song called “Groove Holmes.” But this one is an instantly recognizable classic, with chord stabs from Holmes answered by running notes from McGriff and the guitars. The band takes this cheery blues around the world, with each organist and guitarist taking a solo as the other players support them. There’s a moment at the end of the song where Holmes’s organ makes a sound as though it’s being run through a wah-wah pedal, and the whole band shifts into a hemiola as things fade out.

“How High the Moon” is as close as this record gets to a ballad, with both organists playing swoony turns on the classic melody. Holmes in particular shines here with a solo that swoops up into the high corners of the tune. The record concludes with a briskly virtuosic take on “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” replete with stabs on the organ from Holmes, laid back licks from McGriff and Levy, and a bluesy guitar solo from Freeman. Groove Holmes takes a full twelve bars of tremolo that builds to a screaming climax, then trades licks with McGriff all the way to the end.

Under whatever name you refer to this collaboration, it’s an oddly fun one, hearing the two masters of the organ trade ideas and licks back and forth, and as a bonus has one genuine classic in the form of “Finger Lickin’ Good” that sits alongside “The Cat” in the ranks of organ combo standards. It’s definitely worth seeking out the records that each organist made under his own name, but this session is a lot of fun to listen to as well.

There were some dry years for organ combos over the next little bit, but younger players have come along to claim the mantle of these greats. We’ll spend a bit of time with one of them over the next few weeks as we draw nearer to the end of this series.

You can hear this week’s album here (under its original title):

BONUS: The duo of McGriff and Holmes also cut a live album with this set-up. Here’s “The Preacher’s Tune” from Giants of the Organ in Concert:

Jimmy Smith, Root Down

Root down, and get it, with this milestone live recording by the master and a young band with connections to the Jackson 5, Motown and Quincy Jones.

Album of the Week, October 18, 2o25

When last we heard from Jimmy Smith, he had just started to build a new trio after years of relative stability with Grady Tate. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the personnel for his bands continued to change, and his live sets continued to blow minds even as his recorded work continued in the same groove it always had. But a live session from February 1972 went to new heights and effectively immortalized him for a later generation.

As we’ve heard, even famously conservative labels like Blue Note were leaning harder into the jazz-funk stream. Jimmy had always had a healthy dollop of R&B in his sound, but the band of younger players he brought to the Bombay Bicycle Club on February 8, 1972 went much farther in that direction. Drummer Paul Humphrey had played sessions with Wes Montgomery, bluesman Mel Brown, Quincy Jones, Merry Clayton, and organists “Groove” Holmes and Charles Kynard. Wilton Felder was a founding member fo the Jazz Crusaders who had played bass on the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and “ABC.” Conga player Buck Clarke had performed with Les McCann, Willis Jackson and Cannonball Adderley. And guitarist Arthur Adams had performed with Quincy Jones, the Jackson 5, the Crusaders, and others, as well as releasing his own material as a leader with Motown. The band were steeped in funk and soul, and just as the arrival of the Collins brothers had turbocharged James Brown’s funky side a year earlier, the young collaborators did incredible things for Jimmy’s sound that night.

Paul Humphrey, Wilton Felder, and Buck Clarke begin with a fierce rhythm over which Adams begins to lay down a scratch guitar line as Jimmy plays the opening lick and descending chromatic chords of “Sagg Shootin’ His Arrow.” Adams gets the first solo, making heavy use of a wah-wah pedal to alter the sound. Jimmy’s solo uses sustained tones over which he plays a frantically fast organ part; as Adams keeps going with sustained tension on a minor third in the mid-range of the guitar, Jimmy keeps his solo higher so that it can be better heard above the band. When Adams drops back to the funk “scratch” effect, Jimmy drops an octave, but not for long as his intense energy continues to drive his solo forward. Note: the version of the tune linked above is the unedited version from the 2000 reissue of the album. The original LP has a seven-minute edit instead.

“For Everyone Under the Sun,” written by Peter Chase, kicks off with a mellower introduction, but Jimmy brings an enormous amount of energy to even this ballad, with the melodic line rolling like waves. Arthur Adams takes a brief solo but then it’s back to Jimmy. He embellishes almost every line with rolling chords, blue flourishes, and secondary melodies; the ideas seem to just pour forth. If his studio solos were sometimes predictable on earlier albums, here he’s anything but.

“After Hours” is a deeply bluesy original that starts with just Humphrey and Felder backing up a triple-time rolling blues solo by Jimmy. Steve Williams, who seems to have just been hanging around the club, gives a few licks on the harmonica that serve mostly as color underneath both Jimmy and Adams; this track is his sole recording credit (Discogs thinks otherwise, but I doubt he’s the same Steve Williams on that 2009 Australian blues record). Buck Clarke gets a feature alongside Jimmy on his second solo, his polyrhythmic hits helping to fan the fire already burning under Jimmy’s solo as the organist leans into the tonic as a drone under his solo. The band leans into the slow blues at the close, at what must have been the break in the set (and the end of Side 1); the audience in the club is audible in their appreciation.

Side 2 opens with “Root Down (And Get It),” which is to say it opens with Felder. His opening note on the bass is a slide into the tonic an octave up, followed by a bluesy descent down to the subtonic an octave down. The theme on the bass: subtonic to repeated tonic, subtonic to repeated tonic, up to a minor third, at the lowest reach of the bass, is some seriously, deeply stanky funk all by itself. When Humphrey hits a series of syncopated beats on the tom and snare, it builds to a rhythm that immediately has the audience clapping along. Arthur Adams arrives with a deeply wah-wah’d, scratched intro, the congas percolate along, and Jimmy’s organ plays mostly on the tonic and subtonic, laying into a funky groove that builds up to rising chromatic chords. Structurally we’re in twelve-bar blues land, but artistically speaking we are in some deep funk. What makes “Root Down” more funky than “Sagg Shootin’ His Arrow”? In my mind it’s the space in the arrangement. “Sagg” feels frantic, almost overloaded, like the band has something to prove, but “Root Down” breathes even as it consistently, insistently circles back to those rising chords. The moment late in the song where the players drop back and you can hear just Humphrey and Buck Clarke’s rhythm is magic.

The band rolls right into “Let’s Stay Together”; the Al Green song must have been on many minds, considering its cover on Two Headed Freap last week. Jimmy’s solo here is exuberant and extroverted, and the band’s hard backbeat and groove make this version one to listen to. If the beat is relaxed here, it is only in preparation for its double time recapitulation of the opening number, retitled “Slow Down Sagg.” Here Arthur Adams takes a walk down Main Street in Funkytown, both in his solo and in his accompaniment of Jimmy’s frantically Terpsichorean boogie. Paul Humphrey gets his moment in the spotlight, as do both Buck Clarke and Wilton Felder, in what seem to be made-for-sampling breaks. At the end, Jimmy changes both key and mode into something out of the Arabian Nights as the band finally stops, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd.

Jimmy continued to record into the 1990s, making his last studio album, Dot Com Blues, for Verve just a few years before he passed away in 2005. By the 1970s, he had been around that even his imitators had built up significant traction and recording careers of their own. We’ll hear from a few of these peers next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: There are a lot of live covers of “Root Down” out there, but this one by Chris Thile’s band is a pretty darned good funkgrass rendition:

BONUS BONUS: Not gonna lie: even as a terribly uninformed hip-hop novice I knew about the Beastie Boys a long time before I heard Jimmy Smith. So in that regard this song was my gateway to this album. It was absolutely mind blowing when Verve released the Jimmy Smith album on CD in (checks notes) 2000 and I could hear what the Beasties were listening to: