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Jimmy Smith - The Complete Verve Singles [Verve] 2016 FLAC

Jazz is not normally associated with hit singles, or even singles. The album, the long playing record and latterly the CD have been the preferred medium for jazz musicians to stretch out and produce some of their finest work. 

Releasing singles back when impresario and entrepreneur Norman Granz started Clef Records in the late 1940s and later Norgran and Verve was all about gaining exposure through radio plays and on the juke boxes that were keen to swallow up dimes in bars – or anywhere and everywhere that people gathered. By 1956 there were 750,000 juke boxes in America; 1956 was the year that Verve Records was founded. 

Jimmy Smith introduced more people to jazz than just about any of his contemporaries. He had hit singles on the Billboard charts and his hip Hammond B3 organ was ubiquitous during the 1970s. His was accessible jazz, the kind that was easy to get ‘into’, yet it was complex and challenging too, offering endless hours of enjoyment. His back catalogue is full of wonderful albums and if you are looking for a place to start check out The Cat from 1964 which has also recently been reissued on vinyl. 

“I am the innovator. that’s it. period! I’m the guy that made it.” – Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith’s father had a song-and-dance act in the local clubs, so it was perhaps no surprise that as a young boy he took to the stage at six years old. Less usual though was that by the age twelve, he had taught himself, with occasional guidance from Bud Powell who lived nearby, to be an accomplished “Harlem Stride” pianist. He won local talent contests with his boogie-woogie piano playing and his future seemed set, but his father became increasingly unable to play and turned to manual labour for income. Smith left school to help support the family and joined the Navy when he was fifteen years old.