Jimmy McGriff
You
gotta love Hammond organ, no? I’ll not
say much about this one other than Mojo Magazine placed it in the 1001
essential albums of all time (in the jazz category). It’s been a personal favourite for years and
seems just the thing to get you over the mid-week slump/hump/bump.
One
of the all-time giants of the Hammond B-3, Jimmy McGriff sometimes gets lost amid all
the great soul-jazz organists from his hometown of Philadelphia. He was almost
certainly the bluesiest of the major soul-jazz pioneers, and indeed, he often
insisted that he was more of a blues musician than a jazz artist; nonetheless,
he remained eclectic enough to blur the lines of classification. His sound --
deep, down-to-earth grooves drenched in blues and gospel feeling -- made him
quite popular with R&B audiences, even more so than some of his peers; what
was more, he was able to condense those charms into concise, funky,
jukebox-ready singles that often did surprisingly well on the R&B charts.
His rearrangement of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" was
a Top Five R&B hit in 1962, and further hits like "All About My
Girl," "Kiko," and "The Worm" followed over the course
of the '60s. McGriff spent much of the '70s trying to
keep pace with the fusion movement, switching to various electric keyboards and
adopting an increasingly smooth, polished style. As the '80s dawned, McGriff gave up trying to sound contemporary
and returned to his classic organ-trio sound; as luck would have it, vintage
soul-jazz soon came back into vogue with a devoted cult of fans and critics,
and McGriff was able to recover his creative
vitality and take his place as one of the genre's elder statesmen.
James
Harrell McGriff, Jr. was born April 3, 1936, in Philadelphia. His mother and
father both played the piano, and he counted saxophonist Benny Golson and soul singer Harold Melvin among his cousins. First
getting involved in music through his family's church, he received his first
instrument, a drum set, at age eight; by his teen years, he had taken up
acoustic bass and alto sax, and also learned vibes, piano, and drums by the
time he finished high school. Bass remained his primary instrument for a while,
although he was inspired to try his hand at the Hammond organ after seeing Richard "Groove" Holmes at a
club in Camden, NJ. However, McGriff was drafted into the military
after high school, and served in the Korean War as a military policeman. Upon
returning to the United States, he decided to make law enforcement a career,
and after completing the necessary training, he worked on the Philadelphia
police force for two and a half years. Still, he never lost interest in music,
and around 1955 he augmented his day job by working as a bass player behind
vocalists like Carmen McRae and, most frequently, Big Maybelle, who had a regular gig at the
local Pep's Showboat club.
With
the Hammond organ rising in popularity around Philadelphia, jobs for bass
players were scarce, and McGriff contacted Groove Holmes about learning the organ,
this time in earnest. He bought his own Hammond B-3 in 1956, and spent the next
six months practicing as hard as he could, either at Holmes' house or at Archie Shepp's house (where he stored the
instrument). Skipping more and more work time to play gigs, he finally quit the
police force, and enrolled at the local Combe College to study music. He later
moved on to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in New York, and also
studied privately with Milt Buckner, Jimmy Smith, and Sonny Gatewood. McGriff's first recording was the single
"Foxy Due," cut for the small White Marsh label in 1958; it featured
a young saxophonist named Charles Earland, who subsequently learned
the organ from McGriff and, like his mentor, went on to
become one of the instrument's quintessential performers.
McGriff was performing in a small club in
Trenton, NJ in 1962 when a talent scout from the small Jell label heard him and
offered him a chance to record. McGriff's instrumental soul-jazz
rearrangement of Ray Charles' classic "I've Got a
Woman" was released as a single, and sold well enough for Juggy Murray's New York-based Sue label to
pick it up for wider release. With better distribution and promotion behind it,
"I've Got a Woman" hit the national charts and became a bona fide
hit, climbing into the Top Five on the R&B charts and the Top 20 over on
the pop side. Sue issued McGriff's debut album, naturally also
titled I've Got a Woman, in 1963; it too was a
hit, nearly making the pop Top 20, and it spun off two more charting singles in
the McGriff originals "All About My
Girl" (number 12 R&B, Top 50 pop) and "M.G. Blues." Sue
released several more McGriff albums over the next two years,
including the live At the Apollo, Jimmy McGriff at the Organ (which produced
the chart single "Kiko"), the holiday hit Christmas With McGriff (actually his
highest-charting album at number 15 pop), the charting Topkapi (a collection of soundtrack themes
with orchestral backing), and another chart hit, Blues for Mister Jimmy, which proved to be
his last on Sue.
In
1966, McGriff moved over to the Solid State
label, where he hooked up with producer Sonny Lester, who would helm most of his
records through the '70s. He debuted with Jimmy McGriff and the Big Band, which
found him fronting an all-star swing orchestra featuring many Count Basie alumni (it was later reissued
as A Tribute to Count Basie). McGriff recorded prolifically for Solid
State over the remainder of the decade, including albums like A Bag Full of Soul (1966), A Bag Full of Blues (1967), and I've Got a New Woman (1968; mostly a look
back at his Sue material). Most notably, though, McGriff scored another hit single with
"The Worm," which made the R&B Top 30 and sent the LP of the same
name rocketing into the R&B Top Ten in early 1969. In addition to his Solid
State recordings, McGriff cut several albums for Blue Note
over 1969-1971, most notably Electric Funk, an early foray into
jazz-funk fusion that teamed him with arranger/electric pianist Horace Ott; a similar outing that featured
pop/rock and R&B covers, Soul Sugar, was released on Capitol during the
same period. Additionally, McGriff toured as part of Buddy Rich's band during the late '60s,
and again from 1971-1972.
McGriff made Groove Merchant his primary
label in 1971, and although he briefly quit the business in 1972 to start a
horse farm in Connecticut, the lure of music proved too powerful to overcome.
Early in the decade, he alternated between funky electric outings (usually with
covers of contemporary rock and R&B hits) and more traditional, small-group
organ-jazz settings. Notable albums included 1973's Giants of the Organ Come Together, a
summit with mentor and longtime friend Groove Holmes; a duo album with bluesman Junior Parker; 1976's Mean Machine, a slicker jazz-funk LP that
returned him to the R&B album chart's Top 50; and the 1977 follow-up Red Beans, which also sold respectably.
After
1977's Tailgunner (on LRC), McGriff's recorded output tailed off over
the next few years. He resurfaced on the Milestone label in 1983, debuting with
Countdown, a return to his classic, bluesy
soul-jazz style that started to bring him back into the jazz spotlight. A
series of strong albums followed during the '80s, including 1984's Skywalk, 1985's State of the Art, 1986's acclaimed The Starting Five, and 1988's Blue to the 'Bone (a near-Top Ten hit on
the jazz LP charts); he also recorded a one-off session for Headfirst in 1990, You Ought to Think About Me, that made the
jazz Top Ten. Additionally, McGriff co-led a group with saxophonist Hank Crawford during the late '80s, which
released several albums, including 1990's popular On the Blue Side (number three on the jazz
charts). He also returned to his roots in the church by playing on gospel
singer Tramaine Hawkins' 1990 live album. McGriff and Crawford moved over to Telarc for a pair
of albums over 1994-1995, Right Turn on Blue and Blues Groove. As soul-jazz returned to
cult popularity in both America and the U.K., McGriff found himself playing
higher-profile gigs and venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He returned to
Milestone and resumed his solo career in 1996 with The Dream Team, which featured saxman David "Fathead" Newman and
drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, both of
whom would become familiar faces on McGriff recordings in the years to come.
Follow-ups included solid records like 1998's Straight Up, 2000's McGriff's House Party, 2001's Feelin' It, and 2002's McGriff Avenue, which looked back on some
of his '60s hits. (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jimmy-mcgriff-mn0000076658)
Track Listing:
01 The Worm
02 Keep Loose
03 Heavyweight
04 Think
05 Lock it Up
06 Girl Talk
07 Blue Juice
08 Take
the ‘A’ Train
