Blue Bash!
Biography
"Kenny Burrell's smooth, tasteful guitar work and Jimmy Smith's intense, fire-breathing approach to the Hammond organ have been complementing each other, and delighting audiences, since the two first recorded together in 1957," reads a Verve records blurb about the Burrell and Smith album Blue Bash! Jimmy Smith, nicknamed "The Incredible Jimmy Smith", (December 8, 1925 – February 8, 2005) was a jazz musician whose Hammond B-3 electric organ performances helped to popularize this instrument. Bo...
"Kenny Burrell's smooth, tasteful guitar work and Jimmy Smith's intense, fire-breathing approach to the Hammond organ have been complementing each other, and delighting audiences, since the two first recorded together in 1957," reads a Verve records blurb about the Burrell and Smith album Blue Bash!
Jimmy Smith, nicknamed "The Incredible Jimmy Smith", (December 8, 1925 – February 8, 2005) was a jazz musician whose Hammond B-3 electric organ performances helped to popularize this instrument.
Born James Oscar Smith in Norristown, Pennsylvania, USA. Smith was influenced by both gospel and blues. He first achieved prominence in the 1950s when his recordings became popular on jukeboxes. In the sixties and seventies he helped create the jazz style known as 'soul jazz'.
While the electric organ was used in jazz by Fats Waller and Count Basie, Smith's virtuoso improvisation technique on the Hammond helped to popularize the electric organ as a jazz and blues instrument. For ballads, he played walking bass lines on the bass foot pedals. For uptempo tunes, he would play the bass line on the lower manual and use the pedals for emphasis on the attack of certain notes, which helped to emulate the attack and sound of a string bass.
Smith was a prolific recording artist, recording with the Blue Note label beginning in 1956. His early albums with Blue Note, included Home Cookin' , The Sermon!, House Party, Midnight Special, Prayer Meetin' , and Back at the Chicken Shack.
Smith signed to Verve Records label in 1963. Smith's albums with Verve include: The Cat, The Boss, Root Down, Peter & The Wolf, Any Number Can Win, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Incredible..., Bashin, Got My Mojo Workin, Christmas Cookin, and Organ Grinder Swing. While he was signed to Verve, he began collaborating with guitarist Wes Montgomery, with whom he recorded two albums: The Dynamic Duo with Wes Montgomery and Further Adventures Of Jimmy and Wes.
Smith recorded with a full orchestra and worked with arrangers and conductors such as Lalo Schifrin, Claus Ogerman, and Oliver Nelson. He also worked in small groups such as organ trios that featured jazz musicians such as Kenny Burrell, Donald "Duck" Bailey, Grady Tate, Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson, Tina Brooks, Jackie McLean and Stanley Turrentine.
...
Kenneth Earl Burrell (born July 31, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American jazz guitarist. His playing is founded in bebop and blues but works well with other jazz styles, so he has performed and recorded with a wide range of jazz musicians.
Burrell made his first recording in 1951, with Dizzy Gillespie. After moving from Detroit to New York City in 1956, he recorded with a wide range of prominent musicians, including John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Benny Goodman, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine, Jimmy Witherspoon and Cedar Walton. He also led his own groups since 1951.
In the 1970s he began leading seminars about music, particularly Duke Ellington's (Burrell has a music degree from Wayne State University). A highly popular performer, he has won several jazz polls in Japan and the United Kingdom as well as the United States.
He has recorded about 40 LPs, including Midnight Blue (1961), Blue Lights, Guitar Forms, Sunup To Sundown (1990), Soft Winds (1993), Then Along Came Kenny (1993), and Lotus Blossom (1995).
Burrell now serves as Director of Jazz Studies at UCLA. On Saturday, December 2nd 2006, Kenny Burrell recorded his 100th album, live at UCLA's Royce Hall. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
