(Jimmy Smith – Silent Night)
What is it with 1964?? 3 out of 4 so far from that year…hmmm. Anyway on with the Christmas showdown with a cut from Organist supreme Jimmy ‘The Cat’ Smith with a piece that just gets better and better as the tune unfolds. We all know his qualities so no need to wax lyrical about them….Recorded for and released on Verve. Step up Jimbo and let the people know what time, (of year), it is.
AlternativeSoundtrack4 #4
(Jimmy Smith Trio - Jimmy’s Blues)
Fats has taken up the challenge from the young pretender and the battle hots up..first Fats on top and then for a while Eddie hits a winning streak which sees him reach his inital target of “Ten grand in one night” but rather than call it a night the kid fancies that “this table is mine” and in his naivite he gives his opponent the opportunity to carry on playing “Until Minnesota Fats says it’s over. I say naivite but in my experience ‘etiquette’ can and does play it’s part in ‘the game’ and offering the loser the chance to win his money back is, (or was in the games I played), accepted as an unwritten rule. Unless of course the Hustle is your business and then there are no unwritten rules.
During the contest George C. Scott enters the fray as Minnesota’s backer and we hear him ‘pipe up’ for the first time after watching Eddie and Fats going toe to toe for hours but as we, (and Eddie) are soon to find out “the Race is not for the swift but for who can endure it”
The music is yet another slice of the 1961 pie but today it’s courtesy of Hammond Organ supremo ‘The Incredible’ Jimmy Smith and Trio freaturing Quentin Warren on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums…borrowed from a Blue Note session called ‘Straight Life’, (recorded by Rudy Van Gelder).
12AngryMen #9 (alternativesoundtrack #3)
(Jimmy Smith & Lou Donaldson - Summertime)
so the count is now 9 to 3 in favour of the guilty’s. The evidence is being torn to shreds piece by piece and what started as an open and shut case is turning into a battle of subjectivite opinion vs objective facts.
the two performances that, for me, are outstanding are Henry Fonda and Lee J Cobb. The others are good but these two are special. both are featured on this piece of dialogue.
the song which comes courtesy of organist supreme Jimmy Smith and Blue Note stable mate, Saxophone legend Lou Donaldson is a haunting 1957 rendition of the George Gershwin classic Summertime, (penned for the Opera Porgy & Bess). A song that has been covered more times than I’ve had hot dinners, rumour has it that Gershwin adapted it from a Ukranian lullaby ‘Oy Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon’, (A Dream Passes By The Windows), which he heard in 1926.
