JIMMY SMITH — Hobo Flats (review)

JIMMY SMITH — Hobo Flats album cover Album · 1963 · Blues Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
EntertheLemming
Jimmy Smith is the only reason I started to listen to jazz and he represents an attractive portal for many other newbies to dip their tootsies into what can seem a huge and forbidding pool.

(His name cropped up constantly whenever my Prog Rock hero Keith Emerson was asked to name-check his formative influences)

Despite the teasing of my buddies in exploring Smith's output e.g. 'Come on man, that's old geezer's music'

I persisted and discovered a brand new world had opened its doors wide to me. Jimmy's glut of trio albums are a tad predictable and often retread a well beaten path so the big band albums soon became my favourites. On first acquaintance, this will strike the casual listener as plain vanilla blues plus horns, but on closer inspection is revealed a hard bop sensibility wedded to a very attractive and accessible soul-jazz style. No matter how sophisticated and angular Jimmy's rapid monophonic bop inflected runs can get, there is always a shed load of groove underneath to help the medicine go down. Like Lalo Schifrin, Oliver Nelson's charts are big, bold, brash and sumptuously tacky which serve to frame Smith's bluesy eloquence against a suitably populist backdrop. Take heed however, that there are in places a few servings of supper-clubhouse 'scampi in a basket on a bed of latin percussion' where Jimmy's lyrical take on the main theme is stated but these are mercifully short-lived and few and far between. 'I Can't Stop Loving You' and 'Meditation' are probably the worst offenders here as fondant flute plus latin percussion always adds up to Hubert Laws in my flawed arithmetic. The highlights on this set are the title track where a lonely and dissolute harmonica slurs against Nelson's funereal shuffling horns while Smith teases us with some rippling runs cunningly placed low in the mix. The effect of his ensuing solo thus erupting in full guttural throaty stereo is beautifully realised. Dining out from inside a dumpster in Cardboard City has never sounded this attractive. Horace Silver's 'The Preacher' receives an addictive swinging treatment utilising a seedy defrocked gospel tone while Smith and Nelson somehow conspire to transform a song I heartily loathe (Fat's Domino's 'Blueberry Hill') into something else entirely and quite irresistible. 'Walk Right In' is reminiscent of the sort of Big Band arrangements made famous by Cab Calloway (that's gotta be a good thing in my book) This is certainly not the best Jimmy Smith Big Band album out there ('The Cat', 'Any Number Can Win' and 'Bashin'are probably superior) but it's a safe place to start and just might lead you further afield in due course to the delights of Larry Young, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery and points unknown.
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