Monday, October 16, 2017

Lucky Peterson - Tribute To Jimmy Smith (JAZZ VILLAGE 2017)


Lucky Peterson concentrates here on the Hammond B-3 organ, his favorite instrument whose warm tone refers to the songs of gospel and the hymns of soul music. To pay tribute to his mentor Jimmy Smith, he surrounded himself with virtuoso partners among whom stands the prodigy guitarist Kelyn Crapp. Throughout the album, Lucky Peterson is the repository of a long musical history rooted in the blues but very open; we find the pulsation of jazz, the groove of rhythm'n'blues and the energy of rock'n'roll.

After the remarkable The Son of a Bluesman and Live in Marciac, the new album of the American bluesman Lucky Peterson at Jazz Village is already an important and indispensable disc in his lush discography. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, Lucky Peterson plays exclusively with the Hammond B-3 organ and favors instrumental pieces, and then proposes a particularly compact instrumentation (a trio orgueguitare-drums, sometimes with the addition of a trumpet or a saxophone) through a repertoire clearly oriented towards jazz, in tribute to the great organist Jimmy Smith, with classics from his repertoire (The Sermon, The Champ), and many other surprises ...

This jazz is tinged with soul and of blues. Music that groove and could be called "jazz'n'blues," as in the old days of the vinyls of Blue Note. From 1956 to 1963, Jimmy Smith was also one of the locomotives of this label, knowing how to deploy with force and elegance swingups tracklistings resembling trains undulating in the night.

And it is precisely by the energetic and enthralling Night Train of Jimmy Forrest that starts this album, with the presence in guest of the French trumpeter Nicolas Folmer. A piece that Jimmy Smith recorded in 1966 for Verve with the majestic guitarist Wes Montgomery, and who in this new version, as well as on the whole album, sees Lucky Peterson entrust the guitar to a musician who knows how to sound its strings between jazz and funk, in the line of the great Wes ...

This is a young guitarist from San Francisco named Kelyn Crapp who, given his talent and sense of feeling, will not remain long unknown.

1 Night Train 8:44
2 The Sermon 6:30
3 The Champ 6:42
4 Jimmy Wants to Groove 6:40
5 Singin this Song 4 U 5:48
6 Jimmy's Jumpin 5:20
7 Misty 7:56
8 Back at the Chicken Shack 7:53
9 Blues for Wes 4:43

Lucky Peterson - Hammond Organ, vocals on 4 and 5
with Herlin Riley - drums
Kelyn Crapp - guitar
and Nicolas Folmer - trumpet on 1
Philippe Petrucciani - guitar on 9
Archie Shepp - sax on 4 and 8, vocals on 4