Wednesday, February 09, 2005

R.I.P. Jimmy Smith, 1928-2005


Yesterday was a sad day, as it marked the passing of Jimmy Smith, the primary man responsible for the popularity of the Hammond Organ in jazz music. He died in his sleep in Phoenix, at the age of 76, and you can read a news story here from our good friends at MTV. He was responsible for countless organ classics throughout the 50s and 60s, and though the quality of his output seemed to decline in the 70s and onward, he kept on churning out the jams. Chops and I reminisced with these two gems last night:


Root Down is a live jazz classic that everyone should own (I think the Beastie Boys agree), with that cover of "Let's Stay Together" that comes damn close to the power of the original. I wish I had gotten a chance to see him play, like my dad, who was lucky enough to see him when he was at Wooster in the 60s. Damn. I don't have much more to say, I just know he'll always be the king of jazz organ. R.I.P.

On to lighter news: My second review for Swizzle-Stick.com is finally up!!! I Want to Live a Peaceful Life by The Holy Sons is a helluva album, and you can read my thoughts on it here.

Remember that last post where I laid out four shows I was going to attend? Well, I only went one for four, though the weekend was still a good time. Wednesday night, however, I did make it to the 2005 Columbus Beat Battle at Little Brothers, where I met up with Andy and Dave. The amount of Columbus (and Ohio) dudes with beats is crazy. This guy named J-Swift won it all, though I'm just going on the word of everyone else because it finished super late. Spitball also kicked it live as part of the festivities, and it was quite enjoyable. SYSTEM LINK produced another hip-hop smorgasbord, and look out for the next one on March 16th with DJing by Dante Carfagna and J. Rawls!!! Should be a helluva time.

I had a bunch of music-related things kicking around to tell y'all about, but I think I'm gonna save those for later (and try and remember some of them). Right now it's time to dig this out:

Peace.

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