Lonnie Smith: Drives [BLUE NOTE / EMI]

Why you'll love it

This reissue presents Drives in stereo on 180g vinyl. AllMusic gives it four stars, and A Tribe Called Quest sampled Smith's "Spinning Wheel" for "Can I Kick It?"

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Stereo mix

About the album

Soul-jazz organ records in 1970 could go two ways: deep, bluesy grooves or covers of whatever was on the radio. Lonnie Smith did both on Drives, and made the pop tunes sound like they'd been written for a Hammond all along.

He cut the album in a single day, January 2, 1970, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, with Dave Hubbard on tenor sax, Ronnie Cuber on baritone, Larry McGee on guitar and Joe Dukes on drums, and Francis Wolff producing. Edwin Starr's "Twenty-Five Miles" gets a hard-charging workout, and "Spinning Wheel," written by Toronto-raised David Clayton-Thomas, turns into a seven-minute funk stroll. Miles Davis and Victor Feldman's "Seven Steps to Heaven" swings hard, Smith's own "Psychedelic Pi" lives up to its name, and the film theme "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" stretches past ten minutes of slow-burning groove.

Smith later became Dr. Lonnie Smith and a Blue Note fixture well into the 2010s, and this is the sound of him in full flight. AllMusic's Ron Wynn praised Smith's skill with burning originals, R&B covers and show tunes alike. Five songs, two sides and one Hammond, which is a lot of furniture to bring to a single day's work.

Also at Kops: more Lonnie Smith on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 6514860), a reissue of the 1970 album.