Jimmy McGriff R.I.P.

[Jim Alfredson]

Good gracious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGkqnTMHBs0

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yeah! That's from the LP "Chicken fried soul", by Jimmy and Junior. Recorded in 1972 at Jimmy's Silver Slipper club, probably the same night that Jimmy's "Black Pearl" was done for Blue Note.

It sounds better when you play the vinyl yerself, I must say

If there are ESSENTIAL Jimmy McGriff albums, it's these two, neither of which has been reissued on CD. Between them, they encapsulate the entire organ room thing.

MG

[Soul Stream]

Small world....

I had a gig last night and just played all Jimmy McGriff tunes for the first set. Not but a handful of people in the club. There was a group of 10 or so black folks sitting at a table, and at the end of the set... one of the dudes from the group came up and said "Thanks for doing that, I played guitar with McGriff for 2 years in the 80's."

[JSngry]

Who was it?

[ghost of miles]

Jazzwax's Marc Myers has a tribute up on his blog.

[Soul Stream]

Who was it?

I can't remember his name. I do remember he said he was from Chicago. I think he was just in town visiting....

[Soul Stream]

Jazzwax's Marc Myers has a tribute up on his blog.

I liked Jimmy McGriff but I was never a huge fan. A tad too much funk and filler for me on many albums whereas Groove Holmes, Brother Jack McDuff and Charles Earland were in it to win it on nearly everything they played.

...Marc Myers lost me straight at the beginning with that quote. Also thought his Top 10 McGriff tune picks were'nt what I'd choose fo' sho'...but

[Jim Alfredson]

Yeah, that's crap. McDuff, Holmes, and Earland all had filler material on their albums (and some albums were all filler). You could easily make that argument against any of the jazz organists in the 70s.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Quite right.

I think the guy's heart is in the right place but he seems to miss the point. Dividing McGriff's work into a) jazz standards; b) soul covers; and c) extended funk stuff is a really weak way of looking at him; it gives the impression that he's treating the music as a thing in itself, outside of its purpose. In particular, it ignores the fact that ALL of that material was directed to a particular end - providing an evening's entertainment for customers of his bar or other bars.

On the other hand, he's a bit too enthusiastic, I feel, in lauding McGriff's jazz versions of soul tunes. I haven't time today to do any research on this, but I rather think other musicians like Grant Green, JOS and particularly Freddie McCoy were a bit ahead of McGriff. Apart from "I got a woman", which is really proto-Soul old-style R&B (and which JOS had recorded three years earlier), McGriff didn't climb aboard that bandwagon until the late sixties, by which time, Lou Donaldson and John Patton were aboard, too (and quite a few others). All of which is NOT to say that McGriff was less than these other guys at that side of thing, but is more to illustrate the weakness of trying to look at the music as something divorced from its context.

MG

[Soul Stream]

ANY McGriff is GREAT organ...period! Relatively speaking, those guys (the Legends) just were head and shoulders above the rest. There are really good organ players (Sonny Phillips comes to mind, and many others), and then there is McGriff, McDuff, Patton, JOS, JHS, Young, ect., you get the idea. The legends just blow doors and everyone else is wallpaper. McGriff was one of THE guys. To recognize anything less is stupid.

[Soul Stream]

you have some trouble making qualitative judgements on artists you like, i notice. no offense.

If I sat down and said..."Let's go through all these McGriff albums...," then we'd certainly find some we liked better than others (and that's not static, WE change over the years and appreciate some things more than others at different times in our lives). I'm not talking about that sort of thing. I'm talking about people who say "Groove Holmes is BETTER than McGriff. Patton is BETTER than McDuff. Ect." Look, there are a handful of recognized greats of jazz organ. That list doesn't really change, and never will. So for this guy to diminish McGriff in any way after his passing seems lame. Maybe only another organist can fully appreciate McGriff's greatness. Like I said earlier, put on "Live At The Apollo" and listen to his BASS solo on "There Will Never Be Another You." THAT is true greatness on the organ. Put on his KILLER version of "The Way You Look Tonight"...put on "The Worm"...put on "I Got A Woman" or "All About My Girl"...that stuff is the Mount Rushmore of Organ Jazz alonside Groove's "Misty"...Smith's "Blues For J". ,ect...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I tend to agree with Dumpy Mama, Mike. I do find it very difficult - as a non-organist - to draw the kind of line you're drawing between the musicians you've listed (plus, I guess, Shirley Scott, WBD, Dr L, Groove and Earland, all of whom I think you would have listed had you been trying for an exhaustive list of THE guys), and players like Baby Face Willette, Rhoda Scott, Freddie Roach, Bu Pleasant, Sam Lazar and Lou Bennett.

To me, there are four innovators of post-war jazz organ - Wild Bill Davis, Baby Face Willette, Jimmy Smith and Larry Young (of course, neither Willette's nor Young's ideas caught on, but those innovations are still there).

I've no doubt you've got reasons for making the distinction you do, Mike, but are they reasons that non-organists can get?

MG

[Soul Stream]

I may be very passionate about these guys...oh well, there are worse things.

Edited May 31, 2008 by Soul Stream

[Jim Alfredson]

That's the point; every one of the great organists made some records that were duds. From that guy's article, you'd think McGriff was the only one. Some of those Groove Holmes records on Flying Dutchman are terrible. Earland made his fair share of pap. Even Jimmy Smith made some placemats in the 70s. And yes, even Larry Young.

[Soul Stream]

Jim...are you saying Groove Holmes didn't mean every note on "The Six Million Dollar Man?"

[GregN]

Earland made his fair share of pap.

Why must you smear Charles again? Didn't Syracuse teach you anything??

[Jim Alfredson]

I know you're joking, but I'm not smearing anyone. Those guys were trying to do what they could do to stay alive, so they made throw-away "funk records".

Also, if I made 1 to 2 records a year over a 30 years span, I'm sure I'd make a handful of stinkers, too.

[Soul Stream]

"Them critics, I didn't really pay them no mind. They didn't have to eat off my records. I did. I had to change up to stay alive. And that's what I did; stayed alive."

Jimmy McGriff

2005

Waxpoetics Magazine Interview

[AndrewHill]

I just saw this! RIP!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

"Them critics, I didn't really pay them no mind. They didn't have to eat off my records. I did. I had to change up to stay alive. And that's what I did; stayed alive."

Jimmy McGriff

2005

Waxpoetics Magazine Interview

No. Because it seems to me that Jimmy is being unceccesarily defensive about his music in this quote. It sounds a bit like, "well, the critics are right and really I'd have much preferred to play Hard Bop, but I could earn a living this way, so I did." But if Jimmy really thought like that, I think I'd sell all the albums of his that I have. Which is not to say that I don't think Jimmy and others in that business wanted to earn a decent living through their music, but that they had chosen where they wanted to be for reasons that weren't essentially financial. And to make the argument that Jimmy did is to demean those reasons.

MG

[Dan Gould]

"Them critics, I didn't really pay them no mind. They didn't have to eat off my records. I did. I had to change up to stay alive. And that's what I did; stayed alive."

Jimmy McGriff

2005

Waxpoetics Magazine Interview

No. Because it seems to me that Jimmy is being unceccesarily defensive about his music in this quote. It sounds a bit like, "well, the critics are right and really I'd have much preferred to play Hard Bop, but I could earn a living this way, so I did." But if Jimmy really thought like that, I think I'd sell all the albums of his that I have. Which is not to say that I don't think Jimmy and others in that business wanted to earn a decent living through their music, but that they had chosen where they wanted to be for reasons that weren't essentially financial. And to make the argument that Jimmy did is to demean those reasons.

MG

I think you're being unnecessarily defensive about the musical results when Jimmy "changed up to stay alive".

Really, if Jimmy wasn't greatly pleased with what he was recording, why should that effect your reaction to the music? Its your reaction, not Jimmy's or the critics, that ought to matter. And you say you'd sell all of your copies of his music if you found out that he had chosen where he wanted to be for reasons that were essentially financial?

You've expressed enthusiasm for a number of recordings from this era (say, mid to late 70s) that, of the ones I've heard, I consider to be complete or nearly competely putrid. (Like, for instance, the Blue Mitchell recordings before he got together with Harold Land, or I think there are one or two Sonny Criss records).

Are you saying that in order to continue to enjoy those records, you need to know that it was "where their heads (and hearts) were at" at that time (so to speak) instead of knowing that they made a conscious decision to record what was popular at that time?

[AllenLowe]

"And that's what I did; stayed alive."

actually, the whole point of this thread is that he DIDN'T stay alive - we all go sometime, and the stuff we leave behind sticks with the memory - think of Wes Montgomery's last work -

[Soul Stream]

Some of my favorite McGriff albums are one's that might be considered commercial. Such as "Let's Stay Together", "Fly Dude", "Groove Grease," "Giants of the Organ," and on and on. I'm not so sure Jimmy didn't dig this line of work. He devoted himself to it and played his ass off within it. I mean "Fly Dude" has killer version of Yardbird Suite and a funked up Healin Feeling. I think we might be overthinking it. Jimmy did it all, and did it all in a unique and singular way. He was a master who could go deep on a balled, burn bop, or funk up the Theme From Shaft.

[JSngry]

What you play - the material - may or may not always be your choice (depending on how much your livelihood depends on it), but how you play it almost always is, and it's the "how" that is ultimately of the essence.

[Jim Alfredson]

Yep.