Jimmy Smith

Softly As A Summer Breeze is a Jimmy Smith organ trio record from the same burst of activity that produced House Party and The Sermon. In the last week of February 1958, over two days at the Manhattan Towers studio in New York, Smith taped enough music for three albums. This one stayed on the shelf until Blue Note released it in 1965. Smith had been recording for the label since 1956, two years before these sessions.

The music on the album was recorded on 26 February 1958, with Alfred Lion producing and Rudy Van Gelder engineering. Smith plays the Hammond B3 in two different trios. Four tracks feature Kenny Burrell on guitar and Philly Joe Jones on drums. The other two have Eddie McFadden on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums.

The programme is mostly standards. These Foolish Things, It Could Happen To You and Sometimes I'm Happy come from the trio with Burrell and Jones. The last of them is the longest piece, at over eight minutes. Thelonious Monk's Hackensack belongs to the same group. With McFadden and Bailey, Smith plays Someone To Watch Over Me. He closes the record with Home Cookin', a tune also known as One For Philly Joe.

Lion had signed Smith straight after hearing him in a Philadelphia club. From 1956 the organist recorded around forty sessions for Blue Note in eight years, far more than the label could release as they came. By the time this album appeared he had already moved to Verve, in 1962. Leonard Feather wrote the liner notes, and the cover photograph is by Jean-Pierre Leloir. A 1998 CD added four tracks from an October 1958 session, which are not part of this LP.

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl edition is stereo and all-analogue, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.