Jimmy Smith – Root Down (And Get It)
Jimmy Smith – After Hours
Jimmy Smith – Slow Down Sagg
Just saw a list of Hip-Hop records that are going to be celebrating a 20th anniversary here in 2014 (which strangely now I can’t seem to find again) and saw the cover for the Beastie Boys Ill Communication. 1994 was a formative period of time for me. I’d just finished my first year in college and first year at Album 88. Like most of the Beastie Boys records, Ill Communication featured some fantastic production work. At some point in 1994 I started making the transition away from CDs and into digging for vinyl. Searching out the samples on that album and others from that Golden Era of Sampling fundamentally changed my tastes and habits connected to music.
I first ran into “Root Down” at the Atlanta Record Swap. I can distinctly remember thumbing through the crates of a dealer by the name of Bill Wolfe, who I’d never seen there before, and there was just gem after gem after gem. Running into this album took my breath away. In those pre-google, pre-Discogs, pre-Ebay days, you didn’t get records over the internet and you couldn’t find information about out-of-print records. You either found them, someome told you about them or someone gave them to you. I just remember being in disbelief that I actually ran into this record and that so much of the original song was in the sample for the Beastie Boys “Root Down.” It was a prized possession until the big sell-off in 2004. It’s only fitting (since I sold him my copy) that I ran into this album again at Groove Merchant via trades with Cool Chris. “Root Down” is the funkiest thing Jimmy Smith ever laid down, “Slow Down Sagg” is almost a more upbeat version of “Root Down” and just as funky. This version of “After Hours” is still bluesy, but it’s a funky blues, though not in the way we generally use the term. So classic, and still takes my breath away every time I drop the needle on it.
Cheers,
Michael