Jimmy Smith - The Cat

European CD reissue.

According to DJ Al Collins of KSFO in San Francisco writing in the liner notes of this fabulous album, “Jimmy Smith’s The Cat cuts through grease like fresh battery acid.” Fact is it’s hard to disagree. Recorded over two days at Rudi Van Gelder’s Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on two, separate, late April days in 1964 it simply buzzes with excitement from the opening bars of Lalo Schifrin’s ‘Theme From ‘Joy House’’ and doesn’t let up until the moody, and sheer sexiness, of ‘Blues In The Night.’

If you know someone who says they don’t get Jimmy Smith, just play them The Cat. Released on 14 September 1964, it is consummate Hammond B3 playing with the added vibrancy of Lalo Schifrin’s arrangements for big band. ‘Basin Street Blues’ eschews 1960s’ sophistication, while the appropriately super cool ‘Delon’s Blues’ is dedicated to the French actor Alain Delon, who Smith had befriended while on tour in Europe in 1963.