Delivering ‘The Sermon!’ With The High Priest Of The Hammond, Jimmy Smith

Recorded across two sessions, ‘The Sermon!’ finds the Hammond organ master Jimmy Smith at his finest for Blue Note.Jimmy Smith wasn’t the first organist in jazz – Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Wild Bill Davis all preceded him – but he was the first notable practitioner of the Hammond B3 and gave the instrument credibility within a jazz setting thanks to Blue Note albums the likes of 1959’s The Sermon! and 1963’s Back At The Chicken Shack. He was also profoundly influential, his jaw-dropping virtuosity spawning a raft of nimble-fingered acolytes who followed in his wake – among them...