Prayer Meetin'

In between the two sessions that resulted in Never Let Me Go, Stanley Turrentine performed on the classic Jimmy Smith album, Prayer Meetin', on February 8, 1963.

Jimmy Smith is a genius, an American treasure.  He pretty much invented his way of playing the Hammond B-3 organ, striking single notes like on a piano rather than playing chords like a church organist.  Sometimes he'd percussively play one note over and over just to explore the sound on electronic organ, allowing the organ to sustain a note long enough that it would create overtones with the next key hit.  Brian Eno once called Jimi Hendrix the first true electronic musician, because he listened to and cared about how his innovative techniques on electric guitar sounded.  I would argue that based on Eno's criteria, Jimmy Smith was really the first electronic musician.

Many people feel that Smith's best records were those that he recorded for Blue Note, and that his best Blue Note records were the ones he did with Stanley Turrentine.  I would not argue with that proposition, but would add that Prayer Meetin' might be the best of his Blue Note Turrentine collaborations.

The album contains three original Smith compositions and covers of jazz and R&B standards, including Ivory Joe Hunter's I Almost Lost My Mind.

I Almost Lost My Mind starts off as a slow, slightly woozy, traditional blues number.  Turrentine takes the first solo, and delivers a slow-burner powerhouse performance of soulful restraint with occasional, tasteful outbursts. Smith follows with as definitive an example of soul-jazz organ as you're likely to hear.  To borrow from one of the reviews of Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue, if you need to know "the Jimmy Smith sound," here it is.  The third solo is by guitarist Quentin Warren, who works in a quote of Ellington's Things Ain't What They Used To Be and raises the question of why we don't hear more of Quentin Warren - Jimmy Smith pretty much kept Warren for himself for almost a decade.  The theme of the song is then repeated, and Stanley gets in a few more licks as the track fades out.  

This was February 8, 1963.  Stanley would record the second session for Never Let Me Go the next week.