Lonnie Smith aka Dr. Lonnie Smith - 36 Albums - Jazz Organ

A turban-wearing jazz institution, and one of the few jazz players to specialize in the difficult Hammond B-3 organ, Dr. Lonnie Smith has had a long musical career that may be divided into three distinct sections. In the first, shortly after his discovery, Smith played as a sideman in jazz bands led by others, most notably guitarist George Benson. In the second, Smith led his own band in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the height of the movement known as soul-jazz. Finally, after a long hiatus from recording, Smith returned in the 1990s with fresh, experimental takes on his earlier styles.

This collection includes records with Lonnie Smith as leader or sideman.

List of included albums in cronological recorded order:

1965 Red Holloway - Red Soul
1966 George Benson - It's Uptime
1966 Lonnie Smith - Finger-Lickin' Good Soul Organ
1966 George Benson - The George Benson Cookbook
1967 Lou Donaldson - Alligator Bogaloo
1967 Lou Donaldson - Mr. Shing-A-Ling
1968 Lou Donaldson - Midnight Creeper
1968 Lonnie Smith - Think!
1969 Lonnie Smith - Turning Point
1969 Lonnie Smith - Move Your Hand
1969 Lou Donaldson - Everything I Play Is Funky
1970 Lonnie Smith - Drives
1970 Lonnie Smith - Live At Club Mozambique
1971 Lonnie Smith - Mama Wailer
1975 Lonnie Smith - Afrodesia (compilation from Afro-Desia and Funk Reaction)
1976 Lonnie Smith - Keep On Lovin'
1977 Lonnie Smith - Funk Reaction
1988 Jimmy Ponder - To Reach A Dream
1991 Lonnie Smith - The Turbanator
1993 Lonnie Smith - Afro Blue
1993 Lou Donaldson - Caracas
1993 Lonnie Smith - The Art Of Organizing
1994 Lonnie Smith - Foxy Lady
1994 Lonnie Smith - Purple Haze
1994 Lou Donaldson - Sentimental Journey
1996 Essence All Stars - Organic Grooves
1998 Ximo Tebar - Goes Blue
1999 Jimmy McGriff - McGriff's House Party
2000 Bobby Broom - Modern Man
2002 Lonnie Smith - Boogaloo To Beck
2003 Crash - The Doctor Is In
2004 Lonnie Smith - Too Damn Hot!
2005 Lonnie Smith - Jungle Soul
2007 Saori Yano - Little Tiny
2008 Lonnie Smith - Rise Up!
2010 Lonnie Smith - Spiral

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In addition to this, two live concert videos, one studio video and one audio live concert has been added:

'Lou Donaldson Quartet with Lonnie Smith - Live in Germany 2000', 
WMV, 320x240, 635 kbit/s, aspect ratio 4:3, 21 min, 94 MB. 

'Lou Donaldson Quartet with Lonnie Smith - Live in France 2004', 
AVI, 352x288, 160kbit/s, aspect ratio 4:3, 58 min, 525 MB.

'Killer B's with Dr. Lonnie Smith and Joey DeFrancesco 2006',
XVID, 720x480, average 1890 kbit/s, PCM Audio, 48000Hz, 1536 kbit/s, 24 min, 595 MB.

'Lou Donaldson - Live At New Morning' (audio ripped from 2001 TV broadcast)

Videos are tested OK under Windows with VideoLAN VLC Media Player and Microsoft Media Player.

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MP3 format. All songs are tagged by the book.

If you encounter errors during the file sharing, please, place this material as close to the root of the hard disk as possible and restart the file sharing (e.g. as close as possible to C: in Windows). This is in order to make the path (drive, directory and filename) as short as possible. Operating systems have limits regarding how long a path including the filename can be, and if this limit is exceeded there will be errors.

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Lonnie Smith — not to be confused with keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith — was born in Buffalo, New York, on July 3, 1942.

At about 20, he learned to play the organ by ear. His biggest influence was organist Jimmy Smith, whom he met a few months after he started playing. Before long, Lonnie Smith had enough keyboard skills to accompany traveling Motown-label vocalists when they came to town needing a pickup band.

About a year after he started playing, Smith rented his organ for a week to Brother Jack McDuff. While McDuff was performing with alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson (probably at Buffalo's Pine Grill club), friends of Smith's in the audience called out to McDuff, encouraging him to let Smith play. The organist complied, and Smith had a ready-made audience of influential jazz people that included guitarist George Benson, a major pop star a decade later.

Smith made the most of the opportunity. Benson at the time was forming a band of his own and offered Smith a place in it. After a quick rehearsal at Benson's mother's house, Smith became a touring jazz musician. Times were hard for the little-known group, and Smith recalled at one point having to grab waitresses' tips from restaurant tables in order to get by.

But things improved fast. Working with Benson for several years, Smith began his recording career on Benson's albums on the Columbia label. He sometimes played piano as well as organ, but the organ was his central focus.

Smith moved to New York and worked with Lou Donaldson later in the 1960s, contributing organ grooves to Donaldson's hit Alligator Boogaloo.

Moving to the Blue Note label, Smith recorded the best-known music of his career. Such albums as Think! and 'Drives' fit the basic soul-jazz pattern but showed Smith's tremendous talents as a sheer improviser.

Smith recorded for a variety of smaller labels throughout the 1970s, slowing down somewhat as soul-jazz lost its appeal but never falling out of favor with his fellow musicians. During the period of his Blue Note albums he was still simply Lonnie Smith, but later he became Dr. Lonnie Smith — a title bestowed not by any academic institution but by musicians who called on Smith to "doctor" pieces they were struggling with. Smith also began wearing a turban.

During the 1980s, Smith was mostly absent from the recording scene. He continued to perform with rhythm-and-blues singers as well as with jazz groups. He appeared as a sideman on albums by other artists, and in 1990 he reunited with Lou Donaldson for the latter's Play the Right Thing album.

By the 1990s Smith, who had six children, had moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He recorded several more albums with e.g. Donaldson, and the new exposure for his playing also led Blue Note to reissue some of his classic albums of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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