Dr. Lonnie Smith | Evolution

Dr. Lonnie Smith
Evolution
(Blue Note)
Musical reflections by A. Scott Galloway
February 25, 2016

In the late `60s when he jumped from George Benson’s band into that of alto saxophone great Lou Donaldson, organist Lonnie Smith became known for whipping up a brand of funky voodoo on the B3 that got beneath the skin of the listener like lotion, beginning with the now-classic Alligator Boogaloo on into Midnight Creeper. Blue Note, where Donaldson recorded, snapped Lonnie up and turned him loose on his own set of fire-starters such as Move Your Hand and Cycles. These records made him a star and endured into the age of Hip Hop when they were hungrily sampled by intuitive artists like A Tribe Called Quest.

Fast forward to now and decades of recording and touring around the globe, 73 year-old Dr. Lonnie Smith returns to Blue Note Records after 45 years and he’s still ahead of the curve. Even when looking back to a tune called “Play It Back” that he first cut in a live rendition in 1970 at fabled Club Mozambique, he unearths some 14-minute funk buried in the pyramids with help from a crew of excavators that includes Robert Glasper on piano and TWO drummers: Joe Dyson and Johnathan Blake. On the snaky “Afrodesia,” Lonnie conjures up some wicked bitches brew in a cauldron of conversation that includes more intoxicating drum chatter, and incinerating solos from trumpeter Maurice Brown and Joe Lovano (an old friend who made his debut on a Smith date back in 1975). He returns to this fuzzed out funk later on the march-and-grunt vocal chant groove “Talk About This.” Meanwhile, “For Heaven’s Sake,” a moody piece he says he wrote in Hawaii “a long, long, long time ago about people taking me into oblivion,” is a wee hours, low embers simmer of nocturnal passion featuring guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and that rises like a phoenix with the harmonic swells of the horn trio.

The good doctor swings his butt off in classic organ trio mode with guitarist Kreisberg and drummer Blake on a jog through Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” kissed with an intro from one of his own timeless classics (strictly for Dr. Lonnie heads only). And he conjures the ominous and majestic spirit of The Motherland with the percussion and flute (John Ellis)-navigated sojourn “African Suite,” punctuated with voices and soundscapes handed down from the ancestors. But Dr. Smith saved the softest part of his heart for an 11-minute orchestration of “My Favorite Things” that crests and ebbs into an Empire State of waltz time joy and glory.

Evolution is a fitting title for Dr. Lonnie Smith’s return to Blue Note. He returns to the venerable jazz giant company with gifts and inspirations nurtured from not one lifetime but lifetimes of solar core vibrations.

A. Scott Galloway
Music Editor
The Urban Music Scene
February 25, 2016