Johnny Smith Quintet - "Jazz at N.B.C." Series

Woke up this morning feeling like I needed some jazz.  Popped on Johnny Smith Quintets - "Jazz at N.B.C." Series.  Johnny's playing is great on this album and he is accompanied by Stan Getz, Eddi Safranski, Don Lamond, and Sanford Gold.  A sample of Smith's playing can be seen below in a rare video of him performing "What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life?"

Track Listing:

• moonlight in vermont
• tabu
• a ghost of a chance
• where or when
• tenderly
• jaguar
• my funny valentine
• vilia

A 3 DIMENSON SOUND RECORDING
OF
“JAZZ AT NBC”
WITH
The Johnny Smith Quintet

JOHNNY SMITH could accurately be called a jack-of-all-trades. Just accurately, and without sounding as punnish that title seems, he could be described as a very success bridge between the jazz musician and the successful studio musician.  In short, Johnny Smith is such a composite musical personality that he becomes a minor legend after one has read a list of his various accomplishments — a major legend if only he had picturesque habits, name and come from Kansas City or New Orleans or even Minton’s.

Unfortunately, for legend, he was born in Birmingham, Alabama and raised in Portland, Maine where he began his professional career as a hillbilly guitarist — then, as now, completely self-taught. It was during this time that his love of jazz began to mature, fed mostly by radio and records since the Portland of that time associated jazz with the plague and avoided both with equal fervor.

The Army interfered for four years with a jazz trio that Johnny had formed. But the Air Force band, in which he played, gave much more than it took away. He learned the trumpet and played lead in the section as well as playing violin and viola in the concert group.

But the guitar was still the instrument with which felt he could best express himself. And it was the guitar which he played with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra while in the Army. And the guitar which he played upon his return to Portland and the local NBC station there. The same guitar which he brought with him to New York's NBC after a friend, Arthur Owens, secretly sent an audition record of his to the network headquarters which brought a speedy summons for a personal appearance.

Since being in New York, Johnny has played first trumpet and guitar with all groups of the NBC musical staff, arranged and played with Benny Goodman, recorded a-soon-to-be-released record with Gene Krupa, Bolero, was featured for several years with Paul Lavalle's Cities Service Band, recorded two operas — Berg's Wozzeck with Dimitri Metropolis and Schoenberg's Serenade, has played with the City Center Opera Company and the NBC Symphony as well as conducting his own groups at NBC and writing and conducting different radio and television shows: the Fireside Theatre for a year, the Solitaire Show with Bob Houston and the Dave Garroway show, which he conducted before the advent of Skitch Henderson.

Out of this diversity of experience, Johnny has emerged as a complete musician, at home in any one of a number of musical forms. Into all of them he brings TWO essential elements which are present in this album — the love of the beautiful and the penchant for simplicity. And both these qualities are enhanced by a sincere desire to communicate, both to the listener and to the other members of his group. It is this emphasis on communication which makes listening to these records a creative pleasure. Within the group there is a steady inspiration to better performance, and simplicity is assured because the song itself was thought of as being more important than the individual performance, which is another way of saying that simplicity is the structure within which these ensembles and solos were conceived.

For as Johnny says, "simplicity is beauty, and it communicates to the listener. It doesn't drive him to frenzy. It creates a quiet responsive audience which is highly preferable to a noisy performing audience." Especially preferable if simplicity means, as it does in Johnny's case, the ability or the skill of clearly portraying thoughts while maintaining a polished and profound technical and melodic sense. It means treating a song as if it were a painting, striving to complete the whole picture; For if the picture is complete, it is bound to remain in the mind, otherwise it takes considerable study on the part of the listener, more than he usually wants to do. It means, further, playing up to the listener instead of down. It is a thoroughly fresh and certainly a complimentary attitude on his part and it can be perceived throughout this record. Integrated with his unusual tuning of the guitar, which makes it comparable to a piano, and his writing, which produces a much bigger ensemble sound than is usual for this size group, this is jazz, Johnny Smith style. It is, in fact, great jazz, any style.

Bill Coss
Cover design by Burt Goldblatt