Too Damn Hot

When organist Dr. Lonnie Smith released an album of Beck songs a few years ago, it may have raised eyebrows in jazz circles, but it made perfect sense. After all, like Beck, Smith is all about the groove. Whether playing originals, interpreting jazz standards or paying tribute to rock greats (he once did an album of Hendrix tunes), Smith intends to connect on a gut level. A video on his website (drlonniesmith.com) shows a wizardly Smith, bearded and donning his trademark turban, laying down a bare-bones though highly syncopated groove. He bobs and weaves through time like an all-pro halfback dodging tackles. Melding second-line beats and Meters-style scatting with guttural “huh!”s and “ow!”s à la James Brown—all the while working the bass pedals and tossing off a laid-back blues head—he nearly encapsulates funk’s essence in a 70-second span. Though he’s generally considered a jazz organist (and, like many other genre-defying artists, is ghettoized in the jazz bins at the record stores), he’s just as much a funkster (and a popster...and a soulster...and a rockster). But there’s a common thread through it all—feeeeeeeeeling. “It’s a shame when people get wrapped up in categories,” Smith says. “It’s like when you try to turn someone onto sushi and they say, ‘Aw, I don’t eat that. That’s raw fish.’ What you need to do is let someone take you that knows sushi, that knows what’s good, what to order for you.’ ” Smith spent the late ’60s and most of the ’70s as a preeminent organist, then pretty much vanished for the next decade. But the advent of acid-jazz (or, depending on how you see it, the revival of soul-jazz) in the mid-’90s brought renewed interest in his work, and he’s been recording and touring steadily since. “I had gotten frustrated,” Smith says of his sabbatical. “I love to play music. But the business aspect is a little rough for me. You don’t like the way things go sometimes, so you want to get out of the scene. So I hid. I even went to Hawaii and stayed for a while. I lived there for about three years. Stanley Turrentine was trying to get me down there. Marvin Gaye, George Benson, everybody was there.” For someone committed to spontaneity, the business expectations could be something of a drag. “You know, when you record and you make a hit, you have to play that same song over and over and over again—whether you like it or not. I just want to play what’s in my heart at that moment. But, you know, that’s what the people want to hear. So I just said, ‘Let me back off for a while.’ ” Now, Smith plays by his own terms and lives in the moment, an immediacy that may lead him either to a recognizable standard or a 10-minute foray into the musical wilderness. “He’s one of the most fearless improvisers on any instrument,” says Peter Bernstein, a superb jazz guitarist performing in Smith’s trio at The Belcourt. “When he plays trio, he’s completely untethered. He can go anywhere. Even if I think I know what’s coming, I don’t. I’ve learned most of his tunes on the gig. He’s never given me a piece of music. He might show it to me for a second during sound check. Or he might just play it on the gig and say, ‘Oh, this is in G minor. Don’t worry about it.’ ” Smith’s latest, Jungle Soul, shows the Hammond master delivering catchy pop melodies, dense jazz harmonies and extended improvs over insistent, head-bopping funk grooves. He still covers a wide range, from Thelonious Monk to Gaye to original material, all the while exploring the B3’s broad range of tones and timbres. “He has complete control of the organ, which is something you don’t always see,” Bernstein says. “A lot of guys who play organ are good musicians and have a good left hand and keep that together, but Lonnie knows the sounds so well, and he’s so creative. He gets a total orchestra...no, beyond an orchestra. He gets otherworldly sounds out of the thing. He’s just so free and creative. When he plays a tune, it can really go anywhere.”