Soul Message - Richard Groove Holmes

Groove's Groove

Soul Message
Richard "Groove" Holmes
Produced by Cal Lampley
Recording: Rudy Van Gelder
Prestige 7435

1965

From the back cover: The organ has had late acceptance as a jazz vehicle, for it is only in the last decade that the instrument has found popularity with players and listeners, so much so that the organ now graces (or grates) one's ears in thousands of jazz-tinged-cocktail-lounges across America, Canada and Europe. In a decade the organ grew up into jazz away from its association with skating rinks and (if you are older) as a filler at the movies ("The Mighty Wurlitzer of Joe Doakes") and all that jazz). The organ was certainly a respected instrument, through, as established by its reference to the reverence of church services of every denomination (and more about that later), particularly when the instrument was so ponderously restricted and constructed in pre-electric days by the complex maze of air pipes and demanded an awesome amount of knowledge and which had the potential to imitate every musical and vocal sound. The organ as a voice in serious music (a ridiculous phrase: are jazzmen kidding?) dates all the way back to Bach and the great richness of the instrument was brought to majesty in our time thought the sanctified hands of the late Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who became the first great virtuoso on the instrument in our country.

Jazz had its first organ virtuosos at about the same time, for the late Thomas "Fats" Waller was the first jazzman to devote his talents to the demands of the instrument. In 1926 Fats recorded St. Louis Blues and Lenox Avenue Blues for Victor and later he added six spirituals to the company's vault. Form that times Fats recorded often on the Compton or Wurlitzer organ in serious (there's that word again) and jazz expressions – and some of those treasures ar enow available in the wonderful world of Reissue. Of course Waller recorded through the 1930's and in that decade came another organist of note, Count Basie – alas, so seldom recorded though. In the 1940's players such as (Wild) Bill Davis and Milt Buckner and Bill Doggett split their moments in jazz and rhythm and blues, but ironically, in the innovational years of 1945-50 when the solo of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were being borrowed by players of every other horn the nascent noise of bop was not filtered through the organ. As critic Leonard Feather noted in Down Beat (10/24/63):

"Although there were... traces of the Gillespie- Parker influence... was its ability to swing loud and long, with a tendency toward full, heavy chorded passages and a feeling for strongly syncopated, extended riffing on the blues. (Thus) the purist jazz fans began to bypass the organists or to dismiss them as rhythm and blues performers."

The attention of jazzmen and fans was captured again in the middle of the 1950s however, with the arrival of Jimmy Smith, and then came the deluge – hundreds of players closed the piano lid and swiveled around to the organ in imitation of Smith - but the switch was too much. The converts soon came to realize that the organ was not an easy out for frustrated one-handed pianist; rather, it required the two they had and any they could grow. Moreover, the organ demanded a coordination of hands and feet that the piano only hints at. Yet the voice of the organ would be heard in the land and there were good players drawn to the instrument. On the east coast Prestige artists Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, and Johnny "Hammond" Smith proved to be complete players who had something important to play and the amalgamation of the instrument into modern jazz was assured. At about the same time on the west coast still another important organist had begun to draw notice on records and in clubs – and actually he was a (displaced) easterner, too – Richard "Groove" Holmes.

"Groove" Holmes first attacked the organ in Camden, New Jersey, and his first influence was from Red Bank neighbor, Count Basie. It is important to note that Holmes found his groove early, for he is not a converted pianist, and his own expression is not limited by the technique of the pianist-turned-organist. He has satisfied the demands of his instrument simply by dedication to it over the most important years of any musician's development – the initial years of study when one develops the good and bad habits of physical dexterity which serve as the basis for the execution of mature ideas. The point is that "Groove" is an organist initially, primarily, and finally. It is small wonder that he has come to receive attention from recordings with Les McCann and Gerald Wilson, and he even found a niche on the popularity charts with his own album with tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. A favorite album in my collection is a set "Groove" did with guitarist Joe Pass. All of these excursions come with a west coast post mark, and each one indicated that there was a "comer" on the coast. He has now come east and it is Prestige's great pride that Richard "Groove" Holmes has signed an exclusive contract with the company.

Notes: Christopher Peters (October, 1965)

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