Collectables Jazz Classics (series)

I've Got A Woman

by Jimmy McGriff

Description by OLDIES.com:

Mixing ingredients of jazz, blues and gospel, organist Jimmy McGriff enhances the reputations of this tasty assortment of half-old, half-new tunes.

Product Description:

Personnel includes: Jimmy McGriff (vocals); Morris Dow (guitar); Jackie Mills (drums).

Includes original release liner notes by Ira Howard.

Personnel: Jimmy McGriff (organ).

Liner Note Author: Ira Howard.

Director: Juggy Murray.

McGriff's first album is great. The title cut was in the top 20 in 1962. Also on the same album is "M.G. Blues" and "All About My Girl." This session McGriff, Richard Easley on drums and Walter Miller on guitar. Hi-impact early McGriff is the still the best, and this is the album that started it all, on the Sue label. Three cuts available on the Collectable CD A Toast to Jimmy McGriff's Golden Classics. ~ Michael Erlewine

Even more than his Hammond-tickling soul-jazz contemporaries, Jimmy McGriff had a knack for blending the rootsy blues and jazz flavors of the idiom with straightforward pop accessibility. I'VE GOT A WOMAN, McGriff's first album on the Sue label (reissued on CD by Collectables Records) is a superb example of the artist's crossover tendencies. His cover of Ray Charles's R&B classic "I've Got a Woman," in fact, proved to be a Top 20 hit in the early 1960s. The song takes all the bluesy bluster of the original, and gives it the cast of a church revival full of gospel flourishes and rave-up rhythms.

The rest of the program consists of three McGriff originals, a smattering of jazz classics--including Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll," Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight," and Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home"--and an ode to B-3 pioneer and McGriff mentor Jimmy Smith in a cover of "The Sermon." Drummer Jackie Mills and guitarist Morris Dow brew up light-but-insistent rhythms behind McGriff's swirling keys, fleshing out the easy, in-the-pocket feel. The mix of familiar jazz standards and R&B highlights presented with no-nonsense, rootsy attitude makes I'VE GOT A WOMAN one of McGriff's most representative and enduring recordings.