Jimmy McGriff I've Got A Woman

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 Jones.

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.