While the title track of Back at the Chicken Shack is the Jimmy Smith track I always think of first, The Sermon! tends to score somewhat higher marks in the polls then that album. Unlike the other album, this one (recording just a few years earlier, yet ten albums before that one! what a recording machine!) sports a six-man lineup on the first and third tracks ("J.O.S." was recorded a year earlier, minus the tenor sax spot and almost all different musicians), some of which were big names already or would be soon. Other than Smith himself, only hard bop trumpet sensation Lee Morgan plays on all three tracks. Morgan's employer in the Jazz Messengers, Art Blakey, provides his drumming services.
As mentioned previously, Jimmy Smith was a huge influence on a number of jazz and rock musicians, many among my absolute favorites, and also made the Hammond organ an acceptable jazz instrument. This doesn't mean he runs wild and takes over everything. In fact, his almost always shares the leads with a guitarist (often Kenny Burrell, here on tracks 1 and 3) and at least one horn player. This isn't organ trio stuff and it's definitely jazz, not rock, so don't go expecting either John Medeski or Jon Lord style antics here. Yet, without Jimmy Smith, I really don't think we'd have the other two, at least not in the way we appreciate them today.
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