Lucky Peterson focuses on his favourite instrument, the Hammond B-3 organ, and its warm sound to pay tribute to his mentor and friend, king of the B3 Jimmy Smith. Lucky has chosen to work on this project with some real virtuosos, including the great drummer Herlin Riley and one of the greatest saxophonists of all time, Archie Shepp.

Throughout this album, Lucky Peterson proves he has absorbed a long musical history anchored in the blues, but incorporating the beat of jazz, the groove of rhythm ‘n’ blues and the energy of rock ‘n’ roll. Twelve years after his death, the time is right for Lucky Peterson to pay tribute to Jimmy Smith’s genius and passion, by focusing on his chosen instrument and performing for the first time some of the great jazz standards, such as his take on the sublime Garner tune Misty. The album is predominantly instrumental, but vocals are used twice: Lucky Peterson himself sings on a surprising cover of A Song for You by Leon Russell – which Donny Hathaway also sang beautifully way back when, and which has been renamed Singin’ This Song 4 You – and then Archie Shepp sings his heart out, yelling the blues in his inimitable ‘shouter’ style on Jimmy Wants to Groove, a composition by Lucky Peterson.

“Jimmy Smith, the Philadelphia-born Hammond organ pioneer, who died aged 76 in 2005, generally approached his performances like a man who was certain he was in showbusiness, rather than art. Smith’s gigs regularly involved plenty of stagey gesticulation, badinage with audiences, and mopping his brow with towels. The music was mostly rooted in that most accessible 20th-century formula, the twelve-bar blues. But the art was never far below the surface. Smith refined and modernised a musical instrument better designed for travelling preachers, magic shows or the end of the pier. He brought a sophisticated and high-powered pianist’s technique to it, and in coupling the Hammond’s holy-rolling aptitudes to bebop, helped open up modern jazz to audiences otherwise impatient with its intricacies.” John Fordham, The Guardian