🎷 AotW: Kudu Johnny Hammond: Breakout (Kudu Records KU-01)

Johnny Hammond: Breakout

Kudu Records KU-01
Released 1971

• A1: It's Too Late /10:50
• A2: Workin' On a Groovy Thing /6:35
• B1: Never Can Say Goodbye /5:35
• B2: Blues Selah /6:40
• B3: Breakout /4:45

Alto Saxophone – Hank Crawford
Design [Album] – Bob Ciano
Drums – Billy Cobham
Electric Bass [Fender] – Johnny Williams*
Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder
Guitar – Eric Gale
Mastered By – VAN GELDER*
Organ – Johnny Hammond
Percussion – Airto Moreira
Photography By – Alen MacWeeney
Producer – Creed Taylor
Tenor Saxophone – Grover Washington*
Trumpet – Danny Moore


Amazon product ASIN B01H5JT018

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Johnny Hammond - Breakout

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[JOv2]

Man, I don't know how I missed this one. I NEED it. Thanks, Rudy!!!

 

[Rudy]

Discovering these albums can get expensive.

I realized when I saw his albums that Creed Taylor has worked with a hat trick of Hammond-playing Smiths--he had Jimmy Smith at Verve, and Johnny "Hammond" Smith and Lonnie Smith on his own label. The latter two Smiths were more in a soul-jazz groove than Jimmy Smith.

This album, like most CTIs, is chock full of talent--Grover Washington, Jr. (ts), Billy Cobham, Eric Gale, Airto, and even Hank Crawford (as) who had his own albums on the label. Good playing all around on this one! In a sense, the way Kudu leaned more into the soul/funk side of jazz made it more accessible--listeners who didn't exactly warm to jazz could be drawn to these, and this first Kudu album sets a good example for the label's dozens of albums to follow.

 

[JOv2]

Discovering these albums can get expensive

Definitely. Given a decent "soul-jazz" combo can churn out about 4 LPs worth of 3-chord grooves per day. Seriously, I keep the bar quite high on this stuff -- which is why I've limited myself to just the three organists over at Blue Note: Larry Young, who, of course, is not a soul-jazz organist but in a whole other bag (and in a class all by himself); Big John Patton -- who started pushing the boundaries in a good way in '68; and Lonnie Liston Smith (his '68 debute with Lee Morgan is solid). Hey, ever checked out Trudy Pitts? She plays with an eloquent touch...probably the only jazz organist you'll see with a cigarette holder!

 

[Rudy]

I'm thinking you meant (Dr.) Lonnie Smith, as Lonnie Liston Smith was primarily piano, and I can't recall he ever did anything with Blue Note. (He was first signed to Flying Dutchman/RCA around 1969 or 1970.) The Doctor had his debut on Columbia in 1967 (Finger Lickin' Good--a groovy little date thanks to his association with George Benson, with Benny Golson arranging all the tracks), and he did have a handful with Blue Note, including Think! which was his 1968 debut with the label (and yep, Lee Morgan was on that album). In 1995, Blue Note released a live recording, Live at Club Mozambique, that was recorded in my area in 1970.

Johnny "Hammond" Smith seems to have appeared in the late 50s, recorded a handful for Prestige, recorded five for Creed Taylor (with Breakout being the first), and moved on to Milestone, not recording much after that point until the early 90s.

 

[JOv2]

I'm thinking you meant (Dr.) Lonnie Smith,

My errors are increasing...As I pointed out not so long ago: the day I refer to M&A Records is the day I decommission up my Post reply button.

Indeed, Lonnie Smith as in "Dr". Lonnie Smith. Think!, Turning Point and Drives ('68-'70) are all highly recommended.

 

[Harry]

As I pointed out not so long ago: the day I refer to M&A Records is the day I decommission up my Post reply button.

 

[JOv2]

...and the fact that I wrote "decommissioned up" clearly shows that I have one foot in the grave at this point...

In any event, thanks, Harry, that graphic is actually quite striking (back in '62 Herb and Jerry may have considered the look of M&A as well...).

 

[Rudy]

My errors are increasing...As I pointed out not so long ago: the day I refer to M&A Records is the day I decommission up my Post reply button.

My mind certainly isn't what it used to be these days. It took way more concentration than should be necessary to put these AotWs together. I'm also forgetting details that I should know, forgetting dates, deadlines, etc., and similar names trip me up as well. Yet I can tell you that the string of lights in the backyard has 600 colored LEDs on it, the spare car has 255k miles on it, and my locker combination in middle school was 6-16-10.

And I can't tell you how many times I've had to correct the metadata that tagged many of my Lonnie Smith albums in the music player--so many of the credits were mistakenly for Lonnie Liston Smith. But I blame that on ignorance of those who entered the metadata in the first place. (Roon Player pulls it in from Musicbrainz and one or two other sources.)

Having said that, Lonnie and Lonnie Liston should have made a few records together.

 

[JOv2]

My 7th grade locker combo was 5-7-29. I can recall nearly all of my childhood friend's phone numbers and street addresses...YET, I cannot remember any such similar data after about age 14. And now pushing six-zero, memory is definitely an issue...just hoping I can limp into retirement before they throw me out the 3rd-story window!

Well, whatever happens, it won't take away my enjoyment of Lonnie Smith...Liston or Doctor or what have you.

 

[Rudy]

Yep, I'll always enjoy listening to ol' what's-his-name. Strangely, some numbers I can remember, if I use them enough. But I've had to resort to ordering personalized license plates for the cars, as I couldn't remember the plate numbers.

For our pal Johnny Hammond, there are four more titles in this series, and they'll be coming up in the rotation here in future installments. And I have to admit that I was never fully aware of everything that was released on Kudu--I had a couple of albums myself but beyond that, I didn't realize the scope of the label until I got a list of all of the albums and dug into seeing what was available. Surprisingly, many of these are still available, and there are only a few that are obscure.

 

[JOv2]

For our pal Johnny Hammond, there are four more titles in this series, and they'll be coming up in the rotation here in future installments. And I have to admit that I was never fully aware of everything that was released on Kudu--I had a couple of albums myself but beyond that, I didn't realize the scope of the label until I got a list of all of the albums and dug into seeing what was available. Surprisingly, many of these are still available, and there are only a few that are obscure.

Excited to learn about what's upcoming. Except for Joe Farrell, I essentially ignored the (non-A&M) CTIs, so these upcoming CTI AOTWs are gonna be exciting. Thanks for putting this together.

 

[Rudy]

Excited to learn about what's upcoming. Except for Joe Farrell, I essentially ignored the (non-A&M) CTIs, so these upcoming CTI AOTWs are gonna be exciting. Thanks for putting this together.

No problem!

We've had some scattered AotWs over the years but never dug into this as a series, beyond the 3000 series. It looks like the series will probably stretch across at least a year and a half--so far I have the next AotWs planned out weekly until early June, but I've got it worked out to a system and it's not too difficult to put them together. Within a few weeks I'll probably have the entire schedule ready to go, and will have a fairly accurate count of the number of albums CTI and the spinoff labels had in total.

I felt the same way--I knew the CTI recordings were there, but I never got in depth to listening to them or even looking deep into a catalog list to see how many there were, and who recorded them. I often pursue a couple of new musical paths each year, and since I was working on a brief series of CTI album features elsewhere, I thought it would be a good time to dig into the deep CTI catalog while it's all fresh in my mind. For the most part, I've been finding that I'm enjoying most of these new (to me) albums.

There is a handful of titles I can't locate for my collection. Three I can get from Qobuz, but there are six that have never had a digital release, and for a few more, I was only able to find ratty needledrops of. So for all but the Qobuz titles, I'll have to see if I can scare up good vinyl copies to work with.

I've lucked out in that just about all the albums I've located so far have all been available on YouTube in their entirety. Having official label uploads is what I'm after, and I've only had to bookmark a couple of non-label videos. Since we have the ability to embed the YouTube videos now, it's handy to post these along with the AotW entry so everyone can follow along. I keep thinking back to our old days, when all we had was a text-based forum and there was no way to add anything, not even an album cover photo.

 

[4mc]

I've lucked out in that just about all the albums I've located so far have all been available on YouTube in their entirety. Having official label uploads is what I'm after, and I've only had to bookmark a couple of non-label videos.

Thats why I've taken to posting links to albums via album.link here it is for Breakout

Breakout by Johnny Hammond

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