Dr Lonnie Smith became a distinctively thoughtful kind of Hammond organist in the wake of his 1960s fame as a jazz/R&B fusioneer, pumping out spacey, Bitches Brew-era ruminations and teasingly sidetracked burnups. This set of smart originals and two covers is enhanced by star guests Robert Glasper and Joe Lovano. The opening Play It Back sounds generically jazz-funky, but Glasper’s adroit piano solo against the time-stretching of two drummers, and Smith’s devious routes to howling climaxes make it old and new at once. Lovano on soprano sax brings a Wayne Shorter/Miles Davis feel to the wraithlike For Heaven’s Sake with trumpeter Maurice Brown; Monk’s Straight No Chaser is teasingly waylaid by abstract ponderings before the famous theme and a volcanic organ outburst; and African Suite suggests the late Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate, even if Zawinul would never have let a trombone mimic a trumpeting elephant. But it’s an entertaining album, aptly named.
