TJR Song of the Day: Dr. Lonnie Smith "Midnight Creeper"

Like many jazz heads, I’ve been listening to plenty of Dr. Lonnie Smith tunes after his passing last week at the age of 79. He was an undisputed pioneer of the soul-jazz sound, and had a run of five classic groove albums for Blue Note at the end of the 1960s, all of which still stand up and are worth seeking out and digging into.

In addition to working as a leader for Blue Note, he was also part of Lou Donaldson’s group that put out three game changing soul-jazz bangers on the label at the end of the 60’s, the third of which was Midnight Creeper, off of which we have the title track today. It was composed by both Donaldson and Smith, and it’s a great example of Smith’s bluesy organ grooves that he so perfectly lays down to set the funky swinging tone of the track for his bandmates to vamp over. When it’s his turn to take his solo he slays it with some super soulful licks that are never over the top and hit the mark every time.

Midnight Creeper will always hold a special place in my heart: it was the first vintage Blue Note LP I added to my collection back in the late 1990s when I was first discovering much of the jazz music I still love today. Hard to imagine now, but those were the days when you could wander into a dusty old used bookstore with a few racks of vinyl in the back corner and come away with an amazing gem like an original 1968 Blue Note album.

Leave any thoughts you might have in the comments below, and - most importantly - enjoy the music!

For the vinyl nerds: ripped from my original 1968 Blue Note copy, with “A DIVISION OF LIBERTY RECORDS, INC.” and Van Gelder stamp in the runoff.