Guitarist Jimmy Ponder (1946-2013) was a mainstay of many an organ combo throughout his half-century career. Starting as a teenager in Charles Earland’s trio to a long stint in Jimmy McGriff’s band, Ponder wound up heading his own organ trio with veteran B-3 bomber -and fellow Pittsburgher – Gene Ludwig (1937-2010).
But the self-taught Ponder’s elegant tone, a liquid-gold mix of the guitarist’s main influences, Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell, seems too pretty for the grits, gravy and greasy sides cooked up in an organ group. That is until you unleash him on a solo. Then, he is all business: swinging thoughtfully and melodically through jazz and the blues, while firing on the funk.
Once Ponder hit New York City in 1968, he found work in Earland’s group as well as the bands of David “Fathead” Newman and reed player Joe Thomas. Like many other guitarists of the period, he also started taking in session work. He did notable and memorable organ dates with Stanley Turrentine, John Patton, Johnny Hodges, Lou Donaldson and Rusty Bryant.
That warm and fluid tone Ponder proffered on these records and throughout his career offered a level of distinction, class and an uncanny aura of timelessness to the music. The guitarist brought an edge to these records that is wholly unique, but not entirely different than the Prestige-era six-stringers Billy Butler, Melvin Sparks, Boogaloo Joe Jones and Wally Richardson or Atlantic’s Eric Gale and Cornell Dupree. But different, even so.
Ponder launched his own solo career in 1974, just as the organ-combo was dying out, with While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a CTI-like production well deserving of a reissue, featuring strings by CTI’s then in-house arranger, Bob James. The guitarist would go on to wax a handful of not-entirely-successful solo records for the ABC-Impulse!, LRC and Milestone labels between 1976 and 1985, mostly a mix of fusion, disco and ballads and, sadly, only a handful of stand-out moments.
Only the straight-ahead, though little-known, and superb Ponder’n (1980), featuring the guitarist with (probably) Jimmy McGriff, Ron Carter and an unnamed drummer, returns Ponder to where he belongs…and shines brightest (three of the LP’s five tracks appear on the 1991 LRC CD compilation Jimmy Ponder, otherwise a reissue of the 1977 LP All Things Beautiful).
Over the years, Jimmy Ponder played with such organ greats as Charles Earland, Big John Patton, Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott, Billy Gardner, Reuben Wilson, Bill Mason, Brother Jack McDuff, Sonny Phillips and Carl Wilson. But none established more of a kinship with the guitarist than Lonnie Smith, or as he was later known, Dr. Lonnie Smith (1942-2021).
Both musicians were self taught, crafting incisive personalities on their instruments by first mimicking their influences. Unlike many organ players, Smith didn’t start out on piano and make the switch; the organ was his first choice. It was only in the seventies, when the organ fell out of favor, that Smith began flirting with other keyboard instruments. Smith is on organ for almost all of the music he made with Jimmy Ponder.
Ponder’s first recording with Smith, Lou Donaldson’s crackling Mr. Shing-A-Ling, finds the organist in between gigs: easing out of a three-year stint in guitarist George Benson’s band in to a full-time solo career (Smith’s solo debut, the John Hammond-produced Finger Lickin’ Good, came out in 1966).
Ponder’s warm and fluid tones are a perfect foil to Smith’s soulful otherworldliness. Sugar and spice. The way these two finesse the greasiest of grooves is always a treat to hear: both are funky, yet thoroughly thoughtful players. Here is where they came together on records over the years.
Mr. Shing-A-Ling – Lou Donaldson (1968)
The second of eight jazz-funk classics tenor saxophonist Lou Donaldson waxed between 1967 and 1971, Mr. Shing-A-Ling may well be the best of the bunch. Lonnie Smith returns from Alligator Boogaloo, the album that made Donaldson Blue Note’s first pop-charting artist. Jimmy Ponder, in his first major label recording, steps up to replace George Benson from the earlier album.
Despite Ponder’s later claim (from the Come on Down liner notes) that he met Smith around 1970, they were obviously familiar with one another from this October 1967 recording. Released in February 1968, Mr. Shing-A-Ling features Donaldson, Smith and Ponder with Blue Mitchell on trumpet and Idris Muhammed on drums. Such a heady combination could hardly fail to catch fire. And this one burns: it even one-ups Alligator Boogaloo for first-rate jazz funk.
The program starts off with a bluesy take on the pop hit “Ode to Billie Joe,” a melody, like “Tennessee Waltz” (that he covered on 1970’s Pretty Things), Donaldson makes his very own. “The Humpback” is one of those appealing and catchy Donaldson originals, like his signature tune “Blues Walk,” that the saxophonist could whip off in his sleep. But there’s no sleepwalking here: everyone gives their all to the groove.
Harold Ousley’s “The Kid” – which is also the title track to Ousely’s little-known 1972 Cobblestone album – is a fine and compatible addition to the set. It’s likely Lonnie Smith who brought the Ousley piece to the session. The two had worked together often over the years, as far back as sessions for Smith’s solo debut, Finger Lickin’ Good (some of which did not appear until 1977 on the George Benson compilation Benson Burner).
Harold Ousley (1929-2015) returns to this story several years later.
Somehow, though, after years of frontloading Blue Note records with radio-friendly tunes like Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” the experts at Liberty (who, by this point, owned Blue Note), planted Mr. Shing-A-Ling‘s best and best-known tune in the middle of the original record’s second side.
Lonnie Smith’s supremely catchy foot-tapper and butt-shaker, “Peepin,” is an eye – and ear – opener. This exceptional groove yields an earworm of a tune and fine, melodic solos from Smith, Donaldson and Ponder. “Peepin,” the album’s single, also became an audience favorite and a staple of Lou Donaldson’s repertoire for years. The song factors on Donaldson’s live set The Scorpion (recorded in 1970 but first released in 1995) and was re-recorded by the saxophonist for his 1974 disc Sweet Lou.
Smith would craft a sequel of sorts to “Peepin” on his own 1968 Blue Note debut, Think!, with the infectious, slightly Latinate “Slouchin.” That album features guitarist Melvin Sparks (1946-2011), a regular in Lonnie Smith’s working group at the time. Benson came back for Donaldson’s next record, Midnight Creeper (1968), but Jimmy Ponder returned for Donaldson’s subsequent disc, Say it Loud! (1969), with Ponder’s boss at the time, Charles Earland, in the organ chair.
Mama Wailer – Lonnie Smith (1971)
The second album on CTI producer Creed Taylor’s soul subsidiary Kudu Records (after fellow organist Johnny Hammond’s Breakout), Mama Wailer did not garner much attention at the time – although Michael Cuscuna called the record “a real cooker” in the October 30, 1971, issue of Record World. The disc likely found its earliest audience in the nineties, during the “acid jazz” craze, when a whole new generation of listeners discovered and appreciated the jazz-funk of the sixties and seventies.
Smith’s former boss, George Benson, then on CTI himself, likely brought the organist to Creed Taylor’s attention. But while the disc seems to indicate that the artist and producer hit it off, Mama Wailer is the only recording the two made together: The “Lonnie Smith” credited on Stanley Turrentine’s “Sugar” on the 1975 compilation The Baddest Turrentine is Lonnie Liston Smith.
Mama Wailer is less of a reunion with Jimmy Ponder – who is one of three guitarists here and factors only briefly on “Stand” – than it is one with fellow Kudu recording artist Grover Washington, Jr. Years before, Smith and the saxophonist were in a band called the Teen Kings, which also featured Washington’s brother, Daryl.
The disc is a fine showcase for Lonnie Smith’s emerging originality on the organ. It also features two top-shelf originals in “Hola Muneca” and the Latin funk of the title track, which Smith first recorded in 1966, with George Benson (that version, an outtake from Smith’s solo debut, Finger Lickin’ Good, first appeared on the 1977 George Benson compilation Benson Burner). An edited version of “Mama Wailer,” which fades after Washington’s solo, was issued as a single.
The album’s standout moment is the bravura – and surprising, for a CTI record – 17-minute cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand.” The song took up the whole second side of the original record.
It is a three-part invention: (1) two and a half minutes of the original melody, (2) six minutes of a slow-burn single-chord funk jam for Smith and Washington to improvise over, and (3) the remainder of which is an original rapid-fire vamp that Smith would later carve out as its own tune (known elsewhere as “Jimi Meets Miles,” “Track Nine” and “Chase Game”).
It is in this third section that Ponder makes his most notable, albeit brief, appearance on the album. It is also here that Smith offers an early and extended taste of his entrancing, spacey style; what jazz journalist Ted Panken would later call “his phantasmagoric flights of fancy.”
Following Mama Wailer, Lonnie Smith seemed to have taken a leave of absence from music. At least from records. He didn’t reappear until his sublime Sonny Lester-produced Afro-Desia (1975), with a young Joe Lovano on tenor sax and guitar, “Compliments of a Friend,” a pseudonym for no less a formidable accompanist than George Benson.
B. Baker Chocolate Co. (1979)
Jimmy Ponder and Lonnie Smith spent the last half of the seventies affiliated with Sonny Lester’s Groove Merchant and LRC labels (Ponder appeared on many of Jimmy McGriff’s Lester-label records during this period, too). These were the days when jazz fusion, or crossover jazz, was heavily informed by disco and pop. Lester’s productions, however, dug even deeper in to these cash-in modes than most.
The man who wrote and arranged many of those records, Brad Baker, gets his own disc here. The B. Baker Chocolate Co. is little more than a conglomerate of New York studio musicians, headlined by the Sonny Lester All Stars: Jimmy Ponder, Lonnie Smith and Jimmy McGriff. Baker seemed unwilling to use his full name on a record of his own, so it’s not surprising that he never put out another disc under his own name (the 1980 disc Hot Chocolate is a compilation).
Surprisingly missing from this aggregate is reed player Joe Thomas, a veteran of many-a Lester (and Baker) production. Thomas is replaced here by not one, but three players: George Young, Sherry Winston and Eddie Daniels, the latter of whom was recording at the time for Marlin, a subsidiary, like Lester’s LRC label, of the Miami-based T.K. label, home to disco sensations KC & The Sunshine Band, T-Connection and many other classic disco acts.
Remarkably, Brad Baker’s only disc under his own name is also the only meeting of Ponder and Smith during their solo stays at LRC Records. With two exceptions – the disc’s final two songs – it is also among the better of the records Baker worked on with either Ponder or Smith.
As expected, Ponder and Smith (on a variety of keyboards) function more or less as studio musicians. Fellow LRC labelmate Jimmy McGriff takes a crack solo on Lonnie Smith’s (!) “Dreamer” and a wonky one on the pointless “It’s Where You’re Coming From.” That last one also gets a phase-shifted guitar solo that sounds nothing like Jimmy Ponder. Eddie Daniels is featured, such as it is, on the disco medley “Higher and Higher/The High and the Mighty.”
Ponder notably takes the lead and solos on “Snow Blower” (a.k.a. “Dream Lover”), while George Young and, presumably, Lonnie Smith take solos as well. Only “Spirit Level” (a.k.a. “Discovery”) metes out another solo to Ponder, while it’s easy to assume that Smith noodles a little on the organ here.
Many years ago, I wrote about this record – which has since been issued on CD in Japan – and others Brad Baker arranged, for my piece titled Whatever Happened to Brad Baker. (Alternative titles listed here appear as such on a 1998 CD compilation titled How to Strip for Your Lover, a title that riffs off a 1962 Sonny Lester record called How to Strip for Your Husband.)
So Many Stars – Jimmy Ponder (1985)
Jimmy Ponder’s sixth solo record, 1984’s Down Here on the Ground, was the guitarist’s first mostly straight-ahead disc, one that even the guitarist himself considered “his first real one.” It had its moments, but revealed Ponder’s enduring predilection for unengaging balladeering and jazzing up pop tunes.
The sequel, So Many Stars, was more of the same: pleasant, if not a little too pretty, but altogether unremarkable and wholly unmemorable. To this day, the disc remains unissued on CD or as part of any streaming service.
Product such as this – amazing even in its existence – is where the funk fathers of the past were relegated to figuring out where they fit in to the conservative era of the mid-eighties jazz, when you were either a young-lion traditionalist or a smooth-jazz avatar.
As a result, Lonnie Smith largely withdrew from the recording industry, but ramped up his performance schedule and recorded with others when the opportunity came up. Ponder, on the other hand, pulled back from good-paying session work (which likely dried up anyway) to advance his own solo career by making records such as this.
If So Many Stars is any indication, it wasn’t going to amount to much. Indeed, it is Lonnie Smith, who rebranded himself years later as the turbaned Dr. Lonnie Smith, who went from fact to legend.
Smith only appears on three of this disc’s six tracks, all appearing on the original album’s first side. On two of the tracks, he’s on piano; for the goofy “We Can Make It,” with electrified handclaps (and a truly funky piano solo) and Ponder’s George Benson-ish vocal “Save Your Love For Me,” with Smith’s noodle-y cocktail piano in the background.
Surprisingly, to this listener, at least, the slowed-down Reggae take on Trinidadian-British singer/songwriter Billy Ocean’s number-one hit “Caribbean Queen” (1984) is the album’s stand-out track. Ponder solos magnificently and Smith is back on organ, wailing (however briefly) with the wealth of royalty. Something like this could have gone on longer. But that’s all we get: not enough stars.
To Reach a Dream – Jimmy Ponder (1991)
From the first few seconds of Lonnie Smith’s initial organ swaths and Jimmy Ponder’s melodic tones, it’s clear that To Reach a Dream is a solid return to form. Not since the two musicians were paired two decades before on Lou Donaldson’s Mr. Shing-A-Ling had they been captured so aptly together.
Recorded in 1988, but not released until after Come on Down in 1991, To Reach a Dream, like Mr. Shing-A-Ling, was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder, although the former has RVG’s echo-ey “Muse sound” of the eighties and nineties while the latter retains the engineer’s crisp, in the pocket “Blue Note sound” of the sixties.
Ponder and Smith (on organ throughout) lead a tight quartet with Muse regulars: Greg Bandy on drums and Lawrence Killian on percussion. Geary Moore adds an unobtrusive rhythm guitar on three tracks.
The group gives nice reads to such standards “You Are To [sic] Beautiful,” “Ruby” (a nova bossa nova), “At Last” and the Ponder originals “To Reach a Dream” and “Don’t Be Flat Blues.” The quartet rips through Sonny Rollins’s standard “Oleo” as though bebop was nothing to these funk masters. Smith and Ponder solo beautifully throughout.
But real the standout moment here is surely the superb take on Wes Montgomery’s “Bumpin’ on Sunset.” This concise, though fiery, performance reveals the alchemy shared by Smith and Ponder. Smith offers up plenty of spicy and spacey licks that are at the root of his roaring comeback in the nineties, while Ponder delivers six-string fireworks that rightfully should have brought him much more notice. The guitarist doesn’t chew the scenery here so much as shred it.
To Reach a Dream is among guitarist Jimmy Ponder’s one or two personal bests. This is due as much to Lonnie Smith’s participation as it is as the guitarist’s nominal leadership. Yet while much of Ponder’s recorded output, particularly the LPs, are hard to come by these days, To Reach a Dream is nearly impossible to find. Like so many of the guitarist’s discs, which never sold in big numbers, likely only a thousand or so copies were pressed. This one is worth finding, though.
The ballad “This Bitter Earth” is, surprisingly, the only song to factor from this set on the 1998 Ponder compilation Steel City Soul. It’s possible, though, that the song, not the set’s best and overly drenched in Smith’s thunderous block chords, was Ponder’s own choice, as the guitarist seemed to favor ballads at this point in his career. There is a reason why “Bumpin’ on Sunset” appears on more compilations.
Live in New York – The Harlem Art Ensemble (2007)
The oddly-named Harlem Art Ensemble is an upscale nom-de-record for an all-star quartet of soul-jazz veterans gigging around NYC in the late eighties and early nineties. The group includes saxophonist Harold Ousley (1929-2015), organist Lonnie Smith (1942-2021), guitarist Jimmy Ponder (1946-2013) and drummer Bruno Carr (1928-93).
The quartet was seemingly led by Carr, a veteran of the bands of Ray Charles – as well as Charles veterans Hank Crawford and David “Fathead” Newman – Aretha Franklin and Herbie Mann. This is only one of two discs that the quartet is known to have waxed – and this little-known set is the best known of the two.
Recorded live – seemingly without an audience – at New York University in August 1990, Live in New York was produced by Teruo Nakamura, a Japanese bassist who relocated to New York in the sixties, and presumably intended for release on the Japanese Eastworld label. It’s unknown why that never happened.
Nakamura, who had previously featured Smith, Ponder and Carr on his various Rising Sun Band records in the late seventies. produced a series of albums in the eighties and nineties that surprisingly remained unreleased for decades. Live in New York made its first appearance on disc in 2007 on the short-lived British (!) Explore label (which also issued other previously-unissued Nakamura-produced discs, including two others featuring Jimmy Ponder).
This quartet session has the distinct feel of a Muse session of the period, reinforced by Harold Ousley’s similarity in sound and style to Muse superstar Houston Person. Even without Ousley – as on the disc’s two bookended pieces – the combination of Ponder and Smith recall the guitarist’s own Muse records at the time.
It’s a very strong set of band originals, standards (“Invitation,” “Four” and “Strollin”), Stevie Wonder’s “All in Love is Fair” and a second satisfying round of Wes Montgomery’s “Bumpin’ on Sunset” for Jimmy Ponder and Lonnie Smith. The originals include the set’s kick-off, Lonnie Smith’s “Keep Talkin’,” originally on Smith’s 1967 solo debut Finger Lickin’ Good (whose sessions also featured Ousley) and Ousley’s own “That’s When We Thought of Love,” which the saxophonist first presented on Jack McDuff’s 1968 album Soul Circle (recorded in 1966).
The album’s highpoint, though, comes on the all-hands-on-deck “Blues for Beth,” a Ponder original not known to have been recorded anywhere else. Ousley goes full-throttle Houston Person, while Ponder and Smith deliver the greasy goods in their own-inimitable ways.
Live in New York is a pleasurable listen and might have had a real chance in the early nineties, as the Acid Jazz craze was taking hold. But, to be fair, neither the title nor the music itself are especially memorable. Even the group’s unnecessarily artsy name – which sounds like something that a string quartet would take on – undermines its appeal. Little wonder that only super fans of these four musicians bothered to pick up on this enjoyable music.
Come on Down – Jimmy Ponder (1991)
Recorded a month after The Harlem Art Ensemble disc (above) and released the following year, Come on Down is a bit of a disappointment. The fourth of six Muse albums released by Ponder between 1987 and 1996 (and the second with Lonnie Smith), Come on Down has its moments – but not enough, coming as it does on the heels of the more engaging To Reach a Dream.
Here, Jimmy Ponder and Lonnie Smith are joined by drummer Winard Harper, percussionist Sammy Figueroa and, on four of the disc’s eight tracks, saxophonist Houston Person (who also produced).
Opening with the odd swing of “Uncle Steve,” named for one of Ponder’s stepbrothers, the melody seems somehow divorced from the solo passages. The solos are all decent and the song has a nice, easy-going groove. But when the melody returns, it’s almost jarring in its oddness: a lick that never really goes anywhere.
What’s more grating is how loud everything is. The sound is typical for Rudy Van Gelder’s Muse recordings of the period – but on steroids. The percussion alone seems to drown out the soloists. The overbearing modulation on the ever-dismal “Ebb Tide” blasts Lonnie Smith’s strident organ chords at listeners, while the drummer and percussionist are deafening on the near-funk of “Come on Down.”
The sound is more tempered on the remainder of the program. That said, Come on Down lights up on the other tracks, where the volume is turned down.
Ponder digs in to the Blue Note vault for Horace Silver’s “Barbara” and Stanley Turrentine’s “A Subtle One” – both originally from discs recorded by Rudy Van Gelder exactly three decades earlier. “A Subtle One,” in particular, benefits by the personable takes Smith, Person and Ponder offer in roles assumed earlier by Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine and Kenny Burrell.
The guitarist takes a brief solo turn the lovely ballad “A Tribute to a Rose,” another Ponder original, but saves the best for last. “Fats,” the guitarist’s longtime nickname. was written by another of Ponder’s stepbrothers, Dean Alston, is a classic organ-combo groove. The quartet (without Person) all dig in and serves up a delicious side of funk. This is where the disc should have begun and exactly where it should have gone instead.
The Turbanator – Dr. Lonnie Smith (2000)
Lonnie Smith’s solo recording career seemed to have gone on hiatus from 1980 until about the mid nineties. He didn’t really resume his solo status until the mid aughts, when he began a streak of records on the Palmetto label. In the meantime, the erstwhile keyboard player adorned a turban and a cane, adopting the “Dr.” moniker, a title that first appeared on a 1991 Lou Donaldson album.
But the Doctor never left the recording scene. In fact, he upped his recording output, appearing with many all-star aggregates and guesting on dozens of sessions by leaders, great and up-and-coming alike.
On a lovely summer’s day in July 1991, Smith entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studios with the impressive crew of guitarist Jimmy Ponder, former Mwandishi bassist Buster Williams and ubiquitous session drummer Buddy Williams (no relation to the bassist) to head up a CD which never saw the light of day until nine full years later.
Presumably, this wonderful disc was originally recorded for the Muse label. Originally produced by Houston Person, the session likely gained its release courtesy of Todd Barkan, who produced a number of Smith discs in the mid nineties – notably three exceptional trio discs for the Venus label, with guitarist John Abercrombie and drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith.
The Turbanator – a silly title, which likely riffs off a SNL sketch of the period – would have been given a more dignified title had it come out on or near when it was first recorded. It’s a top-shelf entry in the Doctor’s catalog and may have helped usher in his “comeback” sooner if given the chance. But even in 2000, that return to prominence was still a few years off.
Smith and company cover three standards here (the exciting “Caravan,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and a low-key take on “Cherokee,” a feature for Person’s tenor sax). Three of the program’s four originals find Smith switching to acoustic piano: for the bluesy “Night Song,” a highlight and a nice feature for Ponder, “River Walk,” also a perfect feature for bassist Buster Williams, and “Monk Could Swing,” which brings Person back in to the group. (Jimmy Ponder is out on “River Walk” and “Monk Could Swing.”)
In another case of odd programming, the disc’s best moment comes at the end. “Brushin’ It” is a familiar Smith vamp (a.k.a. “Play it Back”) that finds the quartet digging in on good old-fashioned organ funk. Not a single moment of The Turbanator goes to waste, leaving much to enjoy throughout. However, there is a sense here that the producers – and Smith himself – were trying to figure out how to fit themselves in to the schizophrenic period of jazz in the early nineties.
With that, The Turbanator is maybe a more apt title than it initially appeared to be: the album symbolizes Dr. Lonnie Smith’s faith, identity and commitment to the music. It is not at all beholden to the tenor of the times. Bravo.
Go To – Teruo Goto & The Harlem Art Ensemble (1993)
Japanese tenor saxophonist Teruo Gotō’s (b. 1953) recording career dates back to the seventies. But he remains completely unknown outside of his home country, however well-known he is there. While the saxophonist – whose sound here could easily be mistaken for such American soul-jazz players as Houston Person or Harold Ousley – has little experience playing with American musicians, his love of American jazz is beyond question.
The cleverly-titled Go To appears to be the first of only a few discs under Gotō’s name and the only one that I know of featuring the saxophonist with American musicians. Here, the tenor saxophonist is paired with Lonnie Smith, Jimmy Ponder and, presumably, Bruno Carr, three-fourths of a collective known at the time as The Harlem Art Ensemble.
The disc is a terrific collection of well-selected jazz standards (“Maiden Voyage,” “Freddie Freeloader”), off-beat R&B covers (“Our Day Will Come,” “Hello Like Before”), a captivating calypso, a honky-tonk jam and “Dream Diary,” a swinger by Japanese trumpeter Haruyuki Sawada .
The refreshing organ-combo takes on “Maiden Voyage” and “Freddie Freeloader” are real highlights, while the breezy bossa of “Hello Like Before” and the surprising swing of “On the Trail” are others. The disc’s real jewels, however, are the the hypnotically funky take on “Jamaica Farewell” and the ten-minute set closer “Let Me Go Out Here!” [sic – I think]. This is where Gotō, Smith and Ponder shine brightest, taking bravura turns on their individual instruments that are chill-inducing.
Neither Smith nor Ponder burned like this on their own discs during this period.
The only dud in the bunch is the more morose than usual “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” originally made popular by The Stylistics in 1974. The song fades for no good reason…other than, perhaps, it wasn’t going anywhere in the first place. Unfortunately, the pointless “Brand New” is not the only song to fade on Go To: “Hello Like Before” and Dream Diary” both fade for no reason and the long jam “Let Me Go Out Here!” may earn its title with its fade.
While Go To, issued on the short-lived label Ninety-One in Japan only, is pretty much impossible to find on CD, the full program is remarkably available on most streaming services.
In the early nineties – just as the organ-combo was starting to make its comeback – Jimmy Ponder returned to Pittsburgh. Likewise, Lonnie Smith had, as so many other New York-based jazzers, including Prestige founder Bob Weinstock (1928-2006), relocated to Florida.
For his part, Smith started to expand his musicality, taking any opportunity that came his way and dramatically expanding his musical vocabulary, He dished out guest turns on riveting discs by Akira Tana, Javon Jackson, Cory Weeds, Ximo Tebar, Cyrus Pace and others, while launching a rich era of his own discography with releases on the Palmetto and Blue Note labels.
Ponder, unlike other funk guitarists, like, say, Melvin Sparks, chose to take the straighter path. The guitarist formed a trio in Pittsburgh with local organ great Gene Ludwig (1937-2010) and played many local venues, including the James Street Tavern, the North Side performance space whose sign is pictured on Ponder’s 1997 disc James Street (yes, it’s still there).
The guitarist recorded seven straight-ahead discs in the decade between 1997 and 2007, in various formats (solo, trio and quintets) for the HighNote label. Each of these discs exhibited Ponder’s finely-honed style, but in his later years, the guitarist tended toward more programmatic balladry. The occasional blues or light-funk number showed up, but the guitarist handled the heat on more of a low flame than he once had.
Ain’t Misbehavin’ (2000) turned out to be the guitarist’s only disc to chart (reaching number 38 on Billboard‘s Jazz Albums chart) while the exceptional Guitar Christmas (1998) – with such all-stars as John Hicks, Dwayne Dolphin and Cecil Brooks III – is, to these ears, Ponder’s best and most notable solo outing of the period.
Jimmy Ponder died on September 16, 2013, after battling cancer for more than a year. He was 67. Dr. Lonnie Smith, a NEA Jazz Master, died on September 28, 2021, of pulmonary fibrosis, a form of lung disease. He was 79.