Search - Jimmy McGriff :: Jimmy McGriff - Greatest Hits

This is the good music!

Edward Gordon Brown | 08/25/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Jimmy McGriff is a blues authority when at the Hammond Organ. All the songs here are top-notch. One thing that mislead me a bit at first was the fact I had bought this CD basically because of the "I have a Woman" song. I had heard this song on an old audio tape of my father's "Teen Beat '56" and it had been labeled as "I have a Woman (part one)"...yet the song with this name on this CD is completely different. It is actually called "Kiko". I defy anyone to listen to "Kiko" and just stay put... You just can't. It's an infectious song, it urges you to get up and dance to it. Even if this CD had only one song on it- this one- I'd buy it. This song alone is worth the price of admission."

Falls Just Short Of A 5-Star Rating

J. E FELL | 09/03/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For a "greatest hits" album this one comes a lot closer than some - and yet it too falls just short by omitting one charted hit from among the six he had between 1962 and 1968. That selection is M.G. Blues which, as the B-side of All About My Girl [# 12 R&B/# 50 Billboard Pop Hot 100 in early 1963] peaked at # 95 Hot 100 itself. Hard to understand why distributors do this.



A trained classical musician [violin], his interest in jazz and the organ began while attending Temple University in Philadelphia where, so the story goes, a future comedian named Bill Cosby helped arrange some local gigs. At some of those sessions he met - and learned from - the great Jimmy Smith and Milt Buckner.



In 1962 he secured a recording contract with Sue Records, and in October that year hit the charts with the Ray Charles classic I've Got A Woman - Parts I and II, which rose to # 5 R&B/# 20 Hot 100 in November.



His second hit was the above-mentioned All About My Girl/M.G. Blues, which he followed in June with The Last Minute Pt. II which peaked at # 99 Hot 100 b/w Pt. I. About a year later Kiko topped out at # 79 Hot 100/R&B b/w the old standard, Jumpin' At The Woodside [not here].



With his brand of music [along with contemporaries like Brother Jack McDuff] shunted aside by the British Invasion, insofar as chart success was concerned, it would be over four years before he re-emerged briefly with The Worm which, early in 1969, made it to # 28 R&B/# 97 Hot 100 b/w Keep Loose [not here].



And although that would be it in terms of hit singles, Jimmy nevertheless maintained a strong following with his many LPs for Capitol and Groove Merchant, among others.



In addition to the skimpy liner notes and lack of sessionography, the omission of that one hit and two of the B-sides has to result in the loss of one star in my opinion.

"

First review

Deep North (Qld, Australia) | Australia | 07/13/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is my first online review and so I am giving this excellent recording a 4 star rating....in case something better comes along. This CD has really grown on me and after 12 months just gets better and better to listen to. The first 2 tracks are the most funky tunes I have heard (Charles Earland's Mighty Burner is also in that league). I am excited though because this is genre of music that is a real learning (and enjoying) curve for me."