Dr. Lonnie Smith, the reigning king of the Hammond B3 organ, came to Scullers on Friday and put on two sets of juicy soul jazz that alternately lifted and soothed the spirits. At 66, Smith has been at this a long time - nearly five decades - and he has mastered the art of give-and-take with the audience. He constructs his music gradually with great crescendos, building staccato stabs to thick swells of sustained chords, and then he lets it all down gently, as though slowly deflating a balloon. Tunes are frames for extended improvisation - his quartet might stretch six tunes out for more than an hour, as it did in the first set, which began with a funky version of ``Caravan'' and ended with a long take of Smith's own ``Pilgrimage'' that threatened to turn the jazz club into a Baptist church. The quartet - which included in-demand alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, up-and-coming guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg, and 19-year-old drummer (and Berklee College sophomore) Joe Dyson - started the second set with an extremely fast, grooving version of ``Willow Weep for Me'' and twisted the Beatles' ``Come Together'' into a pulsating piece of funk, rendering it almost unrecognizable. Then things got wonderfully strange: Dyson began churning out a New Orleans-style second-line rhythm. Smith, wearing his trademark turban, stood and danced. Then he and Harrison grabbed drumsticks and began playing the cymbals. Smith snagged an empty pint glass from a table up front and tapped on that behind Dyson's beat. Done with that, the group slowed things down considerably with the funeral dirge ``And the World Weeps'' before turning to comic relief. The quartet launched into ``Misty,'' and Smith started singing - not just singing but doing a perfect impersonation of Johnny Mathis. Then he did a few bars of ``You Are the Sunshine of My Life,'' this time sounding exactly like Stevie Wonder. The show culminated with a deliciously greasy piece of funk that Smith said was called ``If You See Kate.'' Hmm. Not familiar with that song, but it sounded like your basic blues. Ah, very sly, Dr. Smith. We just said the title out loud. Very cheeky indeed. Steve Greenlee can be reached at greenlee@globe.com.
Source: The Boston Globe
