Since Hammond B-3 specialist
Lonnie Smith left Blue Note in the '70s, the largely self-taught musician has added the "Dr." to his name, adopted a traditional Sikh turban as a distinctive, if enigmatic style choice (it's unclear if he follows the religion), and continued to release a steady stream of highly regarded soulful well before the 21st century came around. With 2016's
Evolution,
Smith returns to Blue Note, his first studio album for the label since 1970's
Drives. Produced by Don Was,
Evolution is one of the most robust albums of his career. Where his previous few albums found him working in a trio format, on
Evolution, Was surrounds
Smith with various small group configurations featuring a bevy of post-bop, funk, and soul-ready musicians including drummers Jonathan Blake and Joe Dyson, guitarist
Jonathan Kreisberg, trumpeters
Keyon Harrold and
Maurice Brown, and others. Also joining
Smith here are several jazz luminaries including genre-bending pianist
Robert Glasper, whose glassy piano tone rubs nicely against
Smith's burnished Hammond warmth on "Play It Back." Similarly, saxophonist
Joe Lovano, who first made his debut on
Smith's 1975 effort
Afrodesia, joins in on several cuts, including a reworking of "Afrodesia" and the slow-jam ballad "For Heaven's Sake." While
Smith is the star of
Evolution, the expanding group sound works well with his expansive approach to funk-jazz and the cuts with
Harrold and
Brown bring to mind the energetic hip-hop-inflected jazz of
the Roots. Ultimately, it's
Smith's juicy, nuanced, Hammond B-3 sound, deepened by over 50 years of experience, that makes
Evolution such a career pinnacle. ~ Matt Collar