Jimmy McGriff

Soul-jazz organist from Philadelphia

Jimmy McGriff

Today on Ecléctico you're listening to Jimmy McGriff, a soul-jazz organist from Philadelphia. Today's song is a co-feature with Flow State, steadfast and solid presenter of music that’s perfect for working.

McGriff had an extensive career in, out, and around jazz and rhythm and blues circles. It was during a prolific run of albums in the late 60s and early 70s that McGriff took soul-jazz to higher and wider places, refining a blend of deep grooves, popular melodies, and accessible funk.


"The Bird Wave" by Jimmy McGriff
1969 | Soul-jazz organist from Philadelphia


Go deeper with this excerpt from and a link to a review from 1997 by Douglas Payne on All About Jazz:

This 1969 Sonny Lester production was one nearly hopelessly lost slab of solid funk. It often popped up in cut-out bins when records were still waxed. When used-record stores started disappearing, beauties like this started vanishing too. But Blue Note's blessed Rare Groove series has exhumed all 32 minutes of this hard-hitting fon-kee gem (and, to its credit, retained the original but dated cover art too). Acid jazzers are probably already familiar with "The Bird Wave," which appeared on the Blue Note Rare Grooves compilation issued in 1996. The great news is that the rest of Electric Funk goes like this too. No sap, no frills. Just good true groove.