musicology #337

AlternativeSoundtrack4 #4

(Jimmy Smith Trio – Jimmy’s Blues)

Fats has taken up the challenge from the young pretender and the battle hots up..first Fats on top and then for a while Eddie hits a winning streak which sees him reach his inital target of “Ten grand in one night” but rather than call it a night the kid fancies that “this table is mine” and in his naivite he gives his opponent the opportunity to carry on playing “Until Minnesota Fats says it’s over”.

I say naivite but in my experience ‘etiquette’ can and does play it’s part in ‘the game’ and offering the loser the chance to win his money back is, (or was in the games I played), accepted as an unwritten rule. Unless of course the Hustle is your business and then there are no unwritten rules.

During the contest George C. Scott enters the fray as Minnesota’s backer and we hear him ‘pipe up’ for the first time after watching Eddie and Fats going toe to toe for  hours but as we, (and Eddie) are soon to find out “the Race is not for the swift but for who can endure it”

The music is yet another slice of the 1961 pie but today it’s courtesy of Hammond Organ supremo ‘The Incredible’ Jimmy Smith and Trio freaturing Quentin Warren on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums…borrowed from a Blue Note session called ‘Straight Life’, (recorded by Rudy Van Gelder).