It Sure Is

Bobby Timmons, like most jazz musicians, students of the humanities, and residents of the American Midwest, died frustrated and alone. Another little-known veteran of the soul-jazz era, Timmons hit his stride as pianist with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the late fifties and early sixties. Though an exceedingly able bandleader, Blakey was also an infamous enabler, and when Timmons found himself unfairly typecast as “just another soul player,” the group’s drug and alcohol-laden atmosphere did little to alleviate his crushing depression. Over the next ten years, Timmons struggled to achieve the same level of success he had with Blakey, but never managed to recapture his prior notoriety.

Bobby Timmons died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1974.

Dat Dere (1), This Here (2), This Here is Bobby Timmons, Riverside, 1960

Though both tracks were originally written for The Jazz Messengers and The Cannonball Adderley Sextet, respectively, Timmons cut these particular recordings as leader of his own trio. Orrin Keepnews, author of the liner notes to This Here is Bobby Timmons, and possessor of what may be the worst name I’ve ever heard, had this to say about Dat Dere: “...[a] shouter with just a suggestion of a Latin strain to it.” I don’t particularly feel like writing a pithy description of This Here, either, so here’s something Cannonball Adderley said. "[It’s] simultaneously a shout and a chant" and related to "the roots of soul church music."

Note: Files (Dat Dere on top, This Here on bottom) only seem to play in Firefox.

--Chris C