Johnny Hammond: "Gambler's Life"

Though it’ll never be as well-known as “Gears”—Johnny “Hammond” Smith’s other Mizell Brothers-produced masterpiece—“Gambler’s Life” does its own thing, and has a slightly more underground, late-night-smoke-and-mirrors feel, which I love.  Fonce and Larry Mizell exhibit more experimental tendencies on this LP than usual, like on the cut “Rhodesian  Thoroughfare,” which moves from heavy jazz-fusion to the Mizells’ trademark light jazz funk to wild synth excursions from Hammond.  It feels as though the Mizell-Hammond-Mizell team wasn’t necessarily aiming for a huge hit in the way that they did with the subsequent “Gears,” and so they take more risks; there’s the studio-chatter-intro, stop-start funk stutter of the title cut, the smooth-jazz-into-odd-time-fusion of “This Year’s Dream,” the NOLA-meets-“Manchild”-era-Herbie of “Yesterday Was Cool,” the funk-to-hard-bop-and-back-again “Virgo Lady.”  Mizell funk throw-downs are plentiful as well, my favorites being “Star Borne” and “Back To The Projects.”  Of special mention on this album is the drumming of Harvey Mason, whose samba-funk-fusion style always elevates whatever given session he appears on; and then of course there’s Johnny Hammond himself, whose willingness to dive headfirst into the funk milieu despite his being of the soul-jazz old guard is not only refreshing but mind-blowing.  The Mizells and Hammond hit pay-dirt a year later, and “Gears” deservedly went down in history as a jazz-club-fusion landmark, but “Gambler’s Life” is worthy of re-examination and re-evaluation, for all the moving parts that made “Gears” so successful are here also, and shown in a starker, more uncompromising light.  Track this down.