Melvin Rhyne: Boss Organ

Originally released on CD on the Criss Cross label in 1993, Hammond B3 organist Melvin Rhyne's Boss Organ is issued here for the first time on vinyl. Spanish archive label Elemental, under license from Criss Cross, has repackaged it as a double LP in a gatefold sleeve on 180-gram audiophile vinyl.

It is a blinder. Not because Rhyne deals in surging, heavily amped block chords, a la Jimmy Smith, but because his style is utterly unlike that, putting him in a minority of B3 players who emerged post-Smith in the late 1950s. A closer comparator to Rhyne is the guitarist Wes Montgomery, whose single-note runs he favours, though delivered with a more percussive attack than Montgomery, who famously used thumb and fingers rather than a plectrum.

Both players grew up in Indianapolis, and Montgomery, thirteen years Rhyne's senior, recruited Rhyne for the group with which he recorded his debut, The Wes Montgomery Trio, for Riverside in 1959. Rhyne recorded several more albums with Montgomery, including Boss Guitar (Riverside, 1963). Rhyne also played on Montgomery's younger brother, vibraphonist Buddy's This Rather Than That (Impulse!, 1969).

For reasons which remain unclear, Rhyne was off the scene during the 1970s and '80s, returning at the start of the '90s and recording prolifically until he passed in 2013. On Boss Organ, he fronts a quartet completed by the tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, then at the start of his recording career, the guitarist Peter Bernstein, whose style is derived from Montgomery's, right down to the parallel octaves (as per his solo on Montgomery's "Full House" here), and the drummer Kenny Washington.

The music, all of it covers except for Rhyne's "Hatush Blues" (check the YouTube below), is hard swinging and amiable, the band tight and everyone is in top form, including a gutsy Redman, who would make waves later in 1993 with his sophomore album, Wish (Warner Bros.).

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