Jazz fusion: Expansions and My Love

Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Donald Smith (vocals, flute), David Hubbard (flute), Lonnie Liston Smith (electric piano), Cecil McBee (electric bass), Art Gore (drums), Lawrence Killian (congas, percussion) and Michael Carvin (percussion). From the album Expansions (1974).

Lonnie Liston Smith is an American pianist and keyboardist who has played jazz, soul, funk, jazz fusion, smooth jazz and acid jazz, being one of the most versatile musicians of modern music during his 40-year career. He began as a sideman for several prestigious jazz performers, such as saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri, and trumpeter Miles Davis, before setting up his own group to develop his original concepts in the mid-1970s. Born in the city of Richmond, his father was part of the Gospel quartet The Harmonizing Four.

He studied trumpet, tuba and piano in high school, and received his bachelor’s degree in music education at Morgan State University in 1961. He became interested in jazz listening to the giants Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. While in college he belonged to the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and the musical fraternity Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and played with his classmates alto saxophonist Gary Bartz, trombonist Grachan Moncur and double bassist Mickey Bass. In his teens he worked as a back vocalist and pianist in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

He also supported several jazz singers, like Betty Carter and Ethel Ennis, with the Royal Theater band of Baltimore. In 1963 he moved to New York, where he played piano in Betty Carter’s group for a year and worked briefly with singer Joe Williams. In 1965 he joined multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk’s band and appeared in the hard bop album Here Comes the Whistleman, which features a private performance at Atlantic Studios. Later that year he shared the pianist position in the drummer Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers with Keith Jarrett and Mike Nock for a few months, and then was replaced by Chick Corea.

Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Donald Smith (vocals), Lonnie Liston Smith (piano), Cecil McBee (electric bass), Art Gore (drums), Lawrence Killian (congas, percussion), Leopoldo Fleming (bongos, percussion) and Michael Carvin (percussion). From the album Expansions (1974).