js The “Jazz Milestone Series” was put out by the Pacific records label and was designed to showcase a “best of” series for their various artists. This Groove Holmes album covers the early part of his career when he recorded and performed in LA during the early 60s. The music on here is what we would expect from Holmes, blues based jazz played in swing time, the very early roots of the soul jazz sound. When it comes to the B3 greats, Jimmy Smith has the high speed licks and McGriff and McDuff have the hard edged funk, but Groove Holmes is the master of the swing and the hard driving B3 bass pedals. Most of these cuts are pretty solid, with no particular duds, nor many particular stand-outs either. Side one centers around shorter RnB/gospel flavored tunes, while side two stretches out and gets a little jazzier. Album closer, “Comin’ thru the Apple”, is probably the best with a high speed romp based around the Parker tune of a similar name.

Holmes’ playing sounds great throughout, and there are also many stellar guests including Joe Pass, Ben Webster and Les McCann on piano. That double keyboard sound is real effective on the gospel and RnB flavored numbers. If you are a fan of the early 60s B3 jazz sound and you see this at your local used record shop for a reasonable price, go ahead and pick it up, there are not a lot of surprises on here, but sometimes that’s a good thing.