Just imagine for a moment a mild-mannered young man with a Clark Kent demeanor stepping inside a metaphysical phone booth only to be transformed into a screaming demon of the Hammond B-3 organ known to other musicians as Scorch!

The journey began in Massillon , Ohio and wound up in the great state of Texas where an incubation took place while attending North Texas State University (now U.N.T.), an acknowledged breeding ground for first-rate players especially those of the jazz persuasion. Fast-forward to the present, where our protagonist now has two previous albums under his belt, has toured extensively with numerous Texas blues masters and is widely respected in his adopted turf of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Eric's first instrument was the organ and he still prefers his vintage 450 pound B-3 to any of the new or supposedly improved models. Although an excellent pianist with a stable of students to prove it, at heart he's a dyed-in-the-wool hardcore organist to the bone.

For his third compact disc presentation, Scortia wanted a reality based, no frills production. "I thought I'd just pick out some of my favorite playing tunes from over the years, keep the group to a minimum with head arrangements and a majority of first takes to keep things fresh," he explained. Mainman Marchel Ivery brought his trusty Selmer while six-string ace Henry Johnson along with his working band drummer, Greg Rockingham, came in from Chicago to gather in a local studio and by day's end the session was completed. The results should be in your CD player now. And now the cast. Texas tenorist par excellence and longtime Scortia collaborator Marchel Ivery carries a long list of heavy credentials from touring with Art Blakey in an unrecorded edition of the Jazz Messengers to playing with piano icon Red Garland in his final years. The saxman has cut three dates under his own name for the Leaning House and co-led an album with David "Fathead" Newman for the Dutch Timeless imprint. His presence here underscores the importance of unheralded regional jazzmen as some of the best kept secrets of the music scene.

Like Ivery, guitarist Henry Johnson has helmed recording for various small labels but he is perhaps best known to listeners from his tenure with pianist Ramsey Lewis. A consummate practitioner of the six-string jazz lineage, he can roar down the blues highway like a souped-up deuce on Thunder Road or gently strum mentholated chords on a dreamy ballad. Always in complete command of his axe, the almost telepathic sensibility exhibited herein proves this isn't his first meeting with the organist.

Manning the drum kit is Greg Rockingham, a skilled drummer who brings new meaning to the musician’s term "kickin' tubs" as he plays with more kinetic energy than Ben Franklin's kite. No stranger to the bandstand or the organ milieu, his name can be found listed as the pocketkeeper on sessions by Charles Earland and numerous others.

The playlist can be easily halved into two distinct categories; the ever-popular boogaloo, which has been a soul jazz staple since the sixties, and five compositions all set in a more customary, straight-ahead manner. The first-named items include manner. The first-named items include Scortia's "Green Tea," a jaunty boogaloo with a bridge that is dedicated to guitar great Grant Green.

After solid statements from Johnson and Ivery, the leader gives out a lesson in advanced organology building multi-noted lines to several climaxes in subtle displays of tension and release.

Dr. Lonnie Smith's "Son of Ice Bag" begins in a more mellow bag but soon heats up with incendiary solos from the guitar, tenor and Hammond upon which Scorch chops chords like a karate master. The other titles both stem from the catalog of Green; "Cantaloupe Woman" was on the guitarist's only Verve album and is sort of an inverted answer to "Watermelon Man" by Herbie Hancock while "Sookie, Sookie" sports a loping sidewinder feel replete with fine rides from the three principal soloists. If this groove doesn't move you, I would suggest a Geritol enema.

Continuing in that vein only faster, two of the straight-up 4/4 numbers are flat-out smokers. Check out Eric and Marchel's trippy voicing on "Milestones" taken at a brisk tempo with skillet-hot solos from all hands including gait keeper Rockingham whose fiery pyrotechnics lead everyone back into the theme.

The other scorcher "Key Club Cookout" springs from the late "Mighty Burner" - Charles Earland. It's two note punch is effectively used to introduce each soloist. Ivery weaves some serpentine lines, Johnston switches to fleet octaves near the end of his turn and Scortia spits some serious blue flames eventually winding things up with an extended, rafter-rattling coda. Down a notch is a staple of the soul-jazz songbook from Nat Adderley "Work Song" in a rendition which proves that, in the proper hands this warhorse is not quite ready to be put out to pasture while the slinky, D-minor blues "63rd Street Theme" lowers the pulsation (but not the intensity) even more. Scorch delivers a sizzling organ sermon worthy of a holy-rollin' preacher.

Hoagy Carmichael's venerable "Georgia on My Mind" is assessed without superfluities in a tasty arrangement that allows the three lead instruments to answer one another (i.e. sax 2 verses, guitar, bridge and verse) throughout both the melody and improvisational segments before the leader tags the ending. Cooler than the other side of the pillow.

A thought in closing, it is fitting that Eric's chart "Green Tea" is a paean to a musician that wasn't afreaid to use repetition as another tension-building device in his solo arsenal. That aspect of Scorch's style impressed me the most and it can be heard in his improvisation on many tracks of this disc. To my mind he is the only contemporary organist exploring it fully. That and the fact most younger organ players seem overly worried that they may appear unhip is exactly the thing, other than its musical value, that stamps it with certified hipness. So kick back, hit the play button and let this collection of Scorch faves bring you a sonic smile.

Larry Hollis

Regular Reviewer

Cadence Magazine