Check this out: Throughout Chicken Shack's four tracks and forty minutes, the organ hurriedly scratches and pecks away at the floor of the soundscape, the saxophone squawks, clucks and cackles, and the guitar and drums contain it all with a rhythm as sure and steady as fence posts and the geometry of chicken-wire.

Yep! Just flexing my critical muscle there with a spot of metaphor. This regime of writing often sure is paying off. Pitchfork will be beating down my door by post #0037/1001, no doubt.

I hadn't heard of Jimmy Smith and started listening to Chicken Shack before reading the ...1001 Albums notes. I assumed that Jimmy must be the saxophonist to have his name on the front of the album because, on the first couple of listens, the sax seemed to be the focus. Lazy listening, perhaps. ...1001 Albums contends that the organ was a churchy and dorky sound before this album and that Jimmy made it cool. I listened with fresh ears and tried to retrain my focus from centering on the sax so closely.

It's a great group performance. Nobody does too much or overstates anything. I might not understand the technicalities of what's happening musically, harmonically, etc., but they're clearly playing with a good understanding of each other and doing as much as they can with the barest elements of the songs.

Chicken Shack has had a lot of air time in my home over the last few days. It's really repeatable. I do love that organ sound. Sounds like it should be the soundtrack for a Ken Burns documentary about southern America in the early '60s: a black and white photo of an old bus full of merry, shining faces pulling out of a highway gas station at night dissolving to a stark and affronting images of separate White/Coloured water fountains.