Lonnie Liston Smith

At 83 years old, Lonnie Liston Smith physical status not available right now. We will update Lonnie Liston Smith's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Smith was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, United States to a musical family; his father was a member of Richmond Gospel music group The Harmonizing Four, and he remembered groups such as the Swan Silvertones and the Soul Stirrers (featuring a young Sam Cooke) as regular visitors to the house when he was a child. He studied piano, tuba and trumpet in high school and college before receiving a B.S. in music education from Morgan State University in Baltimore in 1961. Smith has cited Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis as major influences in his youth. While still a teenager, Smith became well known locally as a backing vocalist as well as pianist in the Baltimore metropolitan area. During this period, he regularly performed with a number of his contemporaries, including Gary Bartz (alto), Grachan Moncur (trombone), and Mickey Bass (bass). He also backed a number of jazz singers (including Ethel Ennis) while performing in the house band at Baltimore's Royal Theater shortly after receiving his degree.

In 1963, he moved to New York City, where he initially played piano in Betty Carter's band for a year. Early in 1965, Smith began playing with Roland Kirk, first recording with his band on Here Comes The Whistleman (Atlantic, 1965), an album recorded live in New York on March 14, 1965. A further track from that gig, "Dream", appeared on Roland Kirk and Al Hibbler's live album A Meeting Of The Times (Atlantic, 1972).

Late in 1965, Smith joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, sharing the piano position with Mike Nock and Keith Jarrett. The Jazz Messengers, together with Miles Davis' group, were one of the main proving grounds for young up-and-coming jazz musicians, experimentally edgy and musically stretching, and both were an ever-revolving door of young modern jazz musicians as modes and moods rapidly changed during a fresh period of experimentation. Beginning with a live session at The Five Spot, New York City, November 9, 1965, Smith's time as a Jazz Messenger was fairly short-term, only lasting until a three-gig engagement at The Village Vanguard 26–28 April 1966; by May 1966 his position was filled by Chick Corea. No recordings exist of this period.

In May 1967, Smith returned to working with Roland Kirk for the album sessions for Now Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful Edith (Verve, 1967) before continuing his career as pianist for a year with drummer Max Roach (although once again no recordings were made of this lineup).

Following this stint, Smith moved to Pharoah Sanders' ensemble early in 1968, a group Sanders had set up on the death of John Coltrane the previous year. Fiercely improvisational, Sanders pushed the band creatively to the boundaries of free jazz, recording three of Sanders' finest recordings: Karma (Impulse, 1969), Jewels of Thought (Impulse, 1970) and Thembi (Impulse, 1971), together with 1969 recording sessions not released until 1973 as Izipho Zam (Strata East, 1973). It is at this point that Smith began experimenting with electric keyboards:

During this period, Smith also backed Sanders vocalist Leon Thomas on his first album Spirits Known and Unknown (Flying Dutchman, 1969).

Having already guested on Gato Barbieri's 1969 album The Third World (Philips, 1969), Smith joined Barbieri's band from 1971 to 1973. Barbieri had by then begun to temper his free jazz excursions of the 1960s with softer Afro-Cuban and South American textures in his music, which would influence Smith's playing into new directions in the following years. Smith played on a number of albums marking this transition, Fenix (Philips, 1971), the live album El Pampero (Flying Dutchman, 1972), Under Fire (Flying Dutchman, 1973), and Bolivia (Flying Dutchman, 1973). One further album, El Gato (Flying Dutchman, 1975), was released after Smith had again moved on; from 1972 he had also taken up the invitation to join Miles Davis band on electric keyboards. Over the next year, during an intense period of studio recording by Davis, various line-ups laid down a considerable number of sessions, which were later inter-cut and remixed for final release. Miles Davis insisted that Smith learn to play the organ for the sessions: "Miles gave me two nights to learn how to make music on the thing. Miles liked to introduce new sounds in a surprising way — that's how he produced such innovative, fresh music." Smith's contributions appeared on On The Corner (Columbia, 1973) and the track "Ife" on Big Fun (Columbia, 1974).

Later career (1986–present)

In October 1986, he moved closer to his musical roots with "Make Someone Happy" (Doctor Jazz, 1986), an acoustic session that included new recordings of several jazz standards by the trio of Smith, Cecil McBee and Al Foster, produced by Bob Thiele. However, despite critical acclaim for this work, Smith found himself without a recording contract until the turn of the decade, when the small Startrak label released Love Goddess (Startrak, 1990) and Magic Lady (Startrak, 1991). "I had a lot of idealistic concepts about music, and about the spiritual message I was trying to get across. But most record companies only care about demographics and bottom line sales." Both of the Startrak albums marked an about turn to the smooth jazz mode of the Cosmic Echoes period, "Love Goddess" featuring vocalist Phyllis Hyman and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine.

Around this time, the emerging hip-hop movement took an interest in Smith's earlier work, and he found himself working with rapper Guru, who was mixing hip-hop with jazz in an innovative way. "Guru and the other rappers would tell me how their uncles used to make them listen to me and Miles and Donald Byrd and how they got the message" Smith told Australia's Daily Telegraph Mirror newspaper in 1995. Smith appeared on Guru's groundbreaking Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 album (Chrysalis, 1993), once again finding a new audience for his earlier work as a result. He had also toured Europe in 1991, but after this short period of activity Smith produced little further work in the 1990s. Despite extensive radio play, appearing on a number of compilation albums and being name-checked and sampled by an increasing number of younger musicians discovering his Cosmic Echoes output, he spent the next few years mainly involved in setting up his own label, Loveland, and it was not until 1998 that Sony International took advantage of his newfound audience by reissuing Exotic Mysteries and Loveland as a double CD. The same year, he recorded Transformation (Loveland, 1998), once again revisiting the genre he had been most successful in and reuniting with his brother Donald's vocals. For this release he re-recorded "A Chance For Peace (Give Peace a Chance)" (both as vocal and instrumental versions) and "Expansions" as well as "Space Princess".

Since then he has not recorded, although he has performed live and toured on a number of occasions, especially in Europe and Japan, where he remains popular with new generations of listeners. He has also spent much of his time teaching at various workshops. In 2002, Sony issued a double album retrospective of his Columbia output, Explorations: The Columbia Years, and his compositions remain a feature of jazz fusion orientated radio and CD compilations. The Cosmic Echoes track, "Expansions" has been featured in two videogames: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Driver: Parallel Lines, while "A Chance for Peace" featured in Grand Theft Auto IV. He appeared on the Jazz World Stage at Glastonbury Festival June 2009.

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