Funk Guitar Meets the Hammond B3
McGriff and Schwartz locked into grooves that were funkier than most soul records of the era.
What makes A Bag Full of Soul (1966) distinctive is the presence of Thornell Schwartz, a funk guitarist who brought something rawer and more streetwise to Jimmy McGriff's Hammond B3 sound than the typical soul-jazz session would allow. McGriff was already known for his ability to swing hard on the organ, but Schwartz's approach — grounded in blues and R&B rather than jazz guitar convention — shifted the whole chemistry of the record. Instead of the polished interplay you'd expect from a soul-jazz date, you get something grittier, more rooted in the clubs and dance floors where both men actually played.
The record is straightforward in its appeal: McGriff's organ lays down the harmonic foundation, Schwartz answers with riffs that cut across the top, and the rhythm section keeps everything locked into that pocket where funk and soul jazz overlap. There's no pretense here, no attempt at sophistication for its own sake. The goal is to make you feel something in your legs, and the record achieves that without effort. McGriff was prolific throughout the 1960s, and this is one of his stronger efforts from that period — not a masterpiece, but a genuinely fun record that works because both players understood what the other was doing and trusted the groove.
If you're coming to McGriff's catalog, A Bag Full of Soul sits comfortably in his middle years, after he'd found his voice on the organ but before he became a session fixture. It's best heard as exactly what it is: a one-off collaboration that captured something direct and unselfconscious, the sound of two musicians who could play this music in their sleep and chose to make it sound easy.
