Piano, Keyboards | b. 1940

Smith came to jazz piano from a Richmond, Virginia gospel household, and the warmth and spiritual weight of that background never fully left his playing, even as his music moved through free jazz, fusion, funk, and back again across six decades. His sideman years in New York placed him at the centre of the spiritual jazz movement: he recorded with Pharoah Sanders on "Jewels of Thought" (Impulse!, 1970) and "Thembi" (Impulse!, 1971), worked extensively with Gato Barbieri, and in early 1972 joined Miles Davis's electric band, learning organ in two days at Davis's request for the sessions that produced "On the Corner" (Columbia, 1972). Those experiences fed directly into the music he made as a leader after forming Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes in 1973 with his brother Donald on flute and vocals. The six albums he recorded for Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label between 1973 and 1977, beginning with "Astral Traveling" and peaking with "Expansions" (1975), combined the modal spaciousness of Sanders-era spiritual jazz with a funk rhythm section and an optimistic cosmic sensibility that anticipated acid jazz by nearly two decades. The title track of "Expansions" has since been sampled widely enough to become a recognisable reference point in hip-hop production.