Jimmy Burns & Soul Message Band “Full Circle”

The Soul Message Band has long been co-led by organist Chris Foreman and drummer Greg “The Rock” Rockingham. Foreman and Rockingham were part of the Deep Blue Organ Trio along with guitarist Bobby Broom, and they also recorded together with guitarist Henry Johnson and saxophonist Red Holloway. Long-time fixtures in Chicago, they opened for Steely Dan for eight years and were inducted into the Hammond B3 Hall of Fame. 

The Soul Message Band previously recorded such albums as Soulful Days, Live At The Blue Llama, and People. On Full Circle, in addition to its co-leaders, The Soul Message Band features its newest member altoist Greg Jung on two songs and has appearances by guitarist Lee Rothenberg, tenor-saxophonist Geof Bradfield, and Steve Eisen on baritone and tenor with Typhanie Monique contributing background vocals on four numbers.

Jimmy Burns, who turned 82 in 2025, was born in the Mississippi Delta as the youngest of 11 children. When he was 12, he moved with his family to Chicago where he has lived ever since. He recorded a series of singles starting in 1964, took some time off to raise his family, and in the early 1990s became active again, leading six albums for the Delmark label during 1996-2007.

“Full Circle” teams Jimmy Burns with the Soul Message Band and is a joyful listening experience. With the instrumentalists playing in the tradition of such classic 1960s soul jazz groups as those of Charles Earland, Jack McDuff, and Jimmy Smith, Burns sounds quite comfortable, contributing soulful and expressive vocals on eight of the ten songs. He particularly excels on the blues “World Of Trouble,” over the funky groove of “I Really Love You,” the rollicking “Too Much Lovin’,” and “Rock Me Mama,” playing a bit of guitar on the latter.

The Soul Message Band takes “Ain’t That Funk For You” and “Since I Fell For You” as instrumental features for altoist Greg Jung, Chris Foreman is a major force throughout the date both as an accompanist to the singer and as a soloist, and Greg Rockingham keeps the music grooving.

“Full Circle” is a fine showcase for Jimmy Burns and the Soul Message Band and is easily recommended for fans of high-quality blues, soul jazz, blues ballads, and soulful music.

Scott Yanow, jazz journalist/historian

On ‘People,’ Powehouse Vocalist Hinda Hoffman Fronts Long-Running, Organ-Led, Soul Message Band

by Jim Hynes (Glide Magazine Feb 11, 2022)

People, the first collaboration between powerhouse vocalist Hinda Hoffman and Chicago’s near-legendary Soul Message Band is the second installment in this writer’s self-dubbed “year of the organ-led bands.” Yes, 2022 is starting that way. This marks a couple of firsts too. It’s the first time the band has ventured into vocal jazz and the first time Hoffman has recorded with the group. The core of the Soul Message Band is organist Chris Foreman and drummer Greg Rockingham who are approaching four decades of playing together in various projects. Philadelphia-born guitarist Lee Rothenberg has been aboard since 2014, around the same time that versatile alto saxophonist Greg Ward (William Parker, Lupe Fiasco, Tortoise, Makaya McCraven) joined. Hoffman is a late bloomer who first started singing jazz in her forties who first met the band sitting in at a club gig.

Producer Dennis Carroll penned the arrangements for these most familiar and some not so familiar songs of the Great American Songbook, giving them the classic soul-jazz feel, beginning with Cole Porter’s “All of You.” The unit bursts out swinging, clearly led instrumentally by Foreman’s B3 with Ward and Rothenberg providing some enticing lines in their solos as well. The tempo shifts to a slow simmer in Carroll’s sensitive arrangement of “Don’t Worry “Bout Me” and then embraces driving ‘70s era funk and swing in “How Insensitive.” The expansive standout track, Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love,” a tour de force for Hoffman soaring over Foreman’s church-like organ delivery, the band bringing the tune to a glorious climax.

Ward and Foreman, playing at feverish levels, fuel “Get Out of Town,” a tricky one to sing that Hoffman agilely handles. The title track is one of Carroll’s hybrid arrangements, beginning as a sultry rhumba before morphing into a relaxed, swinging groove with Foreman and Hoffman trading lines excitedly. “Old Devil Moon” has a funk underpinning but quickly becomes a hard swinger with stirring turns from Ward and Rothenberg before Foreman adds his own teeming statement and Hoffman jumps back in to take it home to what would seem to be a rousing climax, only have the tune curiously fade out.

Church-like organ resumes in the tender duet, “Like a Lover” with Foreman caressing notes behind Hoffman’s sensitive vocals. It’s a complete contrast to the unleashed playing in “Old Devil Moon,” and is instead a model of restraint. Rothenberg shines here with his judicious choice of notes as well. Rockingham’s Afro-Cuban beats propel “Angel Eyes” with Rothenberg first authoring some bluesy lines followed by Ward’s soulful take, leading to Foreman’s pulsating solo, in all some of the band’s best playing in this six-minute finale.

Vocalist Hoffman and The Soul Message Band unleash the joyous power of the jazz organ combo, straddling tradition and the contemporary with Carroll’s brilliant arrangements. They once again prove that the jazz organ combo not only lives but is also a renaissance in full bloom in 2022.

Soul Message Band Returns to Cleveland With Timeless Organ Trio Grooves PUBLISHED 27 JANUARY, 2022

Even if I hadn’t moved to Cleveland in 2019 I am probably a bit too young to have visited the many jazz venues that once thrived in the city’s so-called second downtown on Euclid Avenue. On any Saturday night 60 years ago, the district would have been alive with working-class revelers going out to a club for a few beers, and an unpretentious good time. The soundtrack for this custom often involved a small combo (quaint word, that!) of Hammond B-3 organ, guitar and drums that offered bluesy music with a big beat. Capable of shaking the room at a volume level that could rival a big band’s, the B-3 can also issue bedroom confidences in a whisper that could hush a crowded room. No wonder an archipelago of organ trio bars sprang up from Newark and Philadelphia on the eastern seaboard to the industrial Midwest.

Those places are gone now, but the organ trio hangs on as a vital formation in creative music in the Black American tradition, and one of the best is about to roll into town to rock the Bop Stoptomorrow night.

It’s Chicago’s Soul Message Band, and when I tell you that the good-time vibe they create is barely changed from what you might have heard in a Detroit organ bar in, say, 1964, that’s a feature, not a bug.

Organist Chris Foreman and drummer Greg Rockingham have a history of collaboration with the Deep Blue Organ Trio that stretches back 25 years. They’re a little too young to have played in the circuit’s heyday, but you wouldn’t know it from their conversational rapport and flawless command of the genre’s tried-and trues: swing, the blues and an unapologetic desire to entertain. With guitarist Lee Rothenberg, the SMB has released two recordings that capture the band’s joyous energy. A third, “People,” featuring Chicago vocalist Hinda Hoffman, is slated for release February 11.

The Bop Stop engagement comes almost two years to the day since the band’s last visit to the club, mere weeks before the pandemic lockdown. From the moment Rockingham counted off Grant Green’s “Matador,” the show was as soulful and satisfying as one could hope for. Even when the rod connecting the volume pedal to the Bop Stop’s B-3 came loose, Foreman, Rockingham and Rothenberg kept right on.

Soul Message Band · Matador

Or that’s how it seemed, at least. At one point in the show, Rockingham stopped the music to apologize for the way that a chronic condition was affecting his playing that night. He needn’t have done so; he might have been the only one in the room that could have detected the any difficulty. Still, the affable and unpretentious Rockingham felt an obligation to is audience and made one of the most honest stage announcements you are ever likely to hear. One of the bravest, too.

Musicians like this–people like this–deserve our support, in person or online. In return, you’ll receive an evening of good-time music that will lift you up and, as drummer Art Blakey said, “wash away the dust of daily life.” That’s too good a deal to pass up.

Soul Message Band, Friday, January 28 at 8 p.m. at Bop Stop, 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland. In-person are $20, available here. The concert will will be livestreamed at Bop Stop’s Facebook page. Viewing the stream is free but donations to the band and the venue are appreciated and can be made here.

B op Stop