Keyboardist originally from Richmond. He attended Morgan State University where he earned a BS in Music Education in 1961. He performed in various jazz groups around Baltimore featuring Ethel Ennis, Dave Hubbard, Mickey Bass, and others.
Mickey Bass got a gig with Art Blakey, and suggested Smith, who also went on to tour and record with Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
Smith went on to play with jazz greats Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk for whom he recorded on Verve, and Atlantic labels in the mid-’60s. He later worked with Pharaoh Sanders, Miles Davis, and many other jazz greats.
In the early ‘70s Smith became a band leader and began an illustrious solo recording career beginning with the 1973 album “Astral Traveling” (Flying Dutchman Records), and went on to release more than twenty critically acclaimed jazz albums.
