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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album)

album by Johnny "Hammond" Smith

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 8, 2025
Entity authorityQ17010001 ↗
Source-derived summary

Higher Ground is an album by jazz organist Johnny Hammond recorded for the Kudu label in 1973.

Reception

The Allmusic site awarded the album 2 stars stating "Some of the arrangements seem, well... arranged, but as soon as Smith kicks in, the groove is established".

The song "Big Sur Suite" has been sampled multiple times including The Beastie Boys "Pass the Mic" and Dr. Dre in "A Nigga Wit a Gun".

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album)” is album by Johnny "Hammond" Smith. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Higher, Ground and Johnny, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1973—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1974. For this dossier, Higher, Ground and Johnny is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by Johnny "Hammond" Smith” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17010001. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album) primary sources, Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album) archive and Higher research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Higher Ground (Johnny Hammond album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.