Jubu Smith has made a career out of applying his considerable talents to the creative pursuits of other artists. The Oakland-born guitarist got his start in church, honed his craft and landed gigs working with some of music’s biggest names.
Starting in the early ’90s, Smith spent most of the next several decades in a kind of balancing act: backing high-profile artists onstage and on hit recordings, yet toiling in near-anonymity. Smith is well-known and revered in the music community. But to the wider public, mention of his name often draws a blank stare.
That could—possibly—change with the release of an album called Jubu. Released on the Little Village label—an arm of the nonprofit Little Village Foundation—Smith’s self-titled debut album is a showcase for his astoundingly wide-ranging stylistic vision. Created in collaboration with two other esteemed musicians, Jubu is an instrumental tour de force. But it’s fair to wonder: Why did Jubu Smith wait nearly three-plus decades into his recording career to make an album of his own?
The answer may have something to do with Smith’s apparent disdain for self-promotion. Certainly he has given interviews over the years, willingly discussing his role in the careers of Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Whitney Houston and others of note. But when it came time to promote Jubu—released worldwide July 30—the artist had gone to ground.
Fortunately, Jubu Smith has spoken on the record a few times, and close associates on his latest project—guitarist Charlie Hunter, label head Jim Pugh—were more than happy to speak about their work with the man.
Smith’s father was a guitarist; he led a gospel group called the Soulful Sons of Zion. “My dad was my hero,” Smith told podcast host Josh Smith (no relation) on Live from Flat V Studios in 2021. “Had he been a boxer, that’s what I would be today. Had he been a basketball player, that’s what I would have been trying to be,” he explained. “Luckily for me, he played the guitar.”
Jazz training during high school opened up Smith’s musical vocabulary. His first paying gig as a guitarist was a weekly date at Yoshi’s, when he was only 15. As he grew toward young adulthood, he played weekend gospel gigs, all the while dreaming of making music a full-time endeavor. Often playing in groups without a keyboardist, Smith developed a style all his own that lessened or even eliminated the need for other melodic instruments.
During that 2021 podcast interview, Smith revealed that upon graduation from high school in 1988, he had been accepted at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston—with a full ride, even—but he turned it down. “I don’t want people to tell me how to play,” he explained.
Instead, he stayed busy as a working musician. Raphael Siddiq soon hired him as guitarist for his group, Tony! Toni! Toné! Not only was Smith playing high-profile gigs and making good money, but his phone was constantly ringing with offers to play on other artists’ sessions. He pursued many of those opportunities, playing on dozens of recordings for artists in and beyond r&b and pop.
When Siddiq left Tony! Toni! Toné!, Smith decided he was done as well. He auditioned for Whitney Houston’s group, and ended up touring with the singer through 1999 and 2000. During that time, Houston also encouraged Smith to pursue his own path. But before he had a chance to do that, Frankie Beverly called and invited him to play with Maze. Along with continued session work, that gig would keep him busy for many years.
The bills were getting paid, and Smith had cultivated a sterling reputation as a first-call player. In the 21st century, he launched a gospel-blues group called Legally Blynd, recording and releasing a pair of albums. But there was still something missing. “I tell this to myself all the time,” he said in 2021. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t have 10 albums under my name.”
All he needed was to be discovered. “‘Discover’ is the wrong word,” says label head Jim Pugh. In fact, he had known the guitarist and his family for decades. “Back in the ’80s, I played in a gospel quartet in Oakland, the Gospel Hummingbirds,” Pugh recalls. “The scene in Oakland was tight-knit. Everybody knew everybody: The Sons of Zion, Omega Aires, Spiritual Corinthians… on and on.”
Pugh was impressed with Smith from the start. “Way back then, it was his feel. A great stroke and great chords,” he says. “And at some point, I learned he was the heir to the gospel quartet guitar throne held previously by Spanky Alford.”
Fast forward to the 2020s, with Pugh now in a position to help bring Smith’s talent to a wider audience. “I asked Charlie Hunter to ask Jubu if he wanted to do an album,” Pugh explains. “Because who’s going to say no to Charlie?”
Guitarist Charlie Hunter is himself a highly sought-after instrumentalist. A prolific artist, Hunter has released three dozen albums under his own name, taken part in dozens of collaborative projects and produced or co-produced more than 40 albums. His work effortlessly transcends genre; Hunter’s extensive credits include work in The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Garage a Trois, as well as SuperBlue with jazz singer Kurt Elling.
These days, Hunter lives near Greensboro, North Carolina. But back in his younger days, both he and Smith were based in the Bay Area. “Both of our careers were going crazy,” he recalls. “So we never really hung out, because we were always on the road.” But Hunter has long counted himself a serious fan of Smith’s artistry.
Hunter is also the inventor and developer of the Hybrid Guitar. And that instrument provides the ability for a skilled player to handle lead, rhythm and bass guitar parts on a single instrument. In Hunter’s hands, the Hybrid Guitar is a sort of co-star on Jubu.
Smith’s debut album is a musical travelog, an audio document of Smith’s wide-encompassing musical worldview. While tracks like “Hamster Wheel” sport a deep groove funk vibe, there’s a soulful Wes Montgomery feel to cuts like “Jubu’s Poem.” The bouncy “Carroll Drive” leans toward a countrypolitan sound, and “Extreme Pleasure” is knotty, expressive blues. A Smith solo spotlight, “At Long Last,” is a sublime flight of jazz fancy.
Remarkably, while there’s a tightly composed feel to all of the album’s 10 original tracks, every single cut is the product of real-time improvisation. “We didn’t come in with any material,” Hunter admits. He says the explicit goal was to tell a story without words. “We just got together… and played.”
Hunter had high hopes for the sessions at Greensboro’s Earthtones Studio, but even he is astounded by the results. “There’s an insane lot of guitar records,” he admits. “But there aren’t people out there like Jubu, with that phrasing, that lineage and that deep history of the guitar vernacular.”
Jim Pugh and his label are doing what they can to get the word out about Jubu. Pugh enthuses about the “one time—and one time only—organic nature of the improvisation.”
Charlie Hunter will rave about it to anyone who’ll listen. “I felt it was important to make this record,” he says. But after recording and releasing the superb and wordless Jubu, the album’s namesake is ultimately leaving the music to speak for itself.
