This is a musical portrait of the artist as a young man – Larry Young at age 20 on Testifying, Young Blues and Forrest Fire from 1960, and as a 22-year-old on Groove Street from 1962. They reveal a very talented player who, while certainly influenced by Jimmy Smith, was clearly looking to be his own man. This is evidenced by his experimental use of stops, most particularly on Testifying, some of which lend a keening tonality to the Hammond, others which today sound reminiscent of the old radio programme The Organist Entertains. Even so, he has a superb sense of time, which lends a kind of rhythmical freedom within form, which is a hallmark of all the great players. If anything, his footwork on the bass pedals sounds rather undeveloped, one reason perhaps Wendell Marshall on bass is introduced eight weeks later on Young Blues. Unsurprisingly Young shows no appreciable advance in concept or style in this period. Like most Hammond players he would also have used his left hand for some bass lines, and freed by Marshall’s solid presence (he later went on to play for Duke Ellington), we do hear suggestions of greater harmonic richness in his playing. Forrest Fire under Jimmy Forrest’s name (who had a big R&B hit with ‘Night Train’) was recorded a week after Testifying and puts Young into an environment where he learnt his trade, backing saxophones in the clubs of Newark and New York. Groove Street is again in the tenor saxophone/Hammond organ combo context, this time with Bill Leslie, is solid, funky fare from two years later. Amazingly, from this grits’n’gravy chrysalis would emerge the butterfly who would revolutionise the Hammond organ and whose ideas would eclipse those of his hero Jimmy Smith – incredibly it was just three years later when he recorded Unity for Blue Note.