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Music Quote by Jimmy Smith

"And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find"

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You can hear the afterburn of discovery in Jimmy Smiths breathless loop: he finds his sound, repeats it like he cant quite believe it, then tells you how fast it happened. Two and a half weeks is the detail that makes the brag believable. Its not the hazy myth of an artist "always knowing"; its craft, obsession, and a deadline-driven kind of hunger. He clocks the breakthrough the way a working musician clocks a gig: not in years of suffering, but in the exact span it took to lock in a voice.

The phrase "found my sound" does more than claim originality. It frames identity as something you locate, not something youre born with. That matters in a culture that romanticizes genius. Smiths version is closer to problem-solving: you hunt, you test, you listen back, you adjust. The repetition has a funny, almost manic quality, like someone replaying the moment they finally solved the puzzle and now wants you to feel the rush.

Then comes the gearhead flourish: "pulled out all the stops". Its an organists idiom, literally about drawbars and registers, and metaphorically about going all-in. He isnt talking about tasteful restraint; hes talking about maximum color, maximum risk, maximum self. The subtext is competitive, too: once he had a signature, he wasnt going to ration it. In a scene where being heard can be the whole battle, Smiths line reads like a declaration of arrival: I found the thing that makes me me, and I turned it up until nobody could miss it.

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TopicMusic
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Jimmy Smith on Finding a Signature Sound
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Jimmy Smith is a notable figure.

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