Jimmy Smith, 79; Jazz Organist Was Master of the Hammond B-3

Jimmy Smith, the man almost universally regarded as the first and greatest electric organ player in jazz, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz.Before Smith, the organ had a rather spotty history in jazz. Many great pianists grew up playing pipe organ in church, and several of them, most notably Fats Waller and Count Basie, made occasional recordings on the pipe organ, sometimes to indulge a reverential mood, or more often, merely to show that it could be done. Electric organs first began to be heard in popular music and jazz not long after the electric guitar, and by the early 1950s, a number of players were testing the waters.But when Smith released his first albums on the Blue Note label, he unleashed not just a new instrument, but a whole new sound. Smith was not only the first great jazz soloist to make the organ (electric or otherwise) his primary instrument; he brought the electric organ into the modern era: before Smith, no one could imagine the music of Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk being played on organ.Smith dug deep into the fundamentals of all jazz: the church and the blues. He came up with a sound that was deep, funky and swinging, that not only revolutionized jazz but transcended the idiom altogether. It came to be called soul jazz. Smith was so popular that he commanded an audience far beyond the usual jazz market. He recorded in vastly divergent settings, from his trio to a full big band, and played everything from blues and jazz standards to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” and Prokofiev.James Oscar Smith was born December 8, 1925, in Norristown, Pa., home town of many prominent figures in jazz and funk. Both his parents played piano; his Dad, who worked as a plasterer by day, was a local legend of stride keyboard, and taught him the fundamentals. The young Jimmy was a piano prodigy – the two Smiths even performed together when the younger was a teenager and at one point had an act in which young Jimmy tap-danced.Jimmy dropped out of school in seventh grade to support his family after an injury sidelined his father. He joined the Navy during World War II, and was discharged in 1947.Smith attended music school on the G.I. Bill, taking piano classes at three Philadelphia institutions. By the early 1950s, he was working regularly with a prominent local band, and also had the opportunity to open for his hero, Charlie Parker. At this point he found himself growing increasingly unhappy with the piano. “The pianos were always so out of tune, it was ridiculous,” he told an interviewer, “Plus, the ivory was so worn out on the keys, I was getting blisters from playing on the wood.”Smith was inspired to play jazz on the organ upon hearing Wild Bill Davis in 1954. He asked to try it out, but Davis told him that proper jazz could never be played on the instrument because there was no efficient way to work the foot pedals in a jazz context. With characteristic resourcefulness, Smith solved the problem his own way. As he later wrote, “I made a chart of (the foot pedals) and put it on the wall in front of me so I wouldn’t have to look down. My first method was just using the toe. In the earlier days I was a tap dancer so the transition to heel and toe playing was made without too much trouble. I would write out different bass lines to try for different tempi in order to relax the ankle.”By 1956, Smith had perfected the art of playing jazz and funk on the organ, so much so that his first albums (on Blue Note) lived up to their title – “A New Sound…A New Star” – and caused a sensation in the jazz world. He had by now perfected the art of playing what both a jazz pianist and a bassist customarily play, all by himself. His usual format was a trio with guitar (usually Eddie McFadden) and drums (usually Donald Bailey). Over the next seven years he recorded, by his own count, 21 LPs for Blue Note, many that supplemented his trio with notable horn players. Smith also made the combination of organ trio and saxophone into one of the great jazz lineups.By the early 1960s, jazz organ groups were proliferating all over America. The soul jazz style that Smith had helped pioneer was especially popular with Afro-American audiences, and nearly every club in a black neighborhood had a B-3 Hammond organ permanently installed. In 1963,he switched from the independent Blue Note to Verve Records (owned by MGM). Some of his records there utilized larger canvases, like full orchestras and combined him with notable guest guitarists like Wes Montgomery and George Benson. Yet his “volcanic interpretations,” as hipster Babs Gonzales described Smith’s playing, were never compromised by anything any producer could throw at him, from the top 40 to the classics.In a career that lasted for nearly 50 years as a headliner, Smith’s creativity and productivity never flagged. Nor was there ever a time when his swinging, soulful brand of jazz was out of favor. Although he had seen dozens of great jazz organists come and go over the decades, there was no serious rival to unseat him from his throne as king of the instrument. A few weeks before his death, in January 2005, he was named a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment of The Arts.“Ever since I was a child, I wanted to play the better type of music, even classics,” he wrote in 1964. “I’m going to scare a lot of people with the incredible number of tones on the Hammond Organ before I die.”

Jimmy Smith, 79; Jazz Organist Was Master of the Hammond B-3

Jimmy Smith, 79; Jazz Organist Was Master of the Hammond B-3

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