House Of Blues Anaheimca

Posted onNovember 18, 2011 - 10:03 am by Admin | 0 Comments

Count Basie and Fats Waller had featured the organ in their bands, but it wasn’t until 1956, the year Alfred Lion discovered Jimmy Smith in a club in Philadelphia, that the electric organ truly found its voice in modern music. With Smith’s bold new improvisational approach, a new sound was introduced to jazz.

Self-taught on piano, Smith purchased a Hammond organ, rented a warehouse space, and emerged a year later with a unique approach to keyboards and a whole new palette of sounds. Shortly to be known as “The Incredible Jimmy Smith” he created and developed the new standard, a Hammond B-3 played through a Leslie speaker, employing the trademark clicks resulting from keystrokes as an accent to the new sound. Using pedals for bass-lines, he was able to turn himself into a one-man-band, obviating the need for a bass player on recordings or live performances. The new voicing caught on like wildfire – Smith recorded nearly three dozen sessions for Blue Note and as many for Verve, who he signed with in 1962, recording for both labels simultaneously.

Open Invitation To the B-3 Party

Perhaps more than any other player from the bop era Jimmy Smith had an exclusive influence over the generations of players to come. Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, and more recently Joey DeFranceso and John Medeski have taken Smith’s sound through the mainstream streets of jazz, while Keith Emerson, Brian Auger and Jon Lord brought the majestic, larger-than-life Hammond B-3 over to the world of rock music.


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