Jimmy Smith
The man who took the Hammond organ, once an instrument of churches and neighborhood bars, and brought it to the very front of jazz. With his left hand he laid down the bass line; with his right he sang like a horn.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- InfluenceWild Bill Davis
Hearing his Hammond playing was what turned Smith, then a pianist, to the organ.
- PatronAlfred Lion
As head of Blue Note, he heard him at a New York club in 1956, signed him on the spot, and had him leave behind a wealth of recordings.
- ColleagueArt Blakey
Drummer on “The Sermon!” and “House Party,” he propped up his blues with a backbeat like church handclaps.
- PatronCreed Taylor
His producer at Verve, who set his organ in the middle of big-band arrangements and carried it all the way to the pop charts.
- ColleagueWes Montgomery
On “The Dynamic Duo” in 1966, two blues-rooted masters met and played as if in conversation.
- DiscipleJoey DeFrancesco
An heir who took him as a starting point; together they made his last recording, “Legacy.”
I. The boy from Norristown · 1928–1950 (age 0–22)
(Norristown) He was born in December 1928 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. His given name was James Oscar Smith. Some sources give his birth year as 1925, and which is correct has still not been settled. Norristown was a small industrial town a short way northwest of Philadelphia. Both his parents played piano, and his father is said to have also been an entertainer who took the stage with song and dance. Young Jimmy joined his father onstage and learned early, in his body, how to work an audience. (Boogie-woogie) He learned by ear rather than through formal lessons. Around the age of nine he entered an amateur radio contest in Philadelphia and won a prize playing boogie-woogie piano. Boogie-woogie is music in which the left hand repeats the same bass pattern without rest. This feel for carrying both rhythm and bass with the left hand alone would come back to life, intact, at the organ years later. (Making a living) He is said to have joined the Navy in his mid-teens. After his discharge he studied piano and bass at Philadelphia's Hamilton School of Music (1948) and Ornstein School of Music (1949~1950). To cover tuition and living expenses, he spent his days helping his father as a plasterer, spreading plaster on walls. In those years he was a laborer who played piano, and no way of living by music alone was yet in sight.
II. An instrument called the Hammond · 1951–1955 (age 23–27)
(The Sonotones) Around 1951 he played piano in the Sonotones, a rhythm and blues group led by Don Gardner. It was a stage played to dancing crowds. The experience cemented a musical outlook that put groove (a rhythmic flow that sets the body moving of its own accord) above all else. (Wild Bill) The turning point was Wild Bill Davis's playing on the Hammond organ. The organ was not new to jazz. Fats Waller had left recordings on pipe organ, and Count Basie occasionally played the Hammond. Yet the organ was still thought of as an instrument for church accompaniment or an offshoot of the piano. Smith heard other possibilities in it. Having acquired his first Hammond around 1953, he recalled shutting himself away in a warehouse-like space and practicing alone for nearly 1 year. (Left hand) Out of that practice came his own method. He used the pedals mainly to mark the beat, and walked the bass line with his left hand, one note to a beat (walking bass). He set his tone by pulling the drawbars (tone-control bars) and gave the sound a swell with the Leslie speaker. With his right hand, by his own account, he tried to carry over the long-breathed lines of horn players like Charlie Parker. (Trio) Around 1955 he formed an organ trio of organ·guitar·drums and played Philadelphia clubs. Since a single organ also covered the bass, club owners could save the cost of one musician. The burden of hauling an instrument weighing nearly 200 kilograms to every gig, though, fell squarely on him.
III. A new star at Blue Note · 1956–1958 (age 28–30)
(Lion) In early 1956 he moved to New York and played the Café Bohemia and clubs in Harlem. Blue Note Records head Alfred Lion heard him on that stage, and a recording contract followed at once. Singer and promoter Babs Gonzales is said to have brought the two together. His first album was titled “A New Sound, a New Star.” Blue Note billed him as “The Incredible Jimmy Smith.” (Recording) Lion recorded him almost without pause. Trio sessions followed one after another at engineer Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and “The Champ,” named after a Dizzy Gillespie tune, came out of this period. Thornel Schwartz and Kenny Burrell on guitar, along with longtime drummer Donald Bailey, stayed at his side. In 1957 he also recorded live at Small's Paradise in Harlem. (Blakey) In 1957~1958 he made jam-session-style recordings with Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson, Tina Brooks, Kenny Burrell and Art Blakey. These recordings became “House Party” and “The Sermon!” Blakey's drums laid a backbeat like church handclaps beneath the organ. Miles Davis is said to have called him 'the eighth wonder of the world,' though the exact source has not been confirmed. Either way, by around thirty he had become the new face of jazz.
A trio recording from his first year under contract with Blue Note, it is the first to reveal in full the organ language he honed in the warehouse. He drives a Dizzy Gillespie tune like a bebop horn player.
- His right hand sounds less like an organ than a saxophone. Melodies pour out fast, note by note, without a pause for breath; it helps to listen while recalling that he tried to carry Charlie Parker's phrasing onto the keyboard.
- There is no bassist. The low end belongs to Smith's left hand and the pedals. The bass, walking one note to a beat (walking bass), never wavers throughout the solo.
- When a solo heats up, he presses and holds a single high chord for a long time. Meanwhile the drums keep boiling over, ratcheting up the tension, and this 'hold' became his trademark, one that later organists rushed to imitate.
- The Leslie speaker (a rotating speaker) changes speed, and the sound swells slowly, then trembles fast. Listen for whether these shifts follow the flow of the tune.
A jam-session-style recording with Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson and others. As the title suggests, it carries the fervor of a church sermon into the blues.
- The title track runs close to 20 minutes. Its only form is the blues, repeating a 12-bar frame (12-bar blues), yet as the players take turns soloing, each tells a different story over the same frame.
- Art Blakey's drums are in no hurry. At a relaxed medium tempo he lays the backbeat down heavily, creating a groove like handclaps in church.
- While the others solo, Smith tosses off short chords in support (comping). It sounds like a congregation answering a preacher with 'amen.'
- It is known as a recording played freely over the blues, without prearranged charts. So a loose, in-the-room heat comes before polish.
IV. At the heart of soul jazz · 1959–1962 (age 31–34)
(Groove) By the late 1950s his music had settled deeper into blues and gospel. “Home Cookin'” is an album from that time. In April 1960 he recorded for a single day with Stanley Turrentine on tenor saxophone, Kenny Burrell on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums, and that session yielded “Back at the Chicken Shack” and “Midnight Special.” In place of fast, flashy bebop came relaxed tempos, a heavy backbeat and the call-and-response idiom of church music. People called this music soul jazz. (Circuit) Its stage was the bars and clubs of Black neighborhoods. In an era when segregation still pervaded daily life, many clubs installed a Hammond outright, and a route opened for organists to play their way from club to club. It was commonly called the organ circuit. Organists such as Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff and Richard Groove Holmes followed in his wake. Smith was both the benchmark of this movement and the rival to beat. (The move) At Blue Note he left more recordings than the label could absorb. Even “Back at the Chicken Shack” did not come out until 1963, 3 years after it was recorded. In 1962 he moved to Verve Records, which promised wider distribution and bigger stages. His final sessions for Blue Note kept yielding churchy titles such as “Prayer Meetin'.”
It came from a single-day session with Stanley Turrentine. A textbook soul-jazz album that captures the very air of a club in a Black neighborhood.
- The title track's tempo is slow and sticky. Its flavor lies not in quick fingers but in how long, and how heavily, a single note is set down.
- Stanley Turrentine's tenor saxophone, its sound shot through with a thick, rough breath, sings the blues as if speaking. Listen too for the long chords Smith lays down behind him.
- Kenny Burrell's guitar, with its spare, unadorned blues phrasing, makes room to breathe between organ and saxophone.
- The recording was finished in 1960, but the release came only in 1963. It shows just how many of his recordings had piled up at Blue Note.
V. Star of Verve · 1962–1969 (age 34–41)
(Creed Taylor) The producer who took charge of him at Verve was Creed Taylor. Taylor chose to place the organ at the center of big-band arrangements. In 1962 the film theme “Walk on the Wild Side,” from the Oliver Nelson–arranged album “Bashin',” climbed into the top 20 of the Billboard pop singles chart. It was the moment jazz organ spread to radio and jukeboxes. (Big band) In 1964 he recorded “The Cat” with brass arrangements by Lalo Schifrin. In the same period came “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” built on film themes, and “Got My Mojo Workin',” a collection of blues numbers. At the same time he kept hold of his small-group roots, releasing the trio album “Organ Grinder Swing” (1965) with Kenny Burrell and drummer Grady Tate. For many years the organ category of the DownBeat readers' poll was his. (Wes) In 1966 he recorded “The Dynamic Duo” with guitarist Wes Montgomery. Both men were blues-rooted players enjoying popular success. On the record the two meshed less like rivals than like partners in conversation, each picking up the other's lines. Some critics faulted the large-ensemble records of the Verve years as commercial. But he had no qualms about playing music the public enjoyed. In effect, he saw no difference between the dancing crowd at a neighborhood club and the listeners on the charts. European tours also grew frequent around this time.
A hit that reached the pop charts, recorded with Oliver Nelson's big-band arrangement in his first year after moving to Verve. It was the moment the neighborhood-club organ crossed over to the radio.
- The piece opens with a fierce ensemble of brass. Above it, the organ takes up the theme. Listen for the face-off between the big band and a single organ.
- The original is a film theme written by Elmer Bernstein. Nelson recast it as a heavy, bluesy groove, and the result was a tune as fit for dancing as for the radio.
- Smith's solo is short and bold. He drives it forward by repeating a handful of blues figures, a structure tailored to the roughly 3-minute length of a single.
- The hand of producer Creed Taylor is unmistakable. Arrangements and recordings that always set the organ at the very front of the sound became the standard of the Verve years.
A signature work of the Verve years, built on Lalo Schifrin's brass arrangements. Even within a large ensemble, the blues organist's true colors never fade.
- The title track was written by Schifrin. It is built on call and response: the brass toss out a short riff (a brief, repeated phrase) and the organ fires back.
- The rhythm is close to a bouncy shuffle (a rhythm that rolls along like a walk, splitting each beat into long and short). Smith's organ glides playfully on top of it.
- As the solo goes on, the brass grow steadily thicker. The organ, too, holds high chords and swells along with them to build the climax.
- Engineer Rudy Van Gelder handled the recording. Having passed through the same engineer's hands as in the Blue Note years, the organ keeps its warm texture.
An album pairing him with Wes Montgomery, who was enjoying popular success at the same time. It records two blues masters choosing conversation over competition.
- Montgomery was famous for plucking the strings with his thumb and doubling the same note an octave apart (octave playing). Listen to how his thick, round guitar tone blends with the organ's sharp edge.
- In spirituals like “Down by the Riverside,” the feeling of church music, the root both men shared, comes to the surface.
- There is a passage where the two trade short phrases back and forth. It sounds like a conversation, each picking up the other's words and carrying them on.
- Some tracks were recorded over Oliver Nelson's big-band arrangements, others in a small group. It's worth comparing how the two men's breathing changes with the lineup.
VI. The organ goes west · 1970–1994 (age 42–66)
(Los Angeles) In the 1970s he settled in the Los Angeles area. The live album “Root Down,” recorded here at the Bombay Bicycle Club in 1972, brought in electric bass and funk rhythms. Once his left hand set down the bass, his playing moved more like a sharp rhythm instrument. Decades later, this recording would be rediscovered by the hip-hop generation. (Ups and downs) As fusion, disco and synthesizers took over, the heavy, expensive Hammond fell out of fashion. He moved among several labels, Mercury among them. He is also said to have run a club bearing his own name near Los Angeles. In the 1980s he released records on Elektra Musician. In November 1990 he recorded live at Fat Tuesday's in New York with longtime colleagues Stanley Turrentine, Kenny Burrell and Grady Tate, and the recording came out the following year on Milestone as “Fourmost.” (Bad) In 1987 his organ solo appeared on the title track of Michael Jackson's album “Bad.” The producer was Quincy Jones. Tens of millions of listeners who knew nothing of jazz heard his sound. (Revival) From the late 1980s, young organists such as Joey DeFrancesco emerged to lead a Hammond revival. To a man they named Smith as their starting point, and he naturally took his place as an elder statesman.
A live Los Angeles club recording capturing the Smith of the 1970s, who embraced electric bass and funk rhythms. A recording later rediscovered by the hip-hop generation.
- An electric bassist covers the low end. His left hand freed, Smith chops his chords and uses the organ like a rhythm instrument.
- The rhythm is closer to funk (a rhythm chopped into sixteenth notes that sets the body bouncing) than to swing. Drums and bass stubbornly repeat the same pattern.
- The sound of the club audience is captured just as it was. Feel the flow of a live set, where the crowd's response, as the solo heats up, sets the playing alight again.
- In 1994 the Beastie Boys sampled this recording (lifting part of a recording to use as material for a new track) in a song called “Root Down.”
VII. The last chorus · 1995–2005 (age 67–77)
(Return) In 1995 he returned to Verve and released “Damn!” Recorded with younger players, the album showed he was still a working contender. On 2001's “Dot Com Blues,” B.B. King, Etta James and Dr. John took part as guests. It was an album on which his music, born of the blues, the church and the neighborhood club, came full circle. (Lola) By his side was his longtime wife, Lola. Few public records exist about the details of their marriage or about any children. In 2004 the two moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. But Lola died of cancer that same year. Those who remember him recalled that the loss shook him deeply in his last years. (Legacy) That same year he recorded the album “Legacy” with Joey DeFrancesco, on two organs. It was a record of master and heir trading sounds on a single stage. In 2005 the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) named him a Jazz Master. They had planned to tour together, but on February 8, 2005, he died in his sleep at his home in Scottsdale. “Legacy” was released after his death. That the last recording left by the boogie-woogie boy from Norristown was a duet with a younger player shows exactly how his sound lives on.
Lesser-known stories
(Birth year) Sources disagree on Jimmy Smith's birth year, some giving 1925 and others 1928. Record-label materials from the 1950s and later dictionaries·obituaries list different years, and the discrepancy has never been resolved. It was not unusual for jazz musicians to adjust their age early in their careers. Yet there is no evidence that he did so either, so careful sources give both years. (Pedals) It's easy to assume that an organist plays the bass with the feet. But Smith played most of his bass lines with his left hand. He used the pedals mainly to add a dull, plucked-sounding thump in time with the beat. Because hands move faster and more finely than feet, his walking bass was as supple as a double bassist's. On stage his feet seemed busy, which kept this from being obvious; it became known through instruction books analyzing his technique and the testimony of later organists. (Stacked tapes) In the Blue Note years, Alfred Lion recorded him more than the market could absorb. So “Cool Blues,” which captures a 1958 live set at Smalls Paradise among others, did not see release until 1980, more than 20 years after it was recorded, and several other sessions came out only in the 1980s or later. The Smith we know from the Blue Note years is, in large part, a picture assembled after the fact. (Hip-hop) Hip-hop producers of the 1990s loved to use his 1960s–70s recordings as sampling material. The Beastie Boys' “Root Down” (1994) is the prime example. Jazz history books usually relegate this episode to a footnote, but a good many young listeners met his groove before they met his name.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Hammond organ
(Meaning) Hammond is the name of Laurens Hammond, the American who invented the instrument. Organ comes from the Greek organon, which originally meant a tool or instrument. (In jazz) An electric organ introduced in the 1930s. Instead of blowing air through pipes, it makes its sound as electrical signals from spinning metal discs shaped like cogwheels. Of its models, the B-3 was the most beloved in jazz and soul. Think of it as the church's great pipe organ shrunk down so it could fit in a neighborhood club. Even so, it weighed close to 200 kilograms, and players had to haul it to every gig as if moving house. (Elsewhere) In English, organ also refers to a part of the body such as the heart or liver.
Drawbar
(Meaning) The English drawbar, combining draw and bar. True to its name, it is a bar you pull out to use. (In jazz) The row of bars above the keys of a Hammond organ. Each bar governs a harmonic at a different pitch, and how far you pull it makes that sound louder or softer. Combining bars yields everything from a soft, flutelike tone to a sharp, piercing one. It's like making tteokbokki sauce, where the taste changes with how much gochujang·sugar·soy sauce you add. Jimmy Smith built a sound you could recognize instantly from his own drawbar settings.
Leslie speaker
(Meaning) Named after Don Leslie, the American who built the speaker. (In jazz) A special speaker in which a horn spins round and round inside the cabinet. Because the direction the sound comes from keeps changing, the sound seems to surge or tremble. At a slow rotation it undulates like waves; at a fast one it quivers. It's the same principle as an ambulance siren rising in pitch as it approaches and falling as it moves away, or your voice wavering when you say 'ah' in front of a spinning fan. Paired with the Hammond organ, it created the signature sound of jazz organ.
Organ trio
(Meaning) Trio is Italian for a group of three together. (In jazz) A three-piece of Hammond organ·guitar·drums, or organ·saxophone·drums. An ordinary jazz band has a separate bassist, but in an organ trio the organist covers the bass too, with the left hand and feet. It's like a group project in which one classmate handles both the presentation and the research notes, so the group needs one fewer member. One fewer player meant club owners could save on fees, and so this lineup spread widely through the clubs of Black neighborhoods in the 1950s–60s.
Soul jazz
(Meaning) In English, soul means the spirit or the heart. In Black American communities, the word also came to stand for the feeling and culture that belong to Black people. (In jazz) A style of jazz that caught on from the late 1950s. It drew deeply on the feel of Black church gospel music and the blues. Its tempos are more relaxed than those of fast, intricate bebop, and it leads with rhythms that set the body moving of its own accord and short melodies that are easy to sing along with. It often borrows the church's way of speaking, in which one voice calls and many answer. It is much like a school pep rally, where the cheer captain shouts and the students shout back together. Jimmy Smith's later Blue Note records are the classic examples. (Elsewhere) Soul attaches to food as well. The traditional cooking of Black households in the American South is called soul food.
Walking bass
(Meaning) In English, walking means moving on foot. The name says that the bass walks. (In jazz) A way of playing in which the bass gives one note to each beat, never pausing, linking the notes as if stepping up and down a staircase. Walking along the path traced by the changing chords, it lays a floor of pulse and harmony beneath the whole band. Just as your footsteps fall evenly, one, two, three, four, when you walk around a schoolyard at a steady pace, the walking bass serves as the music's footsteps. Jimmy Smith played this bass with his left hand on the organ instead of on a double bass.
12-bar blues
(Meaning) A bar is one of the cells into which written music is divided, each holding a fixed number of beats. 12-bar blues means a blues built on a frame of twelve cells. (In jazz) The most basic form of the blues. Over 12 bars the chords change in a set order, and the frame repeats again and again. Players take turns improvising solos over the same frame, one time around (a chorus) each. It is like a jump-rope rhyme: while the same tune repeats, the person jumping in changes, and each one shows off different moves. The frame is simple, but the stories it can tell are endless, so “The Sermon!” runs for nearly 20 minutes on this one frame alone. (Elsewhere) In everyday English, the blues means gloom or a low, melancholy mood.