RIP Jimmy Smith: 1926 – 2005

Jimmy Smith, master of the “Full Eights” sound on the mighty Hammond B-3!

Around 1985, the Yamaha Organ School was doing its damndest to expunge

my love for music and my sense of rhythm. While Yamaha’s musical

instrument division were practically redefining instruments — consider

the Yamaha grand piano’s bright sound, favoured by Glenn Gould and many

rock pianists, as well as the DX-7 synthesizer and the WX-7, which let

sax and clarinet players play synth — the ghouls behind the home organ

division crafted a course bereft of soul and full of schmaltz. I had a

teacher who had a bit of a legato fetish; she was an advocate of a

playing style in which the notes blurred together into a bland aural

mush. To make matters worse, I was only two out of fourteen songs

through the required Barry Manilow songbook.

After making sure that I got kicked out of organ school at the annual

recital (long story, which I’ll recount later), I became a synth player

full-time. I even went to far as to erase any of the organ sounds from

my Akai AX-60 synth. I’d had enough of that infernal instrument.

What changed my mind was a music course I took at Crazy Go Nuts

University: “Science and Technology for Musicians”. It qualified as an

“arts” course for engineering students and as a “science” course for

the music students. I often gave them a hand with the science parts

(“Uh, Joey, how do I draw a graph of a 5Hz sine wave with an amplitude

of 2?”) and they gave me a hand with non-keyboard instruments (“Uh,

Dave, how do I play a scale on a clarinet?”).

During the course, I wound up writing a paper on the Hammond B-3 organ.

This instrument was clearly the invention of a former watchmaker: a

classic Hammond is essentially a big electric motor driving a gear

system which in turn drives a series of wheels that made sound. While

writing the paper, I decided to hit the music library and listen to

artists who were considered B-3 virtuosos; that’s when I discovered

Jimmy Smith.

My bad experiences at the Yamaha Organ School, coupled with a teacher

who was more devoid of funk than the entire Michigan Militia, led me to

forget that one could play the organ with rhythm and even staccato

attacks. On the organ, Jimmy Smith’s hands and feet could be weapons;

his playing style defined what we now considered to be the de facto

organ soloing and pedalling style.

Musicians who redefine the way their

instrument is played tend to draw inspiration from other instruments. For example, Carlos Santana says that in order to perfect his signature guitar playing style, he played Dionne Warwick albums over and over and listened to her voice.

In Smith’s case, he drew inspiration from trumpet players, mimicking

their lines. He even emulated their sound in solos by killing the Leslie

(an organ spaker mounted on a rotating stand that gives organs their

“whirling” sound) and slamming every drawbar save the lowest and

highest to the “zero” setting.

After buying Jimmy’s live album, Root Down (whose name you should recognize — the Beastie Boys covered the title track on Ill Communication),

I reprogrammed the organ sounds back into my synth, and made sure than

any subsequent synth I bought could do a decent B-3 impression. Later,

when the organ made its comeback in rock in the early 1990’s (thanks

largely to the “Madchester” sound of bands like the Charlatans,

Inspiral Carpets, Milltown Brothers, et. al.), I copped more than my

fair share of Jimmy Smith licks at gigs. In 1994, I got to completely “Smith

out” when the band we opened for let me use their B-3 and Leslie. It

was heaven.

My last

synth — a Korg WaveStation A/D,

which I still have — has a patch I programmed: a monster B-3 sound

with a touch of distortion and a decent Leslie effect paired with

spring reverb. When you dial it up, its name appears in capital letters

on the display: JIMMY SMITH.

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Jimmy Smith died on Tuesday at the age of 79. He’d been playing the organ for 50 years and would’ve embarked on a tour with Joey “The other keyboardist named Joey” deFrancesco next month.

Thanks, Jimmy, for all the music, and for helping me fall in love with the organ again.