by by Kavid Day

The words funky and crunchy do not begin to describe the music and spirit of the legendary organist Jimmy Smith.

Born on December 8, 1928 in Norristown (near Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, James Oscar Smith was self-taught on piano and string bass. Although he never learned to read music, by the age of seven, he was playing the "William Tell Overture" and, two years later, won the nationally broadcast Major Bowes Amateur Hour playing boogie-woogie. "I went there to blow everybody away," he says of the show, "I've had this attitude since I found out I could play. My mother didn't have to tell me to get up there. I'd walk up to the piano and just start playing."

In 1942, Smith teamed up with his father in a song-and-dance routine in and around Philadelphia. After a stint in the Navy during World War II, he returned home, plastering houses with his father during the week and playing piano with local groups on weekends. After a number of years of paying his dues on out-of-tune and broken pianos in nightclubs, Smith bought his first electric organ in 1953 after seeing Wild Bill Davis, one of the swing-era pianists who had made the transition to electric instruments.

"He told me it would take me four years just to learn the pedals alone," Smith remembers. "It was a challenge."

Four months later -- after secretly practicing in a warehouse -- Smith was ready to return to Wild Bill. "I was like a maniac. I was like Glenn Ford in The Fastest Gun Alive. I went down to hunt for Wild Bill Davis.

"I'm playing like Bud [Powell] in my left hand and throwing some Bird licks on him. Then I showed him how to play brass the real way-full brass, not just one hand." Three days after the reunion, Smith landed a gig at the nearby Cotton Club in Atlantic City. Forming his own trio, he began to attract the attention of the jazz community and, in 1954, he signed a contract with Blue Note Records and exploded on the New York scene in the late 1950s.

Drawing on the funky, gospel-influenced styles of pianists Horace Silver and Ray Charles, as well as the omni-present blues, Smith used his Hammond B-3 organ to create a new, unique sound and to further redefine modern jazz. These earliest recordings feature Smith at his funkiest playing with some of the greatest Blue Note regulars including tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, trumpeter Lee Morgan, and guitarist Kenny Burrell on albums like The Sermon, Midnight Special, and Back at the Chicken Shack.

Among the first musicians to expand the language of modern jazz into the realm of electric instruments, Smith soon attracted a large following and became an inspiration and father-figure to a new generation of instrumentalists, especially organists. In 1962, he recorded Bashin' with a big band conducted and arranged by Oliver Nelson. This ground-breaking album features Smith's no-nonsense, intensely swinging organ work on a burning arrangement of Elmer Bernstein's movie theme, "Walk on the Wild Side." This arrangement became a Top 40 hit in 1962 and was soon followed by "Hoochie Coochie Man" which features Smith's distinctive funky organ and his irreverent, gruff vocals.

His popularity was so great in the 1960s that downbeat magazine introduced the organ category to its readers' poll in 1964. Evidence of Smith's dominance on the instrument and the music immediately made him a legend. He has won the downbeat poll every year by a two-to-one margin.

However, his instrument, the Hammond B-3 organ, was the subject of much derision by snooty jazz critics during the peak of its popularity in the Sixties. In fact, it fell out of fashion to the extent that the Hammond Organ Company even stopped manufacturing the model. Smith himself occasionally dabbles in synthesizers and electric piano but always returns to the straight-ahead crunchy sounds of the B-3. "The synthesizers and all that junk were coming in a few years ago," he explains, "but now the people want pure jazz."

Smith signed with Quincy Jones' Qwest label in 1984 and, reflecting his diversity and flexibility, he and his B-3 have been featured on recordings as varied as Frank Sinatra's L.A. Is My Lady and Michael Jackson's Bad. After his Qwest contract expired, Smith joined the Fantasy/Prestige/Milestone/Stax family and produced Prime Time, the first in his series of back-to-the-roots Milestone recordings.

His most recent album on the label, Sum Serious Blues finds Smith surrounded by two of his regular cohorts -- tenor saxophonist Herman Riley and guitarist Philip Upchurch -- and features guest vocals by Marlena Shaw and Benard Ighner. The album consists of modern updates of standards including "You've Changed," "(I'd Rather) Drink Muddy Water," and the bluesy ballad, "Hurry Change, If You're Coming" which features Smith as a serious Ruth Brown-influenced singer.

Recently the B-3 sound has come back into fashion and finds a new level of respectability in straight-ahead jazz circles, as well as in the burgeoning British and American "acid jazz" scenes. Smith's influence on an entire generation of organists can be witnessed most clearly in the styles of Jimmy McGriff, Charles Earland, and Brother Jack McDuff, three of the most obvious examples of disciples and spiritual children who continue the legacy of non-traditional instrumentation on funky jazz recordings.

This year, the 8th Annual Clarksville-West End Jazz and Arts Festival proudly presents the father of them all, Jimmy Smith and his funky, crunchy B-3 sound.