John Medeski (b. 1965)
Anthony John Medeski (born 28 June 1965, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American jazz keyboardist and composer, veteran of New York's 1990s avant-garde jazz scene and best known as a member of Medeski Martin & Wood (MMW, formed New York 1991 with Billy Martin and Chris Wood).^[raw/articles/wikipedia-john-medeski.md]
The Hammond in his toolkit
Medeski plays an unusually eclectic array of keyboards — acoustic piano (a Steinway Artist), melodica, mellotron, clavinet, Wurlitzer, Moog Voyager, Vox Continental — but the Hammond B-3 organ is the anchor voice of MMW's groove-based records and of his side projects.^[raw/articles/wikipedia-john-medeski.md] His organ work spans:
- MMW — steady international touring through funk, jazz and jam scenes since the mid-1990s; albums on Gramavision and Blue Note (Shack-man, Combustication, The Dropper).
- With John Scofield — A Go Go (1998) and the Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood albums (Out Louder, 2006; Juice, 2014).
- The Word (2000) — a blues-gospel project with Robert Randolph and the Dickinson brothers, putting the B-3 back in sacred-adjacent territory.
- John Medeski & The Itch (2006, with Eric Krasno and Adam Deitch) — billed explicitly around his B-3 playing.
- Session work: Morphine's The Night (1999), the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's Buck Jump (1999), the Bob Dylan biopic soundtrack I'm Not There (2006), Coheed and Cambria's The Afterman albums (2012).^[raw/articles/wikipedia-john-medeski.md]
Why he matters to this wiki
Medeski is the clearest case of the B-3 surviving inside the post-1990s jam/acid-jazz economy: a working organist whose sound is built on vintage drawbar language (see drawbars) yet whose scene grew up alongside digital emulations. He bridges the soul-jazz lineage documented in jimmy-smith and the revival infrastructure of hammondbeat.
Related
- jimmy-smith — the template Medeski's organ trio format descends from
- clonewheel-organ — the era Medeski's career overlaps
- hammond-b3 — his main organ voice