Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Query: Who carried the B-3 beyond Jimmy Smith — and where did it go?

Question filed: After Jimmy Smith defined the modern B-3 style, who took the Hammond B-3 into new genres, and what does the instrument's map look like today?

Answer

1. The soul-jazz legion (jazz's mainstream, 1960s–70s). Smith's impact was compared to Charlie Christian on guitar or Charlie Parker on sax: a legion of younger players — Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Jack McDuff, Don Patterson, "Big" John Patton, Sonny Phillips, Freddie Roach, Shirley Scott, Johnny "Hammond" Smith, Lonnie Smith, Reuben Wilson, Jimmy McGriff — created a golden age of soul jazz, hard bop seasoned with blues, gospel and R&B.^[raw/articles/vinyldiscovery-organ-jazz-soul-jazz.md]^[raw/articles/wikipedia-dr-lonnie-smith.md] Collector and forum discussion (organissimo BFT-66 blindfold test, see raw/forums/organissimo-bft66-hammond-b3.md) stresses the deep bench beyond the famous names — e.g. Charles Kynard's Pacific Jazz dates, and modern organ-trio players like Craig Kastelnik deliberately avoiding soul-jazz clichés.^[raw/forums/organissimo-bft66-hammond-b3.md]

2. Rock (British wing, late 1960s). Jon Lord absorbed the same American R&B-organ records (Wild Bill Davis, Smith, McGriff's "All About My Girl", McDuff's "Rock Candy") through the B-3/C-3 + Leslie rig and pushed it into hard rock and proto-heavy-metal with Deep Purple, while fusing it with his classical training.^[raw/articles/wikipedia-jon-lord.md] Brian Auger took the same instrument into jazz-rock, soul-rock and fusion.^[raw/articles/wikipedia-brian-auger.md]

3. The revival infrastructure (1990s–2000s). The acid-jazz scene that treats Smith as its "father" produced dedicated institutions like Hammondbeat Records (2002), a label organized not by genre but by the organ sound itself, spanning dozens of next-generation organ bands — the James Taylor Quartet (whose fan site became the label), Italy's Link Quartet with Paolo 'Apollo' Negri, and roster acts across Europe (see the label page's roster section).^[raw/articles/wikipedia-hammondbeat.md] In France, the same lineage runs through Eddy Louiss (1941–2015), the country's beloved jazz organist.

4. Today's working tradition (gospel + modern jazz trio). Organist Larry Goldings, touring the standard organ-trio format (Peter Bernstein/Bill Stewart), frames the current landscape: B-3 playing remains rooted in gospel (he recommends listening to gospel organ above almost anything), drawbars function "like the first synthesizer," and the 888000000-plus-percussion formula is still the reference sound. He also notes the practical limits — the instrument weighs ~425 lbs and is usually rented via the venue rider — which is exactly the gap clonewheel instruments and retro labels now fill.^[raw/articles/npr-blogsupreme-hammond-b3.md]

Synthesis

The B-3's spread beyond Smith ran along four channels, all traceable to his template: (a) within jazz, as soul-jazz organ trios; (b) across the Atlantic into rock (Lord, Auger); (c) into a self-conscious revival scene with its own labels (Hammondbeat); and (d) into gospel and the modern trio mainstream that NPR documents. Every channel keeps the same core recipe: drawbars, percussion, Leslie.

Open threads