Free jazz guitarist Warren Harding “Sonny” Sharrock would’ve turned 86 today. A ferocious player whose unrelenting, distortion-laced six-string attack liberated a generation of avant garde guitarists, he first gained inside notoriety for playing on Pharoah Sanders’ 1967 Impulse! album Tauhid. His contributions on that latter-day Trane-inspired free jazz opus were particulary felt on his ‘skronk’-fueled, string-scraping solo on “Aum/Venus/Capricorn Rising.”

Sharrock later gained access to a much wider audience by playing alongside guitarist Larry Coryell and vibraphonist Roy Ayers on Herbie Mann’s hit instrumental version of “Hold On, I’m Coming” from 1969’s Memphis Underground. His solo on that tune, regarded as absolutely insane by conventional guitarists, inspired a smaller contingent of proto-punk players and adventurous avant garde listeners.

That same year, Sharrock recorded his first as a leader, Black Woman, for Mann’s Vortex label. Accompanied on that auspicious debut by his wife Linda on vocals. Sharrock also premiered the droning, Delta-fied “Blind Willie,” a tune he would subsequently revisit in more electrifying fashion on his 1986 Bill Laswell-produced album, Guitar.

Sharrock appeared on Miles Davis’ groundbreaking Jack Johnson sessions from 1970 (uncredited on the original 1971 release, though his slide guitar and Echoplex-laden contributions on the track “Willie Nelson” were later well documented on the Sony Music 5CD set from 2003, The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions).

In 1980, Sharrock began working with bassist-producer Bill Laswell, later appearing on Material’s 1981 debut on Celluloid Records, Memory Serves (reissued in 1982 on the Elektra Musician label) which also featured alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill, cornetist Olu Dara, trombonist George Lewis, violinist Billy Bang, guitarist Fred Frith and drummer Fred Maher.

Sharrock and Laswell would later form the high-powered improvising superband Last Exit with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and saxophonist Peter Brötzman. ) Their output from the mid ‘90s to the early ‘90s mostly came from live recordings on tour and marked some of the most intense music of that period.

I remember once at the old Knitting Factory (the original one on Houston Street back in the ‘80s) approaching Sharrock after a set there by Last Exit, and I had the temerity to ask him, “Hey Sonny, how come you don’t ever play chords.” His answer snapped back at me like he was swatting a fly. “Fuck chords!”

Not too long after that, drummer the summer of 1987, I saw Sonny leading his own band with bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer Abe Speller. I was sitting in the front row of that event and at some point in the act of him brutally thrashing his black Les Paul guitar I noticed two (or was it three) broken strings flailing in the air. Sonny, unpreturbed, with eyes closed, kept bashing away on his instrument with hurricane force. It was an exercise in brutal bliss. As I wrote in the July 1987 issue of Guitar World:

“To witness the powerful man in concert is like standing near a volcano. Sonny closes his eyes and reacts to the bombast, thrashing violently at crescendos or savoring a single sustained note as if in ecstasy. He totally abandons himself to the flow, at times running wildly across the stage while cranking out impassioned licks. At a recent performance in New York, Sonny snapped not one, not two, but three strings during the course of one particularly sick solo. And he kept going like a psychedelic juggernaut. This man is not for the faint of hear. But for those who might be intrigued by a marriage of Hendrix and Coltrane, dig Sonny.”

In 1988, Sharrock lent his “shards of splintered glass” guitar sound to Machine Gun’s self-titled debut on guitarist Robert Musso’s Mu Records label. That band, led by Musso, also featured saxophonist-flutist Thomas (Rage) Chapin, electric bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and drummer Bil Bryant.

In 1991, Sharrock released the brilliant Laswell-produced Ask the Ages, an incredible 5-star album (IMO) featuring Charnett Moffett on bass, Elvin Jones on drums and Pharaoh Sanders on tenor sax. It remains a favorite of mine, not for the kind of cathartic onslaughts that Sharrock unleashed with Last Exit, but for the beautifully melodic material and consummate accompaniment provided by the regal rhythm tandem of Moffett and Jones with Sanders in tow on saxophones. I’m still thrilled listening to the mysterious and beguiling “Who Does She Hope to Be?” and the triumphant anthem, “As We Used to Sing,” powered by Elvin’s signature over the barline swing factor. As he told an interviewer at the time: “I've been trying to find a way for the terror and the beauty to live together in one song. I know it’s possible.”

My next encounter with Sonny was a sitdown interview for the July 1993 issue Downbeat. It took place in the afternoon at the Time Cafe on Lafayette Street, above The Fez, where the Mingus Big Band held forth every Monday night. Sonny was joined by fellow guitar slinger Vernon Reid for an animated talk about the formation of the Black Rock Coalition, Sonny’s encounters with Miles Davis, the towering influence of John Coltrane and attain that exalted level where “the song plays you.”

To my surprise, Sharrock would later gain a certain amount of mainstream notoriety through his skronking slide guitar theme song for the animated Space Ghost Coast to Coast mock interview show on Comedy Central.

He recorded that cathartic theme on Nov. 19, 1993 and six months later he was gone. Sharrock’s sudden death from a heart attack on May 26, 1994, at age 53, came as a profound shock to that twisted segment of the guitar community that acccept ‘skronk’ as a valid part of the instrument’s vocabulary. Here is that Downbeat conversation with Sonny and Vernon:

So many great CDs have come across my desk in recent months that it’s downright dizzying. It’s been a veritable embarrassment of riches. I think of that scene from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, the one where Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice is besieged by a never-ending army of walking brooms pouring buckets of water before him until the castle is flooded. Never-ending indeed.

Among the flood of CDs that have crossed my desk since June, I’ve narrowed it down to a half dozen, each a spectacular gem that I highly recommend.

Topping the list, and perhaps most surprising (given my lukewarm reaction to his previous band outings) is Jon Batiste’s Monk Movements (Verve). It’s Volume 4 in the Batiste Piano Series, which was inaugurated in 2024 with Beethoven Blues (Volume 1). Released simultaneously with the more classically influenced Black Mozart (Volume 2) and the more New Agey/Keith Jarrett Koln Concert-ish Monk Meditations (Volume 3), Monk Movements not only showcases the Louisiana-born pianist’s remarkably dextrous command of the keyboard but also his unique ability to imbue this familiar material with his own unique spirit. Batiste’s reimaginings of Monk are not just cleverly thought-out twists and turns on these masterworks — strategically plotted out for maximum eccentricity and dissonance, as A.I might do. His free-associative, highly impresionistic approach is wholly organic and in the moment, and you can hear he’s having fun with it. Just listen to his coversation with himself during “Blue Monk” and the delicate waltz “Ugly Beauty,” where he comments nonverbally on his own playing in the moment with a series of grunts, sly laughs and exultant whoops at what he finds along the way in his search and discovery mission. And his take on “In Walked Bud” opens with some impressionistic classical flourishes before turning into an all-out swinging romp recalling the sheer syncopation and delicious eccentricities of Thelonious Monk himself. And dig him dipping into some stride piano work on his 14-minute “Monk Movement.” Yes, he’s channeling Monk, but it’s coming through a filter that is 100% Batiste.

Linda May Han Oh & Melissa Aldana, Beneath Lifted Skies (Biophilia Records) — In-demand bassist and acclaimed bandleader Oh joins rising star tenor saxophonist Aldana in an intimate duo setting on a program of familiar jazz standards. Their super uptempo take on Charlie Parker’s “Anthropology,” which kicks off the stellar collection in adrenalized fashion, is fueled by Oh’s ferocious, deep-toned walking basslines, which Aldana soars over with boppish aplomb before the two unite at the end on the tune’s notoriously chops-busting head. Elsewhere, they have their way with Bud Powell’s jauntily swinging “Hallucinations,” Charles Mingus’ gorgeous ballad “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” and John Coltrane’s burning proving ground, “26-2,” flaunting facile chops and an uncanny chemistry along the way. Other copasetic covers include Sam Rivers’ “Cyclic Episode,” Herbie Hancock’s “The Sorcerer,” Thelonious Monk’s bouncing “Introspection” and Gigi Gryce’s buoyant midtempo swinger, “Social Call.” And Oh delivers two stirring solo bass showcases on Wayne Shorter’s “Dance Cadaverous” and Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”

Henry Threadgill/Vijay Iyer/Dafnis Prieto, Fifteen (Nonesuch) — Trio collective with saxophonist Threadgill, pianist Iyer and drummer Prieto, each a bandleader in his own right, traversing wide open, highly interactive material like Threagill’s delicate and dissonant “Trio Piece” (with the composer on flute), his angular and driving “Last Night” (with Threadgill on alto) and Iyer’s energized “I Wanted a Map,” fueled by Prieto’s steady backbeat. Threadgill’s delicate rubato number “Where Coconuts Fall” is actually a beautiful showcase for Iyer’s luminous pianism in conversation with Prieto’s coloristic approach on the kit while the drummer’s own “Gently Trapped,” a showcase for Threadgill’s expressive flute playing, is underscored by his deft touch with brushes. On the other side of the dynamic coin from that gentle offering is Iyer’s “Fire City,” an unbridled free-for-all between piano, drums and alto sax. Iyer’s somber “Perfect Victims” builds to a throbbing crescendo. And Prieto’s playful closer, “On the Way,” showcases the trio at its most animated and rhythmically-charged.

Henry Threadgill Zooid, Cut You Where You Was (Pi Recordings) — Threadgill premiered his Zooid ensemble on 2001’s Up Popped the Two Lips. This seventh outing by the adventurous ensemble features longtime Zooid personnel Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar, Jose Davila on tuba and trombone, Christopher Hoffman on cello and
Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums. Together they create a web of sonic intrigue on the bubbling “Fluoroscope,” which finds Ellman engaging in some contrapuntal cat-and-mouse play with Threadgill’s alto sax, Hoffman’s bowed cello and Davila’s tuba. The three-part suite, “Bingo,” ranges from rubato introspection with the leader on flute (“Part I”) to pungent minimalism (“Part III”). The expansive 12-minute “Red Admiral Moon Rising” opens with a four-minute unaccompanied cello prelude before the full band heads into the chugging, ping-ponging theme, underscored by Davila’s bubbling tuba lines. Ellman and Threadgill each step forward with some searching solos on this fractured funk number. The album closes with five individual gems, each under two minutes and utilizing that distinctive polyphony that has been Zooid’s signature for 25 years.

Goldings/Bernstein/Stewart, Rhombus (Smoke Sessions) — Hammond B-3 organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart met in the late ‘80s at Augie’s, a little jazz bar on Broadway between 105th and 106th where they soon established a regular Thursday night residency. It would close in 1988 and reopen the following year as Smoke, which was owned and operated by Paul Stache, a former bartender at Augie’s. Goldings/Bernstein/Stewart continued to play at this renovated jazz club on the Upper West Side through the years while racking up 15 albums as a trio, from their 1991 debut, Intimacy of the Blues, to their latest, Rhombus. After 35+ years and countless gigs together, it’s understandable how tight their chemistry has become, while their urge to swing and desire to collective explore new avenues in that B-3 trio format have not dissipated. Some of those new avenues on the new album include their takes on Keith Jarrett’s introspective, melancholy “Everything That Lives Laments,” Abdullah Ibrahim’s hymn-like “Mamma” and Wayne Shorter’s plaintive ballad “Penelope.” Uptempo swingers like Bernstein’s “Dissipation Blues” and Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud” are right in that zone that has been their calling card for so many years.

Sullivan Fortner, Leave That In There (Artwork Records) — A bona fide star on the scene, having elevated from rising star status after winning a Grammy last year for Southern Nights, gifted pianist-composer and multi-faced conceptualist Fortner stakes out some more personal, more expansive territory on his sixth album as a leader. Joined by bassist Tyrone Allen II and drummer Kayvon Gordon, the New Orleans native expands the scope of the traditional piano trio by incorporating Hammond B-3 organ and synths along with marimba and bata drums into the mix. The results are often striking, as on the churning, African-flavored opener, “Sugarcane,” the meditative “A Hymn for Linda,” the spacey synth experiments “12 Gallons” and “T295,” along with two swinging piano trio offerings in “Sorcerer’s Stick” and “Number 3” and the Chick Corea flavored “Aria II,” a kind of sequel to the title track of his 2015 debut album. This young man is brimming with ideas and talent, and it’s just got to come out.

Here’s my reflection on the iconic singer from three years ago, written on July 21, 2003 when he passed away at age 96. It is accompanied by an interview I did with him in 1999 for Jazz Times magazine.

GOT THE SAD NEWS TODAY about Tony Bennett's passing at age 96. He was a sweet, vivacious man with an urge to swing who had been silenced in his final years by the dreaded Alzheimer's disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2016. And yet, like the trooper and consummate entertainer that he was, he carried on performing, bringing joy, playing to the back row like he always had since breaking into the music business in the early '50s. Bennett scored a smash hit in 1953 with his million-seller, "Rags to Riches," which he sang on "The Ed Sullivan Show." It’s how many of us first encountered the Queens-born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, through our tiny black and white tv sets at home. Tony did 18 appearances in all during the run of Sullivan's popular Sunday night program, introducing his signature song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" to America on a 1964 show and reprising that gorgeous tune seven months later for Sullivan's audience of millions.

And check the intimacy, behind-the-beat phrasing and sense of swing that Bennett delivers on this quintet version of "It Had to Be You" from a '65 Sullivan show, with Bobby Hackett taking a beautiful muted trumpet solo.

Bennett continued with his storied career through the '60s, '70s and '80s, then enjoyed something of a revival following a 1993 appearance on MTV's Unplugged. Suddenly, a new generation was seemingly captivated by this older white-haired gentleman swinging so freely and with such joie de vivre.

And dig Tony going totally unplugged (sans microphone) on this riveting balladic version of "Fly Me To The Moon."

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tony Bennett in 1999 for Jazz Times. Not only did I get to to observe his method in the studio during a live recording session with a big band, I later saw some of his paintings at his penthouse overlooking Central Park, then went to lunch with him and his daughter Antonia at an Italian restaurant on 57th Street, where he spun tales about his hero, Duke Ellington:

Watching Tony Bennett work in the studio, one gets a revealing glimpse of the craft behind the man’s artistry. Smooth, always poised, ever-confident of his abilities, the 73-year-old singer exudes an uncanny naturalness and gusto in front of a microphone. It’s a quality that he has in common with such other icons in American entertainment as Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Frank Sinatra. Bennett is definitely part of that hallowed lineage.

A quintessential one-take guy, he has an old school aura about him that carries to the back row of concert halls and touches everyone in the room. Call it magic, pizzazz, charisma, Anthony Dominick Benedetto has got IT. He hits high notes as easily as mortals breathe, phrases a lyric or punctuates accents with seasoned showbiz flair and swings as innately as an honorary member of the Count Basie rhythm section. And he delivers it all with the nonchalance of a lifetime straphanger riding the “N” train back to Queens.

A handful of press people were invited to observe that trademark Bennett magic at The Hit Factory last summer for sessions that resulted in Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot and Cool (Columbia/RPM). A decidedly jazzy outing that ranks with other critically acclaimed collaborations as 1959's Hometown, My Town with Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Urbie Green and Barry Galbraith, Tony Bennett/Jazz (a 1987 release comprised of tracks from the '50s and early '60s featuring Stan Getz, Chuck Wayne, Milt Hinton, Ed Shaughnessy and the Count Basie Orchestra) and the 1975 classic, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot and Cool is a collection of timeless melodies and jazz anthems sung by one of the greatest interpreters of American song. Backed by a quartet led by pianist Ralph Sharon, a colleague for 40 years, and further enhanced by the lush orchestral arrangements of Ralph Burns, this excursion into Ellingtonia is a fitting homage to the great composer in honor of his centennial anniversary.

Guest soloists Wynton Marsalis and trombonist Al Grey contribute some very animated conversational exchanges on “Mood Indigo” and “She’s Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good).” The trumpeter also adds a strikingly lyrical solo on the album’s lone instrumental, “Chelsea Bridge.” Says Bennett of that riveting performance, “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard Wynton do. He just showed up and played so wonderful. Very melodic and economical with feeling. To me, it communicates more than anything he’s done on record.”

Over lunch at his favorite Midtown Manhattan Italian restaurant, Bennett spoke candidly about his craft and about his boyhood idol Edward Kennedy Ellington.

It was interesting to see you do two takes of “Caravan” in the studio. Your choices of phrasing were wildly different from take to take. It was a clear case of taking chances.

Yeah, that brings up a point…it’s so hard to explain to everybody but I do have a stock line for it. All interviewers ask me, “Don’t you get tired of singing ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.'” But I say, “Do you get tired of making love?” They think I do it the same way every night but I don’t sing that way. Every performance is different. If you do it every night like I’ve done-200 dates a year for 51 years now-then you turn it into a game by improvising all the time. Spontaneous stuff is the most fun. See, if you have fun, then the audience intuitively feels that they were witnessing something that happened just for that moment. I get bored if I hear something that’s set all the time the same way. I think what I’m trying to tell you is I’m not really a jazz singer but I know how to improvise.

Isn’t that what a jazz singer does?

Yeah, but the whole idea of “jazz singer” is… I don’t know, that’s so much like belonging to a club. As a kid I never joined the Elks or the Knights Of Columbus. I’ve always been a little wary of clubs and I never tried to be part of the club that’s jazz singers. I don’t sing “Satin Doll,” because everybody sings “Satin Doll.” I stay away from that, even though I may enjoy someone else singing that. I’d like to do something a little different.

Well, you certainly have an affinity for jazz.

Well, sure. Yeah. I’ve always surrounded myself with great jazz musicians, but I consider myself a jazz entertainer. A lot of critics have accused me of trying to be a jazz artist. I’ve never tried to be a jazz artist. I’m a popular singer who sings with an improvised flair. Record companies and record shops, they want to categorize everything. This guy does this, this guy does that. It’s like what Duke used to say about categories: “I’m not a jazz artist; I’m Duke Ellington.” But as an entertainer, the music just becomes a tool for me to entertain people. I like entertaining people. I don’t have this philosophy of, “I do this for myself and I don’t care if anybody likes it or not.” I mean, I do it for everybody. To me, the greatest artists were people like Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Duke Ellington, Count Basie-they were all giving people and they all gave to the audience. They were entertainers. Duke Ellington was an entertainer. Besides being a great musician and great composer, he loved getting in front of a band and swinging the thing out. He loved entertaining people. He also loved to watch them dance.

I understand that you actually wrote a song with Duke.

I was on the road with Duke in the early ’70s. It was such a phenomenal experience to be with that great band. Anyway, we became very close-his family and my family were close. It was just a wonderful experience to get to know Duke like that. He was so alive. I never met anyone more alive. Every moment was important to him, everything was interesting to him, and creative. So he said one day, “Write a song with me.” I explained that I couldn’t really write words too well but that I sometimes could come up with a good melody. And he said, “If you write the music, I’ll write the words.” So I worked on it. And it took me a month on the road with him to meet Duke’s standards. After a month I just sang out a melody to him, he listened for a moment and said, “That’s Cootie Williams.” I had lifted a riff from a Cootie Williams solo and didn’t even know it. I thought it was my idea. Over the years, I had forgotten about that tune. Then when I was getting this Ellington project together, Will Friedwald, who wrote my autobiography with me (The Good Life, Pocket Books), gave me a whole bunch of Ellington tapes to check out. One of the tunes I came across was this thing called “Be Cool and Groovy for Me,” and the composer credit reads: Duke Ellington-Tony Bennett-Cootie Williams. I had no idea that I wrote the song.

You’ve got some good stories in your book about Ellington. What were your earliest first impressions of him?

He looked regal, dignified. Strictly a great man. I saw him as a teenager at the Capitol Theatre with Ethel Waters. I played hooky with some friends to go see him. We used to play hooky, go see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount, Count Basie. 52nd Street was happening. Oh, it was a great time. Anyway, Duke opened up with a dolly set, which was real popular at that time. Curtain opened up and it was like everything was hanging in space. Amazing!

You had already known about Duke at that point and heard him on record?

Oh yeah. My brother John was a big jazz fan. He knew all the early guys like Phil Napolean and Bobby Hackett, who played down in the Village then. I was always impressed with my brother’s musical tastes. So you get into it, you know?

I was amazed to read in your book the anecdote about Ellington being dropped from Columbia.

Yeah, Clive Davis came up to Duke and said, “Mr. Ellington, we have to drop you from Columbia because you’re not selling records.” And Duke said, “Well, I think you have it turned around. I write the music; you’re supposed to sell the records.” He had an answer for everything. That’s another thing I loved about him. His mother taught him that he was very, very special and it really stuck with him. His belief in himself was wonderful. He would tell me, “No matter what accolade anyone may give me, I think more of myself.” I never heard anybody say that before.

So, long before all these power of positive thinking gurus came around, Duke was already there.

Yeah, he was always ahead of time.

And his influence went way beyond music. People were influenced by his fashion sense as well.

And philosophy too. He believed in love. That was the big axiom for him-love. He said the most important realization in the world is that God is love. That was his thing.

That’s why that painting you did of him (“God Is Love”) is so appropriate.

Yeah. Well, the reason for that was, he would always send me flowers when he wrote a song. I’d get a flower and know, “Oh, Duke wrote another song.” So that’s why I put those flowers behind him in that portrait.

You must’ve gotten a lot of flowers.

Yeah, he wrote a lot. A lot of people don’t know that he wrote more music than any composer in the history of recorded music. Duke was the most prolific musician that ever lived. He wrote in every kind of mode-ballets, sacred concerts, fugues, every mode of music possible-classical, solo piano, movie scores-everything.

Do you have a favorite Ellington album?

Ellington at Newport (1956). My God…that thing just takes off. It’s the most incredible thing to listen to. It just flies. Paul Gonzalves playing all those choruses (on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”) and the people going nuts. It’s just incredible. Duke is like Stravinsky. Whatever you hear of his sounds good.

And what else are you listening to these days?

I love Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra (Verve, 1966) with Claus Ogerman arranging and conducting. I could play that all day long. I also love Brubeck & Rushing (Columbia, 1960), a wonderful vocal album with Jimmy Rushing with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. And of course, Art Tatum. I’ve been playing Tatum records for years. Also, I listen a lot to the Debussy string quartets, Bartok, Stravinsky and Bach.

I got the word last week that Plas had passed, just six days short of his 95th birthday. It immediately had me reflecting back on a phone call we had 25 years earlier. I had been recruited by Bob Porter, longtime DJ at radio station WBGO in Newark, New Jersey as well as host of the syndicated “Portraits in Blue” show (which I listened to religiously since its inception in 1981) to write liner notes for a record he was producing for the Milestone label. This was a two-tenor affair (in the tradition of such classic tough tenor battles as Wardell Gray & Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt & Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin & Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis) pairing Plas with his elder (by four years) Red Holloway. Organist Gene Ludwig, guitarist Melvin Sparks and drummer Kenny Washington provided the fuel for this potent session.

Porter’s theme song for his “Portraits in Blue” show was Jimmy Forrest’s slow, seductive “Bolo Blues” (from his 1961 Prestige recording Out of the Forrest).

Porter was a huge fan of that bold-toned tenor tradition, and in producing Keep That Groove Going!, he was out to show that the age-old tenor battle tradition was alive and well in the hands of seasoned veterans like Johnson and Holloway. As he put it to me then, “The idea was to make a record with two guys who really know this tenor tradition and still know how to do it. And these are guys who learned it firsthand. They didn’t learn it from any music school. You don’t need two kids out of Juillard or Berklee to show you what a tenor battle is all about.”

Indeed, Keep That Groove Going! was Porter’s love letter to that grand tradition.

As Holloway said of that session: “We’re not the real hip players like all the youngsters of today, so I thought we might be out of step with what’s happening. But going into the session, we decided, ‘Well, let’s try and do something like the old tenor battles that they used to have.’ I guess we’re just two old-fashioned dudes who play old-time.”

Amen to that!

While both Johnson and Holloway were hugely influenced by elders like Illinois Jacquet, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, they also fell under the sway of the great blues saxophone players of their youth. Said Plas, “Louis Jordan was one of my idols when I was 13, 14, along with Eddie “Cleanhead” Vison and the Buddy Johnson Orchestra. We got to hear these people live a fair amount because their records sold well in New Orleans and they were always in town to promote there.”

Plas Johnson was born in Donaldsonville, La., west of New Orleans, on July 21, 1931. The middle of three children in a musical family, he performed as a teenager in a little-known bebop underground that existed in the Crescent City whose ranks included pianist Ellis Marsalis, saxophonist Harold Battiste and drummer Ed Blackwell. In 1951, Plas joined the touring band of popular R&B singer and pianist Charles Brown, who had hit singles with “Driftin’ Blues” in 1945 and “Merry Christmas Baby” in 1947.

Drafted into the Army later that year, he spent three years in the service before relocating to Los Angeles in 1954, where he quickly established himself on the West Coast recording scene. Plas eventually became a mainstay of The Wrecking Crew, a loose amalgam of session musicians whose ranks included bassist Carol Kaye, guitarists Tommy Tedesco, Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell, saxophonist Steve Douglas, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, keyboardists Mac Rebbenack and Leon Russell, among others. Together they provided backing on recordings by such artists as Jan & Dean, Sonny & Cher, The Mamas and The Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, The Beach Boys, The Monkees, The Righteous Brothers, The Byrds, The Carpenters, The Fifth Dimension, Ike & Tina Turner, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, and many, many more.

Plas also played on countless movie sessions, perhaps most famously on Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” from the 1963 Blake Edwards movie starring Peter Sellars. (He later played that familiar theme song on the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther starring Steve Martin).

Plas had earlier played on another Mancini theme song for the 1958 tv show, Peter Gunn. That same year he played the picolo solo on Bobby Day’s 1958 hit single, “Rockin’ Robin.”

Plas later played in the horn section for the soundtrack to the 1972 movie, Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross.

Johnson spent 15 years in the band of the TV talk-show host Merv Griffin, was a member of the Frankie Capp-Nat Pierce Juggernaut big band and toured in 1990 with the Gene Harris Superband. He maintained an active connection to music later in life, performing and preserving his warm, full tone into his 90s. R.I.P., Plas!

The profoundly sad news about Rodney Holmes’ recent passing began rolling in yesterday on Facebook in the many testimonials of those who played with him and knew him for decades — Randy Brecker, George Colligan, Will Lee, George Whitty, Dave Weckl, David Gilmore, Chieli Minucci, Ed Maguire and others — all attesting to his formidable chops, his kind and sweet demeanor underscored by a bad-ass power-precision presence on the kit. A short, handsome man with a gentle voice, an infectious smile (which he rarely flashed for photos) and a quick sense of humor, Holmes was a regular at the 55 Bar, where I saw him play with Leni Stern, Mike Stern, Wayne Krantz, The Hermanators with Mitch Stein and a host of other New York notables. He anchored several favorite albums of mine in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, including Jean-Paul Bourelly’s Trippin’, Victor Bailey’s Bottom’s Up, Leni Stern’s Ten Songs, Bob Belden’s When Doves Cry: The Music of Prince, The Brecker Brothers’ Out of the Loop, Michal Urbaniak’s Urbanator II, Jane Getter’s Jane, and David Gilmore’s Ritualism.

Holmes eventually went on some major international tours — with Special EFX in 1991, the Zawinul Syndicate in 1992, Santana in 1993, The Brecker Brothers in 1994, Wayne Shorter in 1996. I caught Rodney in concert with Wayne’s band (James Beard on keyboards, David Gilmore on guitar, Alphonso Johnson on bass) at the Montreal Jazz Festival (later documented on a great DVD released in 2009 by Eagle Eye Media).

And here’s that same quintet with Rodney Holmes from Lugano, Switzerland in 1995:

Rodney would later tour and record with The Brecker Brothers Band Reunion, led by trumpeter Randy Brecker and featuring his wife Ada Rovatti filling the very large shoes of Michael Brecker on tenor sax.

The Bronx-born Holmes sadly succumbed to cancer on Saturday, July 11th. I interviewed Rodney for an “Up & Coming” piece in the December 1993 issue of Modern Drummer, just as he was about the join Santana:

And here are some YouTube clips of those superb recordings:

Honorable mention:

• Steven Bernstein, Resonation Trio (Royal Potato Family)

• Brian Lynch, Torch Bearers (Hollistic MusicWorks

• Mike Clark, Kuon Ganjo (Wide Hive)

• John Ellis & Double Wide, Fireball (Sunnyside)

• Seamus Blake, Plays the Music of Eddie Harris (Cellar Music)

• Ron Carter & Yotam Silberstein, Duets (Jojo Records)

• Eli Howell, Steps Taken (D Clef)

• Russ Spiegel, Timepieces (Ruzztone Music)

• Matt Slocum, A Revolving Alliance (Sunnyside)

• Christian Dillingham, As It Relates To Now (Shifting Paradigm)

• Christopher Dammann, Dead Worlds (Shifting Paradigm)

• Jamile & Vinicius Gomes, Boundless Species (La Reserve)

• Dida Pelled, I Wish You Would (La Reserve)

• The Phoenix Trio, Tomorrow Is Today (Giant Step Arts)

• Olli Soikkeli, Comeback (ollisoikkeli.com)

To quote Michael Corleone from The Godfather III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” Yes, I had thought that Part V of my ongoing series of Hammond B-3 organ appreciation in all of its glorious manifestations was the finale, that I could move on to something else. But I was recently reminded that I had dropped the ball in my previous five Substack columns by not cataloguing those brilliant women players throughout the years who added significantly to the B-3 canon. Here’s half a dozen:

I suppose it all begins with Shirley Scott. Nicknamed “Queen of the Organ,” the Philadelphia-born Scott grew up with music. Her father operated a jazz club in the basement of the family home and her brother played saxophone. Beginning with piano lessons from the age of eight, she switched to trumpet at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, before returning to piano by the early 1950s. In 1955, she switched over to the organ when she began collaborating with tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, eventually gaining national recognition for their 1958 hit, “In the Kitchen.” That same year, Scott released her debut on Prestige, Great Scott!, which included covers of Cole Porter’s “All of You,” Miles Davis’ “Four” and Ray Noble’s “Cherokee,” along with a burning take on the popular samba, “Brazil.”

By the early ‘60s, Scott began playing soul-jazz with saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, who later became her husband. While they toured and recorded nine albums together, including 1961’s Dearly Beloved, 1963’s Never Let Me Go, 1964’s Blue Flames, 1966’s Let It Go and 1969’s Common Touch, she also released a string of solo albums including 1959’s Soul Searching, 1960’s Soul Sister, 1967’s Girl Talk and 1970’s Something and 1973’s Superstition. Scott died of heart failure in 2002 at age 67.

New Jersey native Rhoda Scott, nicknamed “The Barefoot Lady,” grew up in her father’s church, where she began playing organ at the age of seven. “The first thing I did was take my shoes off and work the pedals,” she recalled in an interview. By the age of nine, she had taken over as church organist in her daddy’s congregation. She later studied at the Manhattan School of Music and by age 20 began playing organ in an R&B group. Scott eventually formed her own band and opened for Count Basie at a club in Newark. In 1963, she recorded her first album, Live! at the Key Club, on the Prestige label.

In 1967, Scott moved to France, where she still lives and continues to record at age 87. She has over 40 albums as a leader to her credit, her most recent being 2024’s Fly Me to the Moon on the Black and Blue label. And true to her nickname, she still plays barefoot.

Another Philadelphia native, Trudy Pitts began studying at Temple University and later Juilliard before being hailed as a rising star organist in 1967 on the strength of her debut album that year, Introducing the Fabulous Trudy Pitts, featuring guitarist Pat Martino and her husband Bill “Mr. C.” Carney on drums. That same trio followed later that year with her second Prestige album as a leader, These Blues of Mine. Pitts also appeared on Martino’s 1967 debut as a leader, El Hombre on Prestige.

In the mid ‘70s, she played on three albums by Rahsaan Roland Kirk — Other Folks’ Music, The Return of the 5000 LB. Man and Kirkatron. In 1993, she released a solo piano album, Me Myself and I, and continued to focus on piano in the latter part of her career. Pitts died from pancreatic cancer in December 2010 at age 78.

German organist Barbara Dennerlein emerged on the international jazz scene in the mid ‘80s on the strength of her innovative use of MIDI synth pedals to trigger novel sounds (including deep-toned upright bass samples) from her Hammond B-3 organ. She is also well known for her burning sense of swing and authentic feel for the blues. Born in Munich, Dennerlein began on organ at age 11, playing a Hohner before acquiring a Hammond at age 13. By 14, she was playing concerts and in jazz clubs, often leading her own bands. In 1982, at age 18, she made her first television appearance, billed as “The Organ Tornado from Munich.”

Dennerlein made her first records in the mid ‘80s on her own small label, Bebab, before being signed to Enja Records and releasing her acclaimed Straight Ahead in 1988, followed by Hot Stuff in 1991 and That’s Me in 1992. She jumped to the Verve label in 1995, premiering with Take Off! later that year and following up with 1996’s Junkaroo and 2000’s Outhipped. She has since released a string of recordings on her own Bebab label while continuing to tour Europe.

Hailing from Osaka, Akiko Tsuruga established herself on Japan's jazz scene before relocating to New York City in 2001. Mentored by Hammond B-3 organ legend Dr. Lonnie Smith, she began playing with icons like Lou Donaldson and Grady Tate before establishing herself as a leader in her own right on the NYC jazz scene.

An inventive, ebullient player who carried the spirit of elder statesmen and role moderls like Jimmy Smith, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Charles Earland, Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff, she made her recording debut as a leader with 2004’s Harlem Drive (featuring Tate on drums). Her 2008 album, NYC Serenade, featured another legendary drummer. Jimmy Cobb. Akiko would later form close partnerships with tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, guitarist Eric Johnson and drummer Rudy Petschauer, her band on 2009’s Oriental Express. She recorded 2019’s Equal Time with guitarist Graham Dechter and drummer Jeff Hamilton. Her final album was 2024’s Beyond Nostalgia. Tsuruga passed away on September 13, 2025, at the age of 58 following a brief illness.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, Linda Dachtyl has been burning up the B-3 since she climbed onto an el-cheapo Sears organ her father bought her at the age of six. Initially inspired by the rock bands she heard at the time that incorporated organ (Rare Earth, Three Dog Night, Santana, Steppenwolf, Lee Michaels, Emerson Lake & Palmer), she got into jazz after acquiring her first Hammond B-3 organ, inspired by such iconic players as Jimmy Smith, Charles Earland, Jimmy McGriff, Groove Holmes and Columbus, Ohio’s own Hank Marr, whom she paid tribute to on her first CD, 2006’s Blue Bop on fellow organist Tony Monaco’s Chicken Coup label (a subsidiary of Summit Records). She followed with 2008’s For Hep Cats and 2015’s A Late One, both on Chicken Coup. Her latest, 2025’s Full Steam Ahead, recorded at her Pterodactyl home studio with husband Cary Dachtyl on drums and Don Hales on guitar, features a “Full Steam Ahead” train medley that includes James Moody’s “Last Train From Overbrook” and Gene Ludwig’s “Back on the Track,” along with renditions of Duke Ellington/Juan Tizol’s “Caravan,” Thelonious Monk’s “Think of One” and “Round Midnight,” Vernon Duke’s “April in Paris” and Burt Bacharach’s “Promises, Promises.”

A complete list of names of women Hammond B-3 players (courtesy of B-3 aficionado Pete Fallico) would also have to include: Gloria Coleman, Jane Jarvis, Carla Bley, Amina Claudine Myers, Miki Yamanaka, Midori Ono, Atsuko Hashimoto, Adrienne Fenemor, Bobbie Lee, Bu Pleasant, Cherry Wainer, Dee Dee Ford, Dottie Timberlake, Ethel Smith, Gayle Serdan, Grace Potter, Jocelyn Michelle, Judy Blair, Julia Driessen, Lady Byron, Lady Margaret, Loretta Whyte, Merit Hemmingson, Mindy Canter, Nonoka Nagao, Roberta Piket, Sarah McLawler, Sundra Manning, Vanessa Rodrigues, Leonieke Scheuble, Ana Petrova and Twinkie Clark.

Looks like I better get to work on a Part VII.

It’s not often that one gets to have an audience with Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla or Orville and Wilbur Wright. But that’s what it felt like when I conducted this Downbeat Blindfold Test with Lester William Polsfuss (aka Les Paul) back in 1992. The man whose name is synonymous with the solid body electric guitar he introduced back in 1952 revolutionized the music industry by also pioneering multitrack recording, sound-on-sound (aka overdubbing), tape delay and echo, along with many other sound processing gadgets he developed, like the Paulverizer.

Les’ legacy as a musician, inventor, and creator is still celebrated today. Add two more titles to that list: prankster and comedian. The guy was a regular riot, as anyone who ever saw him in concert can attest. Les loved to tell stories between songs, often with rather ribald punchlines. And there are countless stories of him unexpectedly turn off Chet Atkins’ amp mid-solo or playfully unplug his guitar to make him sweat during their appearances together on record and in concert.

Les first came into my orbit through my father’s Chester & Lester record that he constantly played during my youth.

It was later that I found out about the string of hits that Les churned out during the ‘50s with his wife Mary Ford (formerly the country-western singer Iris Colleen Summers), including “How High the Moon,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” and “Vaya con Dios” The songs were recorded with multiple tracks where Ford harmonized with herself and Paul played multiple layers of guitars.

At the height of their popularity, Les and Mary had a tv show on NBC from 1954-1955 titled Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home, which was sponsored by Warner–Lambert’s Listerine mouthwash. The five-minute show aired five times a day, five days a week, and was used as a brief interlude or fill-in for programming schedules.

By the time I moved to New York in 1980 and later settled into my tiny studio apartment on E. 29th Street, I was just a short walk away from Fat Tuesday’s, where Les Paul held forth every Monday with bassist Gary Mazzaroppi and rhythm guitarist Lou Pallo from 1983 to 1995. I was a regular at Les’ Monday night residency at Fat Tuesday’s and in fact that is where this Blindfold Test with “The Wizard of Waukesha” took place in 1992.

Here’s the actual tunes that I played for Les that afternoon at Fat Tuesday’s:

In April 1996, Les transferred his Monday night residency from Fat Tuesday’s on Third Avenue between 17th & 18th Streets to The Iridium at the corner of 51st & Broadway and continued to hold forth there every Monday night for the next 13 years until shortly before his passing on Aug. 12, 2009. I saw him there frequently, laughing at his every joke while wincing at some. And loving every musical minute of it. Les’ birthday celebration at The Iridium was always a special occasion, featuring a bevy of special guest guitarists, from Pat Martino, Bucky Pizzarelli, Larry Coryell and Russell Malone to Al DiMeola, Jeff Beck, Steve Miller, Larry Carlton, Zakk Wylde and Brian Setzer…and I saw them all there.

I had a personal thrill of a lifetime when I recruited Les to record a track with Pat Martino on the 1997 album that I produced for Blue Note (with Matt Resnicoff) called All Sides Now. The session took place on June 23, 1996 at Sorcerer Sound near Times Square. Les, of course, was a boyhood hero of Pat’s. As he recalled in the book Here and Now: The Autobiography of Pat Martino (which I co-authored): “Another of my earliest guitar influences was Les Paul. Dad, always aware of exposing me to these great guitarists, brought me to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, where Les Paul and Mary Ford were performing. After their performance, we went backstage and Dad introduced me to Les. After we talked, Les handed me his guitar and asked me to play something. He seemed to be impressed with my facility, particularly my ability with the plectrum.”

In his liner notes to Pat’s 1970 Prestige album, Desperado, Les wrote:

“Some years ago I was playing an engagement in Atlantic City and a young lad, accompanied by his parents, came backstage to meet me and request my autograph. When the lad said he was learning guitar, I handed him mine and asked that he play something, Well, what came out of that guitar was unbelievable. His dexterity and his picking style were absolutely unique. He held his pick as one would hold a demitasse…pinky extended, very polite. The politeness disappeared when pick met string, as what happened then was not timid but very definite I was very impressed and the momory of this lad stuck with me. Although I lost track of him, I figured that sooner or later I was bound to hear him again.

“Several years later, I began hearing reports of a young guitarist playing in the New York area who was really scaring other musicians with his ability and musicianship I tracked him down to a club in Harlem, and aside from the fact that the reports of his being a great guitarist were not exaggerated, I found that this was the same lad who had visited me in Atlantic City. Now grown up, and with the extra years of practice and experience, he had grown into a musical giant.”

And so, their meeting at Sound on Sound that June day in 1996 was a reunion, of sorts. Since I had been regularly attending Les’ Monday night gigs at The Iridium, I was well aware that he would close each night with a romp through “Caravan” with bassist Paul Nowinsky and guitarist Lou Pallo in tow. The band was tight and Les seemed very comfortable with this Juan Tizol-Duke Ellington tune. It seemed like the perfect vehicle to have Pat and Les collaborate on for the All Sides Now session. So I got ahold of the music, xeroxed it and dutifully faxed it to Pat’s home in South Philadelphia, just so he could brush up on the tune before going into the studio. And Les, who was already well acquainted with the piece, having ended every set with that tune at The Iridium every Monday night, was certainly prepared.

So we get into Sound on Sound with Pat, Les, Lou Pallo and Paul Nowinsky. We do a quick tune up and test levels. Matt and I go into the control room, leaving the musicians in the live room to play together in close proximity. And just before we hit the record button, I can hear Les say, “Hey Pat, you know this one?” And he starts playing “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You).” This last-second switcheroo by Les was the equivalent of him pulling Chet Atkins’ guitar chord out of the amp right before his solo. Pat hesitated for a moment, then jumped in with the familiar melody on that quintessential Tin Pan Alley tune. And the rest is history. They got it in one take!

Hearing about the passing of the enigmatic guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer, who died peacefully in his sleep on June 3, triggered a flood of memories for me. Blood was a proponent of an edgy new musical movement that captured the New York avant garde scene when I arrived in the Big Apple back in 1980. Characterized by a compelling free-funk undercurrent with lots of dissonance overlayed on top, this new ‘harmolodics’ sound had its origins in Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time band, initially on 1976’s Dancing in Your Head (A&M/Horizon), then more pointedly on 1978’s Body Meta (Artists House) and 1982’s Of Human Feelings (Antilles). That trailblazing band featured the two-guitar attack of Bern Nix and Charles Ellerbee and was fueled by the throbbing, funky undercurrent of electric bass phenom Jamaaladeen Tacuma and super drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, who was replaced by the two-drum tandem of Calvin Weston and Ornette’s son Denardo for Of Human Feelings.

Being an Ornette disciple, having already featured the cutting edge alto saxophonist along with bassist Tacuma and drummer Denardo Coleman on his 1978 album Tales from Captain Black (Artists House), Ulmer was deeply into harmolodics by the time he released his followup album on the U.K.-based Rough Trade label, 1980’s Are You Glad To Be In America?, with saxophonists Oliver Lake and David Murray, drummers Calvin Weston and Ronald Shannon Jackson and electric bassist Amin Ali (son of avant garde drummer Rashied Ali). By the time I came to NYC, Ulmer was part of Dr. George Butler’s hip new roster at Columbia Records, providing him and labelmate Arthur Blythe with more visibility than they ever had in their careers. Ulmer’s premier on the prestigious label was 1981’s exhilarating Free Lancing while Blythe made some waves with 1979’s Lenox Avenue Breakdown and 1980’s Illusions (both featuring Ulmer on guitar).

Ulmer would follow up his major label deal with other ‘avant gutbucket’ offerings like 1982’s Black Rock and 1983’s Odyssey (a superb trio date with violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow) before releasing Live at the Caravan of Dreams in 1985 and America — Do You Remember the Love? (his lone Blue Note date) in 1987).

Ulmer was also a key player on a succession of recordings through the ‘80s and ‘90s by the group Phalanx (with tenor saxophonist George Adams, bassist Sirone and drummer Rashied Ali) and the Music Revelation Ensemble (featuring saxophone powerhouse David Murray, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson). Ulmer’s own album as a leader in 1996, Music Speaks Louder Than Words, was a quintet outing showcasing the compositions of Ornette Coleman. He was also a part of the supergroup Third Rail (with bassist Bill Laswell, organists Bernie Worrell and Amina Claudine Meyers and The Meters drummer Zigaboo Modelist) that same year, releasing South Delta Space Age.

Following a Reunion of his Odyssey band in 1998, Ulmer would focus on getting back to his South Carolina blues roots on a series of recordings produced by and featuring Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, including 2001’s Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions (recorded at Memphis’ Sun Studios), 2003’s No Escape from the Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions (recorded Jimi Hendrix’ Electric Lady Studio in the heart of Greenwich Village), 2005’s Birthright and 2007’s Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions (recorded in New Orleans. His last album as a leader was 2009’s In and Out for the German In+Out label.

It was in the mid ‘90s that I became aware of Ulmer’s 1970 recordings as a sideman with organist Big John Patton — Memphis to New York Spirit and Accent on the Blues. He was playing ‘out’ even then, long before recording his own first album as a leader.

I also did very much enjoy Ulmer’s 1977 recording Revealing, a real swinging effort featuring George Adams on tenor sax, Cecil McBee on bass and Doug Hammond on drums that I discovered some time in the ‘90s.

I also was particularly fond of the New Art Jazz Quartet, Ulmer’s quartet with pianist John Hicks, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Rashied Ali, which I got to see in some rare gigs at Sweet Basil and Birdland (including this 2001 performance, which I attended):

I did get to interview Blood once in 1994 at his loft on Greene Street in SoHo, just a few doors down from his neighbor, drummer Rashied Ali. Here is that brief piece from that interview that I wrote for the April 1994 issue of Guitar Player:

James Blood Ulmer’s Harmolodic Blues

Fifteen years ago, New Yorkers were buzzing about this freaky cat who was touted as a harmolodic Taj Mahal. A disciple of Ornette Cole-man, James Blood Ulmer was decidedly “out there,” yet he retained an earthy Delta feel characterized by jangling open-string drones. Critics called his style “avant gutbucket” and heralded Ulmer as “the next new thing.”

“Back then, the loft scene was happening in jazz and new wave was happening in rock,” Ul-mer remembers. “It was a good period for enterprising musicians who wanted to do alternative, experimental music. There was a lot of excitement in the air.”

During this period, he used a Gibson Byrd-land with what he calls a ‘diatonic harmolodic’ tuning. “It’s a unison tuning where every string is tune to the same note, like a one-string guitar,” he explains. “You’re not thinking chords and scales. It’s total freedom.” After recording three critically acclaimed, cutting-edge albums for Columbia in the early ‘80s — Free Lancing, Black Rock and Odyssey — Ulmer was unceremoniously dumped by the label. In 1987, producer Bill Laswell tried to resurrect Blood’s career with America — Do You Remember The Love? on Blue Note.

Now Ulmer is back with a new ax, new album and new attitude. For Blues Preacher (DIW), his most accessible record to date, Blood swapped his usual Gibson Byrdland hollow body jazz box for a solid body Steinberger guitar tuned to E A B G D, leaving the sixth string tuning to last-minute impulse. “I give the guitar five strings and I take one for me,” he says.

Though Ulmer is currently pursuing a vocal-oriented blues-rock direction, he still delves deeply into harmolod-ics with the Music Revelation Ensemble (Sam Rivers, Hamiet Bluiett, Arthur Blythe, Cornell Rochester, and Amin Ali). He also plans to record an ambitious album for string quartet and guitar. “I think of my music as blues,” says Blood. “Other people might not, but I do. I can get up and play the blues all night. I’d like to eventually play with guys like Magic Slim and Lucky Pe-terson, but my real dream is to hook up a gig with Taj Mahal. That’d really be something.” BILL MILKOWSKI

Rollins would put his horn on the shelf for good just two years after this article had come out. And now, 14 years later, both he and the Kennedy Center are gone.

In reading the comments that Rollins gave me in our brief phone interview for this JazzTimes story, I was struck by his genuine and admirable humility, a rare quality in this Trumpian age. I was especially taken by this section:

As for Rollins, he has more to do than collect awards. “I appreciate all these things” he says, “but as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t given myself an award yet. I’m still working on my music. I haven’t gotten it all together yet. I’m still practicing every day, trying to get closer to my ideal. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach perfection, but I had hoped that one day I would become so fluent in my musical expression that I could play anything that came to mind. I think I can get closer than I am now. So that’s what I’m still striving for. 2011 is certainly not the end of my years as far as my own musical development is concerned.”

Rollins adds that he is especially proud of the Kennedy Center distinction, “because that’s great for jazz music. It’s the kind of exposure that jazz needs. And in a way it’s not for me, it’s for the people who came before me. It’s for Duke Ellington, who didn’t get one. It’s for Lester Young, who didn’t get one. It’s for Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, who didn’t get one”

And the piece ended with this bit that perfectly wraps up his career and his life:

As for his own incredible endurance and indomitable spirit on the bandstand, Rollins says, “I’ve always had a strong musical engine going on inside of me, and every time I play I usually go by that and I really don’t realize that I’m 81. I’m probably not supposed to be so enthusiastic or so dedicated or so involved at my age. It’s just something that happens automatically.

“It’s about being in the moment,” he continues. “All we have is the moment. There’s no past, there’s no future — it’s the moment. That’s it.”

Rest in power, Mr. Rollins.

I feel blessed to have witnessed Sonny Rollins in concert on so many special occasions. There was his solo sax performance at the Museum of Modern Art on July 19, 1985, where he strolled the sculpture garden outdoors, occasionally catching the pitch of a passing ambulance or cop car and instantly doubling it and harmonizing with it. It was the single greatest act of pure improvisational genius that I had ever witnessed up to that time.

A month later at the Chicago Jazz Festival on Aug. 28, 1985, while performing at the Petrillo Bandshell in Grant Park, he had even the most curmudgeonly jazz critics in the press section dancing their asses off to his joyful calypso set-closer, “Don’t Stop the Carnival.”

There was his memorable performance at Tramps on April 12, 1997 and his unforgettable 80th birthday celebration on Sept. 10, 2010 at the Beacon Theater, where he was joined by special guest Ornette Coleman on a bluesy and swinging “Sonnymoon for Two,” backed by Christian McBride and Roy Haynes, that eventually headed to more avant garde territory halfway through the marathon 21-minute version. And it was interesting to see how much Ornette’s playing really affected Sonny and opened him up on that extended jam.

Perhaps most moving was Sonny’s appearance at the Ornette Coleman Tribute at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn on June 12, 2014. Sonny couldn’t play anymore but he kicked off the all-star concert with some heartfelt words, paying respect to his peer: “I’m going to say something that Ornette already said to me: It’s all good. Don’t worry about anything. We might not see it right now, but it’s all good.” It is indeed, Mr. Rollins. R.I.P.

I was lucky enough to have seen the great drummer Jimmy Cobb in action multiple times over my career, beginning with a couple of gigs he made in Milwaukee during the ‘70s as a member of Sarah Vaughan’s trio — the first a 1977 outdoor concert at the historic art deco bandshell in Washington Park as part of the Milwaukee County Jazz Galaxies Festival (in which Sarah split the bill with Mel Torme); the second at the 1978 Kool Jazz Festival, a massive touring multi-city concert series sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation’s Kool cigarette brand, at the Performing Arts Center (again sharing the bill with Torme, who was backed by the 13-piece Gerry Mulligan big band).

After moving to New York City in 1980, I would see Cobb numerous times in different situations, whether it was him leading his Cobb’s Mob (with guitarist Peter Berstein, bassist John Webber and pianist Richard Wyands), playing with the 4 Generations of Miles band (with tenor saxophonist George Coleman or Sonny Fortune, guitarist Mike Stern, and either bassist Ron Carter or Buster Williams) or backing the likes of Cedar Walton and Freddie Hubbard at the Village Vanguard, Nat Adderley at Sweet Basil, Charlie Rouse at Fat Tuesday’s, Eddie Gomez at Visiones or playing alongside bassist Walter Booker, saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Ricky Ford, trumpeter Roy Hargrove…on and on.

There was one memorable night in the late ‘90s when I walked into The Savoy (not the famous 10,000 sq. ft. Savoy Ballroom in Harlem that was a key scene for dancers during the Swing era, but a funky former biker bar on 40th Street and 9th Avenue near the Port Authority that had converted into a jazz club and had a short run there). Adam Scone was the house organist at the Savoy and this night he was playing with Cobb, among others who were sitting it. I’ll never forget the timing of me walking into the club and some overserved patron at the bar literally falling off his stool and hitting the floor perfectly in synch with Cobb’s cymbal crash. The choreography of that was beautiful.

Apart from seeing Cobb perform numerous times, I also got to interview him on several occasions, including for this Before & After session for the November 1999 issue of Jazz Times magazine.

Jimmy Cobb Before & After

The lone surviving member from 1959’s landmark Kind of Blue sessions, drummer Jimmy Cobb is still swinging forcefully and creatively at age 80 while leading a couple of different working bands. A recent recipient of the NEA Jazz Master Award, Cobb spent a great deal of 2009 touring with his So What Band (trumpeter Wallace Roney, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, pianist Larry Willis and either Buster Williams or John Webber on bass) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that Miles Davis masterpiece.

Cobb also plans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Davis’ Sketches of Spain (which he also played on) with several performances next year, beginning with a weeklong engagement at New York’s Iridium nightclub in January 2010.

Meanwhile, he has just released a new ballads project, Jazz in the Key of Blue (Chesky), which finds the revered elder joining forces with trumpeter Roy Hargrove, guitarist Russell Malone and bassist Webber. His rhythmically assured pulse and signature cymbal beat can be heard on countless sessions over the past six decades, including some of the all-time classics by jazz giants like Davis, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Wynton Kelly. This Before & After session was conducted at the midtown Manhattan office of Chesky Records.

Miles Davis
“Morpheus” (from Miles Davis & Sonny Rollins: The Classic Prestige Sessions, 1951-1956, Prestige). Davis, trumpet; Rollins, tenor saxophone; Bennie Green, trombone; John Lewis, piano, composition; Percy Heath, bass; Roy Haynes, drums. Recorded in 1951.

BEFORE: I seem to recognize that one a little bit. That’s Miles with Sonny Rollins, with one of my favorite Sonny Rollins solos on it. And that sounds like Snap, Crackle & Pop [Roy Haynes] on the drums. I remember hearing this record when I was a teenager still in Washington, D.C. I used to have this. It’s one of the records I went out and bought. In fact, I listened to it so much I kind of memorized Sonny’s solo a little bit back then.

AFTER: Well, Roy is easy to identify. All that cross sticking he was doing here gave it away. He still does that, but he used to do it a lot back then. In fact, he was one of the first ones that I heard play like that. I met him around that time, too, in ’51. He came to D.C. with Luis Russell’s band and we got to be friends, because he was the kind of guy that you could talk to. Then another time he came back with Pres. I used to see him come down there a lot.

That cymbal intro by Roy is pretty unusual for him.

Well, he was trying to be inventive there. That’s what he’s always been doing, coming up with little things that are really connected to Roy Haynes. Like the way he plays on the snare drum, which is why they used to call him Snap, Crackle & Pop.

2. The Great Jazz Trio
“Someday My Prince Will Come” (from Someday My Prince Will Come, Eighty-Eights/Columbia). Hank Jones, piano; Richard Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums. Recorded in 2002.

BEFORE: [laughs out loud during the drum solo ] Well, I’m kind of thrown by the piano player. It sounds like Bill [Evans], but it sounds like Bill scuffling. … I don’t know why he would be scuffling. So it sounds like Bill, but it doesn’t. And that’s Elvin. The bass player is probably the guy who used to play with Bill, Scott LaFaro.

AFTER: I thought about Richard Davis. I remember these dates. They did two or three of them together. But to me, it sounded like Hank trying to have a feeling like Bill. Elvin … you can’t hide Elvin anywhere, even on a waltz like this. See, even on ballads, Elvin plays the whole cymbal beat on snare drum. That’s how come I can get him out of the closet like that real quick. And then, of course, when he went into his solo … there ain’t nobody else like that. Yeah, he’s an octopus after that. I remember doing a gig with Hank in Japan and we were playing a ballad. And he got finished playing the solo and he looked at me and says, “You got it.” I got what? [laughs] He wanted me to play a solo on the ballad like Elvin just did here. I don’t know, I probably got away with something, but that was surprising just to do that on the bandstand like that.

I thought it was clever to open this piece with the riff from Bird’s “Scrapple From the Apple” before segueing right into “Someday My Prince Will Come.”

Yeah, the Joneses are like that. That whole family was tricky. Elvin was tricky like that on the drums, Thad was tricky like that on the trumpet and Hankenstein, as I call him, was tricky like that on piano. Hank tells me that he had a sister who played piano and if she had lived she would’ve bumped them all off because she was that bad. That’s some good genes in that Jones family.

3. Ed Thigpen Trio
“Sometime Ago” (from Mr. Taste, Justin Time). Thigpen, drums; Tony Purrone, guitar; Mads Vinding, bass. Recorded in 1991.

BEFORE: I got a blank for that. I don’t know who the guitar player is. It sounds like John Scofield or somebody like that. The bass player might be Eddie Gomez. And the brushes sound real good here. Is it Lewis Nash?

AFTER: No kidding! Ed and I started out about the same time on the road. He was with Cootie Williams’ band and I was with Earl Bostic. Then he had all those years with Oscar Peterson and I always knew he played good brushes. That’s one of his signatures. Another great brush player is the guy who plays with Diana Krall now, Jeff Hamilton. I thought it might’ve been him on this tune. Thigpen was noted for his brush playing because he probably had to do a lot of it with Oscar. And we each had our own different approaches to playing brushes. It’s whatever works for you.

You’re noted for your brush playing on “Flamenco Sketches” from Kind of Blue and all the stuff you played on Porgy & Bess and Sketches of Spain.

For me, it was just a question of giving Miles what he wanted. Miles would ask for different things at critical times. Like one time we were working with Gil Evans and the big band and Miles came over and said, “Make it sound like it’s floating.” So I came up with something that felt like that. Then Gil came over and said, “Floating is cool but you have to keep the band together.” So some kind of way we got it together.

It’s a tricky balancing act between keeping time and eliminating the notion of time.

Yeah, but with that particular pattern you just keep hearing One all the time. So long as you’re gonna hear One, that’s all they have to have. And if you just keep doing that, it’ll work itself out. A guy was asking me one time, “How do you play with the brushes?” And I told him, “Well, there’s only a certain number of things you can do. There’s one pattern that you play that’s like a cymbal beat on the snare drum. Then there’s the thing where you make a slow kind of a circle thing from right to left with the left hand while the right hand is going from left to right. And anything you come up with after that that keeps the band together, it works. So there aren’t a whole lot of things. Basically, it’s what you can get away with while still keeping the band together. Make it mellow for the band. I had to play brushes a lot when I was with Dinah Washington when I first came to New York [in late 1951]. Before I even left home I played a couple weeks with Billie Holiday. She’s got some really slow stuff, like “God Bless the Child” and “Don’t Explain,” where you gotta play brushes. So I had to get into that. So I had a lot of experience playing brushes behind singers before I ever got with Miles. And then after I left Miles I worked with Sarah Vaughan for nine years, and you know she does really beautiful slow ballads. So I got to play a lot of brushes with her during that period. There’s definitely an art to playing brushes and everybody’s got their own way to do it.

4. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers “Hammer Head” (from Free for All, Blue Note). Blakey, drums; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone, composition; Cedar Walton, piano; Reggie Workman, bass. Recorded in 1964.

BEFORE: Well, that’s Art, Curtis, Wayne and Freddie. The piano player I couldn’t get. It sounds like either Cedar or John Hicks. I’m trying to think, who else was playing in the band at that time? I don’t know who the bass player was at the time either. It could’ve been Reggie Workman.

AFTER: Art is the only one who could beat out like that, single or double stroke. And he’s strong with that shuffle beat. He’s really kicking that band here. He was a guy who could put things where they were supposed to be. Some guys might say, “Aw, man, I don’t wanna play no shuffe.” But if it was supposed to be a shuffle, Art put it there. If it’s supposed to be there, you’re supposed to give it up. And he came from a time where that was the daily thing. People were playing shuffles all the time back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and that’s what they expected from a drummer, to be able to play the backbeat and shuffle. Just like tenor players. When they went to a gig they were expected to hold B flat and walk the bar. That was the only way to get a gig back then. As good as they could probably play, that’s what the proprietors at that time figured was needed to get customers in their joints—honking tenor players and backbeat shuffles. That’s all they knew. And believe me, I played a whole lot of shuffles in Earl Bostic’s band.

McCoy Tyner remembers when he was a teenager seeing Trane playing a gig in Philly where he was walking the bar and honking.

Right, that’s what was expected.

And you can hear that earthy quality in Art’s playing here.

Yeah, that’s some stuff that he had to do daily coming up.

But then he’s also so powerful in terms of how he orchestrates the band from the kit, coming off of those press rolls here.

Well, he got that from Billy Eckstine’s band. Art got a real education in that band. Billy Eckstine had all the real killer players in that band. Anybody that you could name that was prominent later on came out of that band-Bird, Dizzy, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, Leo Parker, Sassy [Sarah Vaughan]. Art Blakey was the drummer in that band and I used to see them when they came to D.C. at the Music Hall. I got to know Art later on after I got to New York. I left Washington with Earl Bostic’s band and we were traveling with Dinah Washington, whom I got socially involved with. We were living together on 7th Avenue and 122nd Street and in the same building was Dizzy and [his wife] Lorraine, Erroll Garner ... it was like an artists’ kind of a building. So through Dinah I got to meet a lot of people during that period, including Art. He wasn’t as good then as he got to be later on, but you could always tell he was a powerful drummer.

5. Tony Williams “Obsession” (from Angel Street, Blue Note). Williams, drums, composi-tion; Wallace Roney, trumpet; Billy Pierce, tenor saxophone; Mulgrew Miller, piano; Charnett Moffett, bass. Recorded in 1988.

BEFORE: Sounds like Tony and Wallace, and I’m trying to think who the tenor player was. Who was the piano player?

AFTER: I never knew Charnett Moffett was in that band. That was a powerful group he had at that time. Tony was a very talented young man. When I first met him he was still up in Boston. In fact, I met Howard Johnson with him, met them both on the same day. He used to come by when I was up there with Miles at Storyville and wed hang out, fool around on my drums and stuff. Tony studied with Alan Dawson for a while, but Alan said he couldn’t teach Tony nothing because Tony was into his own place, so I don’t think that lasted too long. But he used to come down from Boston and stay with Max Roach sometimes. We got to be good friends. He had something really different from everybody else. It’s like over the years things change with the drums, different styles come along. A long time ago it was Klook [Kenny Clarke] and Max, then Art Blakey and Buddy Rich. Then Elvin came along and changed the way the whole thing was going. And Tony did the same thing. So you get those kinds of guys that changed the way that drums were played over the years.

And Tony was one of those pioneers that changed the way that people played the drums. The way he could play things off the meter—all those really quick fills—and still be in the meter, he could really do that well. Quick hands and quick feet, and his mind was quick too. He could change from thing to thing and be right on it still. And he could play anybody’s style. Wallace told me that he used to play my stuff, Max’s stuff, Buddy Rich’s stuff, Art’s stuff. He could probably play anybody’s thing. He probably thought, Why not play all that stuff? And he had his own little thing there, too, which was great. It’s a shame the way that ended up with him. That’s really a travesty the way that happened. I wouldn’t have ever thought that I’d be here and he’s not.

6. Jeff “Tain” Watts “Dingle-Dangle” (from Watts, Dark Key). Watts, drums, composition; Terence Blanchard, trumpet; Branford Marsalis, tenor saxophone; Christian McBride, bass. Recorded in 2008.

BEFORE: That one tricked me altogether. I don’t have no idea who it is unless it’s Monk Jr. because of that Monk reference in there. I think it’s “Trinkle, Tinkle.” I don’t know, but the drummer sounds overpowering here.

AFTER: Jeff “Tain” and I were born on the same day. Yeah, he’s a powerful drummer, alright, and he’s got a great sense of humor, which you can hear in this piece. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize both him and Christian McBride. I just played at the Hollywood Bowl with Christian a couple weeks ago, doing a Miles tribute with some Porgy & Bess music and Sketches of Spain.

I love Christian. We also made a couple records together [New York Time with Cedar Walton and Javon Jackson, West of 5th with Hank Jones; both recorded in 2006 for Cheskyl, so I should’ve known it was him. And Jeff, I hadn’t heard him play recently, so that’s probably what threw me about that. But hearing this, you can tell it’s a drummer’s band because the sound of drums is overpowering. I made a record for Branford’s label [2006’s Marsalis Music Honors Jimmy Cobb] where he wanted a bunch of drum solos and things on it, so I did that. Some drummers figure if they’re the bandleader they need to play drum solos on every song, but I don’t like to play drum solos on every tune. I like for it to be music most of the time. On my new album we made it no drum solos because we were going for a mellower vibe and drum solos weren’t compatible with that.

7. Newport All-Stars “Old Man River/Caravan” (from 1964 Newport Jazz Festival, wolfgangsvault.com). Jo Jones, drums; Billy Taylor, piano; Slam Stewart, bass; Ed Hall, clarinet.

BEFORE: Well, that’s Papa Jo.

You got that one quick.

Well, there’s only one of him. Nobody was as slick with brushes as Papa Jo. It’s hard to play brushes that fast. He’s amazing, man. Of course, he’s the one that started that hi-hat beat with the Count Basie band that everybody started to do later on. I saw Max do it, I saw Roy do it. So he invented a lot of stuff for drummers to work on. And they’re still trying to get it together.

AFTER: I got to see him doing this solo drum routine. That’s the beauty of it, to actually watch him doing it. He was a real showman. Hed do stuff with his hands and his fingers on the snare drum. Hed play the rims; hed do flashy stuff with the sticks; he’d do stuff around the drums; he’d play four on the floor like they used to do in the big-band days. And he’d be up there on the bandstand smiling the whole time he was doing all of that stuff. I imagine that was sort of the way that Chick Webb played too. Papa Jo told he used to play for a lot of tap dancers, so he’s got all that intricate little stuff that he used to have to play for those guys. We got to be good friends, too. In fact, he used to come to where I was playing and bring me an apple. Every time that he’d come he’d hand me an apple. I never knew what that was about, but I always accepted it and was flattered that he would do that.

photo by Steven Sussman

I first encountered the dynamic presence of hard-swinging drummer-bandleader Ralph Peterson at one of his regular Fo’tet gigs at Sweet Basil in the late ‘80s. Ten years later, when Michael Brecker was going out on a European tour in the summer of ‘98 and needed to find a sub for Jeff “Tain” Watts, I recommended Peterson. Mike later called to report how thrilled he was at the chemistry he and Ralph forged on the bandstand during that tour. Here’s a clip of them playing “Madame Toulouse” from Brecker’s 1998 album Two Blocks From the Edge at the Estival Jazz Lugano.

The following year, Michael guested on Peterson’s 1999 album, Back to Stay, performing on the gorgeous ballad “Soul Eyes,” which also features Ralph playing trumpet . (Yes, he was a doubler. In fact, I remember seeing him doing a Hip Pocket gig at Tramps where he played exclusively pocket trumpet).

I did liner notes for Ralph over the years and was thrilled to catch him at The Side Door in Old Lyme, CT on Oct. 13, 2018 leading the Messenger Legacy Band (with saxophonists Bobby Watson and Bill Pierce, trumpeter Brian Lynch, pianist Geoffrey Keezer and bassist Essiet Okon Essiet). That gig was documented on Legacy: Alive Vol 6 At The Side Door.

Ralph played mightily that unforgettable night in 2018, showing no signs of his ongoing struggle with cancer. And he fought it hard, with the mindset of a heavyweight boxing champion going into the ring every day to do battle. And though he had already been diagnosed in 2015 and was determined to win this fight, Peterson finally succumed to cancer on March 1, 2021 at age 58.

In reflecting on Ralph today, in what would’ve been his 64th birthday, I think back to that day I spent with him in Boston during a summer session for the incoming freshmen at the Berklee College of Music for a Downbeat feature story (December 2018 issue). Here it is:

His urgent vocals on Cream classics like “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Politician” and “White Room” are forever etched on the memory banks of those of us who came up in the ‘60s. Add his raw, roaring, conversational bass lines on those endless Cream jams in concert or his fuzz-inflected bass lines on the title track to Frank Zappa’s 1974 album, Apostrophe, and you’ve got a shoe-in for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But there was much more to Jack Bruce than just those potent milestones.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland on May 14, 1943, he first played bass in Alex Korner’s Blues Inc. in 1962 (alongside future Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts) and in the Graham Bond Organisation in 1963 (alongside future Tony Williams Lifetime bandmate John McLaughlin). There followed brief stints with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers and Manfred Mann before forming the psychedelic blues-rock power trio Cream in 1966, debuting that year with Fresh Cream. The band went on to sell 35,000,000 albums in just over two years and was awarded the first ever platinum disc for a double album for 1968’s Wheels of Fire. Cream split in November 1968 at the height of their popularity and the following year Bruce released his solo debut album, Songs for a Tailor, which featured guest appearances from guitarists George Harrison and Chris Spedding. His second post-Cream album, 1970’s Things We Like, included guitarist John McLaughlin and prominently featured Bruce’s work on acoustic upright bass.

During his tenure with seminal fusion band Tony Williams Lifetime, Bruce appeared on 1970’s Turn It Over and 1971’s Ego. He also played a major vocal role on Carla Bley’s 1971 jazz opera, Escalator Over the Hill, while also playing bass alongside his guitar partner McLaughlin on a few tracks. There followed an early ‘70s stint (and three albums) with another power trio, West, Bruce and Laing (with guitarist Leslie West and drummer Corky Laing, both of the heavy-duty rock band Mountain).

Some of Bruce’s most potent appearances in the ‘80s came in collaboration with Kip Hanrahan, beginning with 1983’s exotic and provocative Desire Develops an Edge and including 1984’s Vertical Currency.

I was fortunate to have interviewed Jack on a couple of occasions during the ‘80s for Guitar World magazine. This one, from the April 1989 issue of GW, was in conjunction with his first major label release in a decade, A Questions of Time, an all-star outing featuring guest guitarists Allan Holdsworth, Vernon Reid, Albert Collins, Jimmy Ripp and Little Feat’s Paul Barrere along with appearance by keyboardist Bernie Worrell, tabla master Zakir Hussain and drummers Steve Jordan, Tony Williams and Bruce’s former Cream bandmate Ginger Baker.

IT’S 2 P.M. AND I’m running late. Jack Bruce sits in the midtown Manhattan offices of Epic Records, waiting, waiting, waiting. I am the captive of a subway train, hopelessly trapped in the city’s subterranean catacombs while a living legend sits and waits for me. We’re going no place fast. Apparently some hapless wretch has thrown himself on to the tracks up by Rockefeller Center, bringing all progress to a dead halt. A long conga line of trains has formed from the point of the unfortunate swan dive all the way downtown to the spot where I sit, mumbling obscenities...

I can’t believe this! Here I am trapped on the A train at the very moment I’m to have an audience with rock royalty. I mean, there are certain people you just don’t keep waiting. The President. The Pope. And Jack Bruce. Why couldn’t this calamity have befallen me the day I took the subway uptown to interview Floyd Rose or maybe Kim Simmons. But noooo! This mook would pick the day I’m set to interview the former bassist of Cream to throw himself onto the tracks. Just my luck!

I arrive at Epic frustrated and over forty minutes late. I imagine Jack breaking into a chorus of I’ve been waiting so long/to be where I’m going…

Informed of my arrival, Jack strides into the room, a pair of cold black shades ill-concealing a look of pity and con-tempt. He lifts the shades a touch and in his finest stern headmaster voice mockingly scolds: “So someone jumped on to the tracks. You call that an excuse?”

He actually has me going there for a second. But suddenly his hardy laugh breaks the tension and we get down to the business of discussing A Question Of Time, Jack’s latest solo project from Epic. “I wanted to get away from synthesizers on this record,” he begins, sounding slightly worn from the effects of jet lag on this promotional trip to New York. “I’ve done a certain amount of keyboard stuff, but on this record I really wanted to feature the guitar. I had the idea early on and just hammered away until I could put it in shape.”

His idea involved recruiting some heavy hitters as guest soloists. No less than Vernon Reid, Allan Holdsworth and Albert Collins take their turns in the spotlight on A Question Of Time, with stunning results. “Can you imagine getting all those musicians in the same room at different times?” he enthuses. “I was very lucky that the scheduling worked out. They were all very busy at the time, but they all made a point of fitting it in. I ended up getting everybody I had originally intended, with the exception of Steve Vai, who I wanted to play on the track ‘No Surrender.’ He couldn’t make it, though, because he had just joined Whitesnake So instead I got Jimmy Ripp, and that worked out real well. I had a good feeling about him from his playing with Mick Jagger, but I hadn’t heard him doing that Steve Vai kind of stuff. Sure enough, he delivered the goods!”

Jack raves about the soaring fretboard work of his longtime colleague Allan Holdsworth on “Obsession,” a tribal rocker with his former Cream bandmate Ginger Baker on drums that sounds curiously reminiscent of “Sunshine Of Your Love.”

“That’s a chilling kind of thing,” he says in awed tones. “That solo blows me away every time I hear it. To me, it is crafted like a great classical Indian sitar solo. I just love the shape of it. You hear this solo and you keep thinking, ‘Oh, it’s about to end now,’ and then Allan will stick in another run and then another run. He keeps going higher and higher with it. It’s incredible. He’s got a pair of ears like no one else. He hears things that nobody else hears and he certainly does things that nobody else can do. I think of him like I think of Jimi Hendrix... like he’s from another planet, musically”

Albert Collins digs in deep with typical ice-pick intensity on another album highlight, his scorching solo in Willie Dixon’s dirge-like “Blues You Can’t Lose.” “I wanted to do a ‘Spoonful’ kind of thing,” he says, referring to the Dixon tune that appeared on Cream’s iconic 1966 debut album, Fresh Cream. “A kind of White Kid From Glasgow Sings the Blues, if you like. I had heard this particular tune on Willie’s album of last year, Hidden Charms, and thought it would be the perfect vehicle. And I was definitely happy to have Albert Collins playing on that one. I think he’s one of the more underrated players around. He’s very unique, using his fingers and playing with a capo the way he does. And he has a very intense attack. He played an absolutely phenomenal set in San Francisco the night before we did the session. He set the place on fire. And he wasn’t just playing in the club, he was playing out on the street, with his patented hundred-foot cord. The night we cut the track he insisted on playing in the big room with the amp cranked up. Everybody else played their solos from the control room, but Albert refused. He said, ‘I wanna see my sound!’ So we let him wail.”

Living Colour’s guitarist Vernon Reid solos with typically ferocious abandon on the hard rocker “Life On Earth,” and the fleet-fingered Vivian Campbell gets in a few good licks at the tag of “Obsession” alongside Holdsworth. Even Jack’s son Malcolm has a go at it, on “Greasin’ The Wheel.”

Conspicuous by his absence from Jack’s star-studded guitar summit is, of course, Eric Clapton. When pressed for a reason why his old Cream-mate wasn’t included in the project, Jack smiles, strokes his chin and slyly states his position. “Ahh...this is a tricky little subject you’ve hit upon here,” he begins. “How do I get around this one? Well, the fact is, I definitely did not want Eric on this record, and I have very strong reasons why not. It will sound strange, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think if I had approached Eric and he had agreed to do it, it would’ve not been an honest and pure project. It would have been a compromise to approach him, and I’m not saying he would’ve wanted to have done it. A certain number of people around me were saying, ‘You must ask him to do it’ and I kept telling them, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ I’ve got my own reasons, and right or wrong, they’re my reasons. There wasn’t a track, really, that was right for Eric on this record anyway.”

Had Clapton appeared on “Obsession,” it would’ve been a Cream reunion. But Clapton is no Holdsworth. And having Clapton on board might simply have been pandering to nostalgia. Perhaps Jack is right. Whatever the case, he’s in no hurry to jump on the Sixties reunion bandwagon.

As it stands, Bruce’s explanation for excluding Eric from A Question Of Time could effectively be read as squelching any Cream reunions in the future. But fans can keep hoping. After their jam at New York’s Bottom Line last year, Jack reported the magic is still there. So who knows? 1991 will mark mark 25 years since Cream formed in England. A silver anniversary tour could be just the ticket.

There is, however, one other significant reunion on A Question Of Time. On the South African-influenced “Kwela,” Jack plays alongside his former employer, drummer great Tony Williams, who led the pioneering fusion outfit Lifetime that lasted from 1969 to 1971. That band’s inner intensity and sense of raucous abandon, fueled by Williams’ powerful drumming, Larry Young’s revolutionary Hammond organ work and John McLaughlin’s proto-punk attack on the guitar, set the tone for such groups as the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever and The Eleventh House. Recalling those turbulent days with fondness, Jack says, “That band is still, for me, the high spot in my musical career. Obviously, the Cream days were fairly astounding. And the hard slough with Graham Bond, when we played some 340 gigs in one year, was invaluable for me in terms of getting my chops together. But Lifetime was a wonderful band. I sometimes try to figure out what it is that made it so unique. I mean, the energy, of course, and the high degree of musicianship were part of it. But there was something else. Something magical that I felt from that band.

Reunions aside, Jack is concentrating on his new album and his new band, which includes Baker on drums for half the night (Lounge Lizard Dougie Brown plays the first half, Bernie Worell and Blues Saraceno on guitar. “I’m real excited about going on the road and playing my new songs and some of the old stuff too. I would like to get some of the recognition for having written and sung most of the Cream songs. That’s one of the things I hope people realize from this record, that I can actually sing. Maybe I’ll even get some recognition from the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame for my contributions to ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’ ‘White Room’ and ‘I Feel Free.’ You know, something corny like an award.”

Shortly after this Guitar World interview, in 1991, Bruce toured briefly with this wildly eclectic all-star ensemble featuring The Meters’ guitarist Leo Nocentelli and avant garde jazz pianist Don Pullen.

Fast-forward a few decades and Bruce was part of a supergroup with guitarist Vernon Reid, organist John Medeski and drummer Cindy Blackman. They record 2012’s Spectrum Road and went on tour in support of the album. Seeing them at the Blue Note in New York was a highlight of that year for me. Bruce passed shortly after, on October 25, 2014, at age 71, leaving behind a recorded legacy that boggles the mind.

And Davis scored something of a hit in 1958 with his two-part version of “The Madison Time,” released during the height of the Madison line dance craze. (Note him calling out the names of Wilt Chamberlain and Jackie Gleason on Part I).

Of course, both Fats Waller and Count Basie had already explored the organ in various recordings during the late 1930s. Here’s two from 1939 by Basie’s Bad Boys:

Fats Waller did also a series of delightful Hammond organ recordings from 1939 to 1943, including these gems:

By the time Jimmy Smith (featured in Part III of this series) came along in 1956 with his bop-fueled B-3 bravado on the two-volume A New Sound…A New Star for Blue Note, the face of the Hammond organ was changed forever. And generations of players followed his soul-jazz example, from Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Charles Earland and Dr. Lonnie Smith to contemporary practitioners like Larry Goldings, Joey DeFrancesco, Mike LeDonne, Tony Monaco, Akiko Tsuruga, Sam Yahel, Pat Bianchi, Kyle Koehler, Jared Gold and Brian Charette.

But there were also those renegade organists who found their own ways on the instrument. Perhaps first and chief among them was Larry Young, who took the hulking 300 lb. beast into more modal and avant garde realms, first with Tony Williams Lifetime in the early and later as a leader in his own right. Often called the Coltrane of the organ,” the Newark, New Jersey native apprenticed with alto sax great Lou Donaldson before working around New York throug the ‘50s with trumpeter Kenny Dorham and saxophonists Hank Mobley, Jimmy Forrest and Tommy Turrentine. He debuted as a leader in 1960 with Testifying on the Prestige label, then quickly followed with Young Blues and Groove Street before jumping to the Blue Note label and releasing a string of forward-thinking albums beginning with 1965’s Into Something (with saxophonist Sam Rivers, guitarist Grant Green and drummer Elvin Jones) and continuing with his 1966 masterpiece, Unity (with trumpeter Woody Shaw, saxophonist Joe Henderson and drummer Jones).

He embraced a funkier muse on 1968’s Heaven on Earth (featuring George Benson on guitar) then dove headlong into fusion with Tony Williams Lifetime (featuring guitarist John McLaughlin), appearing on the group’s audacious debut in 1969, Emergency! , which absolutely startled the jazz establishment with its sheer raw power.

A week before Emergency! was released, in September of 1969, Young also appeared on Miles Davis’ pivotal Bitches Brew, which was released on March 30, 1970 and basically lit the fuse for the explosive fusion movement that followed in its wake. Young delved further into fusion and psychedelia on subsequent outings like 1973’s Lawrence of Newark, 1975’s Fuel, 1976’s Spacebar and 1977’s The Magician. His final recording was the adventurous Double Exposure, a provocative duo collaboration with drummer/percussionist/pianist Joe Chambers. Recorded on November 16, 1977, it was released posthumously on the Muse label in 1978, several months after Young’s passing on March 30, 1978 at age 37. The album was recently remastered for a vinyl reissue on Zev Feldman’s Time Traveler Recordings.

A bevy of brilliant B-3 players followed Larry Young’s renegade example by following their own muse, often with unorthodox and decidedly non-greasy results. Perhaps at the top of that list is John Medeski, whose wild experimentation on the Hammond B-3 organ with Medeski, Martin & Wood has been well documented since the group’s formation in 1991. With Chris Wood on bass, Billy Martin on drums and Medeski on a bank of analog keyboards (piano, clavinet and mellotron along with the trusty Hammond B-3 organ), MMW put a new slant on the organ group tradition with their “avant groove/post-hip-hop” aesthetic on such landmark albums as 1992’s Notes from the Underground, 1993’s It’s a Jungle In Here, 1995’s Friday Afternoon in the Universe, 1996’s Shack-Man, 1998’s Combustification and 2002’s Uninvisible. The so-called “godfathers of the jam band scene” have also collaborated with guitar great John Scofield on several occasions, as documented on such albums as 1998’s A Go Go, 2006’s Out Louder, 2011’s In Case the World Changes Its Mind and 2014’s Juice. In March of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Medeski and Martin posted on YouTube an hour-long, live in-studio video performance as “Bandemic” with Scofield.

(This interview with Hammond B-3 organ maestro Dr. Lonnie Smith originally appeared in the January 2005 issue of JazzTimes).

Sitting behind a hulking Hammond B3 organ, Dr. Lonnie Smith is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a turban. Few people know whether the man some guidebooks say is 62 earned a doctorate in medicine or music. The answer? Neither. One story has it that he earned his “Dr.” moniker from his fellow musicians as a tribute to his ability to “doctor up” their music, although he might have just appropriated the nickname in the mid-1970s to distinguish himself from keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith.

And what about that turban? Smith claims it’s an authentic Sikh wrap, though the Buffalo, N.Y., native seems more Baptist than Sikh. Just who is this genial genie with the long, wispy white beard and ever-present toothy grin who has the power to transport listeners with his swinging, grooving funk machine?

The day after his CD release party at the Jazz Standard in New York for his Palmetto debut, Too Damn Hot!, an interview in the Doctor’s hotel room revealed more about the man beneath the turban.

Despite his numerous mysteries, a few facts remain crystal clear: Dr. Lonnie Smith is a phenomenal B3 burner who can light up a room with visceral intensity or lay down some of the nastiest funk ever played on an organ. He brings an unusually wide tonal palette to bear on ballads and can hit a relaxed midtempo swing like no one else—or slap it with some bacon fat if he so desires. On stage, he shapes songs on the spot the way a sculptor shapes a slab of clay into an elegant pot. With Smith controlling the 425-pound beast (his pet name for the B3), it’s an eternal search for new chordal voicings, fresh grooves and different approaches to old tunes.

“Playing with the Doctor is an improvisational experience in its truest sense, so you have to be ready at all times,” says guitarist and longtime Smith sideman Peter Bernstein. “The spontaneity is unbelievable. He’s such an intuitive player. There’s never an agenda with Lonnie. He’s always looking to see what he can find on the bandstand. You have to be so in the moment, because with him things will go from solid to liquid and back to solid again. It’s always evolving, so it’s just thrilling to play with him—and terrifying at the same time.”

Because he is strictly self-taught and doesn’t read music, Dr. Lonnie is perhaps more naturally inclined to being in the moment than most schooled musicians. Watching him play, you really get a sense of him searching for and finding the music on the spot as he’s playing it, often even surprising himself with his discoveries. “It’s like I’m hearing it for the first time, like how the audience hears it,” he says. “Music is not something that you practice and you get up on the bandstand and run through on automatic pilot. That’s not for me. I enjoy playing too much to memorize stuff. So it’s never gonna be the same when I play. I can’t do it if I wanted to.

“A lot of people who come and hear me, they don’t realize where the music comes from,” Smith continues. “It doesn’t come from notes on the paper or anything like that. What happens is, the music comes from my toe and travels all the way up like electricity. And that’s why I’m surprised when I’m playing. That’s because by playing by ear, I really let my body play what’s in my heart, right there on the bandstand. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived. You should always play how you feel. If you’re hurt, play that. If you’re sad, play that. That’s what I tell my students.”

What audiences see when Dr. Lonnie performs are his wide, dancing eyes, Cheshire grin and ever-present turban peeking above the wooden console. And as he plays, he registers every nuance of approval and delight with a facial gesture. His eyebrows raise when he finds a particular chord voicing that pleases. When he nonchalantly peals off fluid, Bird-like flourishes in his right hand, he grimaces then grins ear-to-ear. And when he offers up percussive-sounding comping from some well-chosen drawbar settings, he seems entirely amused by his choice, almost doing a double take.

“He’s just pure joy when he plays,” Bernstein says. “And by him being a performing, improvising person, it’s really a visual thing as much as it is the sound of what he’s creating because everything he plays is completely in his body, in his face. Everything is a musical gesture. It’s all feeling, so there’s nothing fake about what he’s doing on stage.”

photo by Jimmy Katz

That night at the Jazz Standard, Smith was draped in a floor-length black robe and sported a bright orange turban tightly wrapped and piled high on his head. By now, his turban has become his calling card; one of the most iconic images in jazz since Dizzy Gillespie’s upturned horn. “I used to wear turbans when I was young, way before I first recorded,” he confides. “I started wearing turbans early; I don’t know why. And I didn’t know that this was gonna be it for me when I started wearing them, but I’ve never given it up. I have taken it off and played without it. But at this point the turban has become so much of me that the people expect it; it’s what they recognize. Sometimes I do think, ‘Well, what if I just don’t wear it anymore?’ But that’s me. Taking it off at this point is like pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger. Some people just love that mystery. I mean, why does Michael Jackson wear one glove?”

Smith opened his Jazz Standard gig with “Too Damn Hot,” a slinky, smoldering midtempo blues that set the tone for an evening of scintillating soul jazz by one of the kings of the genre. And as the set continued, the audience surrendered to the compelling grooves, slipping further and further into the funky-good spell of the Turbanator.

Throughout the set he explored the full orchestral potential of the B3, alternating between unpredictable, slashing statements and patient storytelling full of finesse. Patiently, methodically, he got into the guts of the songs, extracting what needed to be extracted, before neatly wrapping them up. Meanwhile, down below he kicked the pedals like he has eyes on the bottoms of his feet, pumping those deep bass lines like a walking upright player and doubling the line with his left hand on the keys to fatten up the low-end groove. “I have so much fun when I’m playing the pedals,” Smith says. “But if you play them you have to decide, What do you want from them? Do you want a real legit sound? Do you want a grumpy sound? Do you want a warm sound? Do you want a real old sound? And I know what I want from the bass pedals. I like for it to flow a lot, which is why I can play them on uptempo songs, too.”

For the supercharged “Evil Turn,” a burner from the new album, young drummer Greg Hutchinson paced the trio with crisp, controlled sizzle on the kit, and the Doctor’s left-hand bass lines killed. “Sometimes on a real fast tune like that one, I’ll step off and do left-hand bass lines,” he says, “because that tempo will tire me out, especially the older you get, playing the pedals at those tempos.”

In a funk bag, like on “Back Track,” he summoned up dynamic shout choruses, orchestrating like a big bandleader. The voicings that he conjured up on a vamp behind Bernstein’s solo were so rich and slyly syncopated that he made himself smile and raise an eyebrow out of sheer surprise. At the peak of his own angular solo, Smith segued neatly into a soulful quote from “Wade in the Water” before layering on some churchy chords. And for his set-ending tune, Dr. Lonnie scatted a blue streak over Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo” before addressing the crowd with the cryptic line: “We’re gonna take a pause but we’ll be white black.”

Lonnie Smith’s first instrument was trumpet, which he took to quite naturally. Learning strictly by ear, he soon became a standout soloist in the high school band. “And at that point I used to go around shoe shining—poppin’ the rag and playing the trumpet just to make a dollar,” he says. Before trumpet Smith had been singing in the church with his relatives and eventually gave up the horn altogether to concentrate on a vocal career. “We formed a vocal group called the Smith Brothers and made $14 on our first gig,” he laughs. “I could hardly believe it. That was a lot of money in 1957.”

At age 16, Lonnie formed a doo-wop group called the Teen Kings that featured young Buffalo native Grover Washington Jr. on sax and his brother Daryl on drums. “As a matter of fact, I used to go to their house and they had an organ there, a little Spinet,” Smith recalls. “But I never played it.” His next vocal group, the Supremes, was formed before Diana Ross came out with her Motown group. “We had already made a record and I was gonna sue to prevent her from using the name,” Smith says, “but I never did.”

The keyboardist remembers getting his first B3 from Art Kubera’s music store in Buffalo and immediately falling in love with the instrument. “I used to go there every day and just sit around in there till closing time,” Smith says. “One day Art came up to me and asked what I was doing and I told him, ‘Sir, if I had an instrument, I could work, I could make a living.’ The next time I came in as usual, he locked the place up and took me in the back, and there in the corner was a brand-spanking-new Hammond B3 organ. He saw my face light up, and he told me, ‘If you can get this out of here, it’s yours.’ It weighed over 400 pounds, but I was determined to move it, so I finally did get it out of there.”

Initially inspired by Jimmy Smith’s 1960 Blue Note record Midnight Special, Dr. Lonnie devised his own play-by-ear method of taming the beast, learning to channel the muse through his fingers. Within a few months, he was on the road as an organist in a regional touring group. Back in Buffalo, Smith sat in one night at the Pine Grill with Jack McDuff’s group, which featured a young guitarist out of Pittsburgh named George Benson. The two immediately hit it off on the bandstand and promised to stay in touch.

But it wasn’t until nearly a year later that Smith finally hooked up with Benson. The two began rehearsing together in the Pittsburgh home of Benson’s mother. “We practiced in his mom’s basement and learned two songs—Clockwise’ and ‘Secret Love.’ Then we took off for New York,” Smith says. “The day we arrived, Jimmy Boyd, who was handling Grant Green, took us down to the Palms Cafe on 125th & Seventh Avenue. Grant was playing there with Larry Young on organ and [Otis] ‘Candy’ Finch on drums, and they let us sit in. And Grant—he wouldn’t let me get off the organ. And practically every day after that, Grant would ask me to play with him. But Jimmy Boyd called him and said, ‘Leave him alone, because him and George are together now.’”

In November of 1965, Benson and Smith got their own gig at the Palms Cafe. Renowned producer and talent scout John Hammond, who had been tipped off about this super-bad guitarist playing Uptown, happened to come into the club one night and catch Benson and Smith—who had been hired to play behind the club’s go-go dancers. Hammond, whose keen appreciation of guitar players had led him to discover Charlie Christian 26 years earlier, was so elated by what he heard that night at the Palms that he tried to sign Benson on the spot, using one of the bar napkins as a substitute contract. Hammond later got Benson’s signature on a proper agreement, and in February 1966 they went into the studio with Smith, baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber and drummer Jimmy Lovelace to record It’s Uptown, the guitarist’s Columbia debut as a leader.

A month later, in March 1966, Smith received a chance to record his own album as a leader for Columbia, Finger Lickin’ Good, which featured Benson and Melvin Sparks on guitars, King Curtis on tenor sax, Cuber on baritone sax, Charli Persip and Marion Booker on drums and Blue Mitchell on trumpet. Before the year was up, Hammond had the George Benson Quartet back in the studio to record its follow-up album, The George Benson Cookbook, which carried the album cover tag “Featuring Lonnie Smith, organ.”

While Benson’s and Smith’s albums were well received by players and jazz purists, the two broke through to a higher level of visibility after appearing on Alligator Bogaloo, Lou Donaldson’s 1967 surprise hit album for Blue Note. “After that, George and I took off pretty good because the record moved,” Smith says. “And shortly after it hit, Duke Pearson [pianist and Blue Note A&R assistant] called me and said, ‘I think they want you on Blue Note,’ even though I was on Columbia at the time. But they managed some kind of way, and I ended up over on Blue Note.”

A string of four funky Blue Note releases ensued: 1968’s Think!, 1969’s Turning Point, the live Move Your Hand (recorded with Smith’s working band at Club Harlem in Atlantic City on August 9, 1969) and 1970’s Drives. A fifth album, Live at Club Mozambique, was recorded in Detroit on May 21, 1970, but remained shelved for 25 years, ultimately being released in 1995 as part of Blue Note’s Rare Groove Series.

The Doctor maintained a relatively low recording profile through the ’70s and ’80s, cutting material infrequently for small labels like Kudu, Chiaroscuro and Groove Merchant before experiencing a new wave of activity in the ’90s in the wake of a B3 revival, spearheaded by Joey DeFrancesco.

Too Damn Hot! shows the Turbanator at the top of his game, and he continues to tour with his own trio, perform regularly with his longstanding colleague Lou Donaldson and with guitarist Mark Whitfield while also making special guest appearances with the Canadian horn band Crush and with the Organ Summit featuring fellow B3 mavens Jimmy McGriff and Reuben Wilson. “I’m just doing what I love and that’s it,” he says. “You have no idea that you’re making a statement when you’re on the bandstand, you just play. But it does feel good to know that your stuff is still potent after all those years.”

Continuing my appreciation of the majestic Hammond B-3 organ in its many manifestations, Part III and Part IV in this ongoing series focuses on two separate interviews conducted ten years apart with two legendary B-3 players — the undisputed heavyweight champion of the B-3, Jimmy Smith (for a February 1995 interview of Jazz Times), and Dr. Lonnie Smith (for a January 2005 issue of Jazz Times).

The Jimmy Smith interview was conducted by phone on Sept. 29 1994 — me from my home office in New Orleans, where I lived from July 1993 to November 1996, Jimmy at his home in Los Angeles. Jimmy’s wife Lola answered the phone when I called and she informed me that he was right in the middle of watching a cowboy movie on tv, a favorite pasttime of his. I hated to interrupt, but Jimmy got on the phone and seemed in a particularly good mood. That’s an understatement. He was wildly extroverted and in X-rated party humor mode, a la Rudy Ray Moore or Robin Harris. I remember thinking, “This cat should be doing standup comedy albums,” along the lines of Eddie Harris’ 1976 spoken word album, The Reason Why I’m Talking S—t!

Our conversation for the next half hour was freewheeling and hilarious, and after it was over I realized that I had maybe five or six minutes of useable material. He did talk about the development of his trademark Hammond B-3 organ style and his current recording at the time (Damn! on Verve), but the rest was a wild stream of consciousness monologue full of expletives. At the end of our chat, I mentioned to Jimmy that I had just polished off a catfish dinner at my favorite New Orleans restaurant, Uglesich’s, a legendary place on Baronne Street in Central City that Croatian immigrant Sam Uglesich had opened back in 1924 and was currently being run by his son Anthony. “Catfish? Ooooh, you dirty dog!” Smith moaned with envy. When I went on to describe the specifics of the dish —chef Anthony’s popular Muddy Waters catfish topped with jalapeno peppers and garlic —Jimmy made an unusual proposition: “I’ll tell you what...next time I come to New Orleans, I think I might suck your dick if you treat me to some catfish.” Unfortunately, I moved from New Orleans the following year and never had the opportunity to follow up on Jimmy’s generous offer. Here’s that Jazz Times piece from 1995:

He is now and has been for the past four decades the king of the hill, the baddest of the bad, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Hammond B-3 organ. When Jimmy Smith jumps on an uptempo groove and lets his right hand fly or when he digs deep into a greasy blues with real-deal intensity, practitioners and connoisseurs alike can only sit back in utter amazement, shake their heads in disbelief and mutter...Damn!

An all-out blowing session, Damn! confirms Jimmy Smith’s status in the B-3 world; still the organist that everyone is chasing. For this fiery session, Smith’s inimitable B-3 burn is highlighted alongside some of the hottest young horn players on the scene today. Challenged by Young Lions like guitarist Mark Whitfield, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton, saxophonists Tim Warfield, Mark Turner, Ron Blake and Abraham Burton, Jimmy rises to the occasion and wails with abandon. Teeming with energy, Damn! harkens back to Jimmy’s landmark recordings from 38 years ago with a young Kenny Burrell, Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley and Donald Byrd (recently compiled and released by Mosaic Records as a three-cd boxed set entitled The Complete February 1957 Jimmy Smith Blue Note Sessions). That same no-holds-barred intensity prevails on Damn!

From funky throwdowns like James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” Horace Silver’s “Sister Sadie” and Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” to scorching bop anthems like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ‘N’ You” and Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple,” the entire session is marked by scintillating interplay. Anchored by bassist Christian McBride and drummers Bernard Purdie and Arthur Taylor (in his last recorded performance), Jimmy drives the session from behind his hulking B-3 like a seasoned quarterback taking his team downfield for a last minute touchdown in the Super Bowl. Simply put, the sparks fly on Damn!

James Oscar Smith was born on December 8, 1928 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Both of his parents were pianists and his father was Jimmy’s primary teacher. At the age of nine, he won first place in a Major Bowes Amateur Hour contest playing boogie woogie piano. At the age of 12, he teamed with his father in a song and dance act, performing at various clubs and on radio shows in and around Philadelphia. Following a stint in the Navy, he used the GI bill to attend Ornstein’s School of Music, where he studied bass and piano. It was in 1951, while playing in Don Gardner’s Sonotones, that he became interested in organ. Soon after acquiring a Hammond B-3 organ, he went into a self-imposed period of intensive woodshedding that lasted nearly a year.

Since the release of his 1956 Blue Note debut, A New Sound...A New Star...Jimmy Smith At The Organ, Vol. 1, few organists have received as much attention. A perennial poll winner since the late ‘50s, Smith redefined the cumbersome instrument while opening a new door in the process for generations of players to come. As the late Leonard Feather wrote in his Encyclopedia Of Jazz: “The first attempt to bring the organ into the orbit of contemporary jazz was undertaken by Jimmy Smith, an extraordinary musician who makes fuller use than other jazz organists of the variety of stops at his dispoal. Smith plays fast tempo jazz improvisations in a style that would have blended perfectly with Charlie Parker’s combo, had Smith risen to prominence during Parker’s lifetime.” In a word…Damn!

With swagger and sass, Jimmy took the cumbersome 300-pound instrument to a new level beyond where B-3 pioneers like Milt Buckner, Bill Doggett and Wild Bill Davis had gone before him. Smith’s new sound utilized the first three draw bars and the percussion feature of the Hammond B-3. He also cut the tremelo off and began playing fluid horn-like lines with his right hand, inspired by players like Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas and Arnett Cobb. As he once explained, “I copped my solos from horn players. I don’t listen to keyboard players. I can’t get what I want from keyboard players,” although he also admits that Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Erroll Garner were important influences.

Jimmy, in turn, has influenced generations of musicians. His inspiration has been acknowledged by countless other organists including Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Booker T, Billy Preston, Larry Young, Lonnie Smith, Richard Groove Holmes, Georgie Fame, Joey DeFrancesco, Barbara Dennerlein and John Medeski. His continuing influence is reflected in today’s acid jazz scene via sampling by groups like the hugely popular Us3, who regard Jimmy Smith as the godfather of soul-jazz.

Perhaps Clive Davis of The London Times put it best when he wrote: “Smith continues to extract an awesome degree of power from his keyboard. The slick walking bass lines laid down by the pedals and the cluster bomb explosions of blue notes from his right hand have been copied by admirers across the generations. His ability to build to a dramatic gospel climax remains undiminished.” That testimony rings true on Damn!

You recently opened for Horace Silver at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Later Horace was overheard saying, “I’m not gonna let anybody ever book me to follow that crazy Jimmy Smith.

Yeah, I heard that. “He didn’t even leave a piece of stage for me to play on. He burned the place down!” I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was under a spell—my mojo spell. You know anything about voodoo? I spread some mojo dust all around the bandstand before I go on. Then I spread just a teeny bit around my organ and I let my tenor player step on just a little bit of the powder. That’s to keep his ass hot. And that’s how come he burns so much. When he plays, he plays! The rest of the stuff, the aroma just goes all over the bandstand.

So you got your mojo woikin’.

I gotta keep it woikin’!

Did you do the same thing down in Osaka when you made that live record last year (The Master II) with Kenny Burrell?

Hey man, we had it working there, too. And the drummer Jimmie Smith—I had to spread a little bit around the drums ‘cause he sound scared of me. He never played with me in his life. He played with Jimmy McGriff but he never played with me. And he told me, “It’s altogether different when you’re playing with Jimmy Smith. Everything—all my life has changed.” He said, “Jimmy Smith will rejuvenate you, change your stuff around.” ‘Cause I had to teach him how to play with me. A drummer can’t just jump up and play with me, not just any drummer. ‘Cause I’ll lose him. Oh man, he’ll get lost in the shuffle…dropping sticks and everything.

And that mojo dust works?

Hey, motherfucker, if I come down there to New Orleans again to play, I’ll put a spell on you. You won’t know your way home. You be driving on the wrong street somewhere.... “Damn, I thought this was Rampart!”

That live in Osaksa album is great. Sounds like you were all in a good mood that night, playing some blues in Japan on the night before Christmas.

Oh man, we had champagne and Kentucky Colonel chicken. Yeah, we had the Colonel in Osaka, man! That’s the day we went on top of the Hilton, the penthouse. Man, they had a nice buffet up there. Kenny took his bear with him and I had my wolf with me.... Uh, well, Lola’s a lion.

Your wife Lola says all you wanna do is eat and look at the cowboy movies.

That’s right.

And never gain a pound.

You got that right. And I’m almost 66 years old, you know.

It’s great to hear you still playing with Kenny Burrell after all these years.

And he don’t look too old either. He’s getting gray but the face is still young.

Elvin Jones is another guy who looks eternally youthful.

No, well, Elvin’s too ugly to look old. That’s an ugly man. You know what happened? When we first met it was Haight-Ashbury in Frisco, and man...I was off on Monday, I was playing at the Jazz Workshop and he was playing at the Blackhawk. So anyway, I wasn’t working on this Monday and he was on. So I walk in the door to catch Elvin’s gig and the guy at the door says, “Jimmy Smith, come on in! Elvin Jones is here, man. I hope you guys can hook up tonight, man.” And here comes Elvin, “Hey, man, we’re gonna get into something tonight, OK?” I said, “What? I ain’t never played witchyou, man.” So he just grabbed me, and he’s strong anyway...I had to put all my little karate shit on his ass. I grabbed his dick. He say, “Turn my dick loose, motherfucker.” I say, “Man, don’t fool with me, boy!” Everybody say, “Jimmy Smith is crazy, don’t fool with him.” ‘Specially when I’m not playing...And I’m “off,” I’m really off. It’s what the black people call you. It’s not o-f-f, it’s o-a-f. They say, “The nigger’s oaf.” That’s from the South. Say that. It sounds good. It’s got a ring to it. So anyway, we play. Elvin broke the sock cymbal right off, man. He done broke that sucker, ‘cause he’s so strong, man. And when we got done, I was soaked, he was soaked, our socks were wet. I’m serious, Bill. Our socks were soaking wet! I messed that suit up—you know, all that salt you get from sweating. You ever see a musician with those white armpits? These motherfuckers with all that salt beadin’ their ass up?

Just like a race horse?

Exactly.

I just got this Mosaic box in the mail.

The what?

Mosaic Records just put out that boxed set of your stuff from 1957.

I never heard of Mosaic Records.

They compiled all your Blue Note recordings from three days in February 1957.

Oh man, I don’t know about that. It’s probably sitting back there unopened with a bunch of other records I ain’t never had time to get to.

You don’t listen much to music at home?

Nope. But do you know I’m doing a rap thing with the Plus Three?

Plus Three?

We Three?

You mean Us3?

Well, somebody’s damn three!

Yeah, it’s Us3. Or as they say down here, Y’all Three.

[Laughter] Yeah, goddamn! You got that sucker on the head, boy! Y’all Three. Whatever the fuck they are. Well, you heard about the three little monkeys, right? Hear nothin’, see nothin’, fuck nothin’... that’s them! But we played together over in London. Man, them kids was going crazy! I mean, I never heard young people holler so loud. It’s not like when the girls used to holler for Frank Sinatra, right? It’s not that kind of holler. This is like a violent, exciting, stomping their feet kind of holler. We did four nights, had 600 people every night in this small club. They just jammed ‘em in. And the only thing about it, buddy...my wife got a contact high. They had some reefer, some hash....I mean, smokin’ in the club! My wite came past them going up to the soundboard so she could hear what it sound like, you know. And by the time she got to the dressing room she be sayin”, “Whoooo! Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy! What are they smokin’ out there?” And I say, “Oh shit!” And I stepped out the dressing room door and the shit hits you right there. And she came all the way through that whole crowd that was smoking reefer. Man, she stayed in that dressing room the rest of the four nights. She didn’t move nowhere. She was really high. And her eyes was all funny looking and shit. Man, that was a wild gig. Of course, I also played Carnegie Hall this year. Did you see me on there, Bill?

I was there (Verve Records’ 40th anniversary celebration]. Yeah, that was a great show.

Why didn’t you come back and say something?

They had such a tight security thing happening it was hard to get backstage.

It was, it was terrible. They were putting all the managers out. They actually were gonna put Lola out until one of the fellas said, “You gonna put Lola out, then Jimmy’s not gonna play.” And the other fella said to Lola, “No, no, no, I better let you inside because I understand Jimmy has a temper.”

So tell me about Babs Gonzalez?

That nut! That damn nut! Oh, Bill, man...Did you know him?

No, but I loved his records.

Yeah, but damn, man, he was a nut! I met him in 1957. We were in the studio at 70 Broadway with [Blue Note founders] Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. I had Eddie McFadden on guitar and Donald Bailey on drums. And, you know Babs, he lets everybody know when he’s making his grand entrance. He used to wear a cape. He was like Batman and shit. Ask anybody about Babs Gonzalez. He wore a cape and all that kind of shit. And he thought he was gonna be my manager. He was telling people he had discovered me but I was discovered already. Blue Note had came down to Philadelphia and they heard me play there. Babs said he brought them down, you know, like he’s my manager. So I had to deck this motherfucker, man. Did you know about his red pepper he’d throw in your eyes? Oh shit, he’d keep that in his lapel pocket. He wouldn’t fight. He couldn’t fight. He’d just throw pepper in your eyes, then he’d whup yo’ ass. So this man…He say, “I’m your manager, motherfucker!” And he put that forceful voice shit on. And I say, “Oh no you not!” And you know, I been in the Golden Gloves since I been seven years old. In Philadelphia you got to be able to pug. You don’t pug, you get your ass kicked too much. So I pugged my ass over. I was knockin’ suckers out that were damn near 195 pounds when I was in the Golden Gloves. You know what I mean? I decked them suckers, man. And when I hit Babs, he laid out so pretty like he was going to a funeral or something. I hit that motherfucker so hard. See, I forgot ‘cause I lost my temper. But he went out so nice, laid right on the floor, and Alfred Lion is running around screaming, “Oh my god, Jimmy’s killed the man!” Frank Wolff be coming around with his camera and everything. It was chaos in that fucking studio.

I know you got into some kind of karate.

Yeah, for 25 years now.

I’ve seen your album Respect (Verve, 1967), where you got your kung fu robe on the cover.

Not kung fu, motherfucker. That’s shotokan! And that means sho-kill-yo-ass. Yeah, I studied that particular method. Shotokan is when you go to the diaphragm and pull out the fucking food, show him what he ate for dinner, you understand? And I mean that shit! Go in there, pull them fuckin’ greens out, put ‘em right in the guy’s face and watch him faint. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that would come in handy on the subway.

Hey man, shit, you don’t need no damn gun. Pull them fucking intestines out—and they be movin, you know, like worms. That shit be running all over my damn hand.

OK... Switching topics here, how about telling us something about your early development on the organ.

Well, I wanted to learn fast, you see. I’m self-taught, you know. I left my organ in the warehouse where I supposed to pick it up and take it home. But I didn’t want people to know I couldn’t play that sumbitch. ‘Cause I couldn’t play it at first. So I left it in the warehouse and then...incidentally, the warehouse that I left it in, my daddy had plastered this particular warehouse. I’m a plasterer by trade. My dad taught us, me and my brother. So it was right on time. My daddy was nicknamed Mr. Blue Jimmy. Anyway, I asked if I could store my organ in this little room and practice, and the warehouse guy said, “Do anything you want.” So I stayed in that warehouse a year. I’d take my lunch, I’d take three sandwiches. And what I did, I had a guy make me a chart on the wall of the pedals, so I would look at that chart instead of looking down at the pedals to see where you was putting your foot. You look at the chart—that’s how I taught myself from the chart so I wouldn’t have to look down. You can’t be looking down at the damn pedals on a gig. You wanna get the people’s attention. So I taught myself my damn steps and I had to find my own sound. I kept pulling out stops until I lucked up on these three damn flute things. Then I cut my tremelo off to give it a big sound, and that sounded good. And that’s where I got my sound. ‘Cause I can put my tremelo to fast or medium or whatever to get the sound you want, see? So when I came out that fuckin’ warehouse, man, I was ready for anybody!

So you still play the same type of instrument?

Yeah, same one, Hammond. Forty years and those motherfuckers never gave me one. They never gave me shit. I’m still mad at ‘em. So anyway, I stayed in the warehouse for about a year — got a down payment from a loan shark, Mr. Goldstein. And he told me, “Now Little Sonny, I’m gonna have a man collecting every Saturday night.” And man, this motherfucker Bob would come in to the club—he’d be half tanked anyway — and he always carried that damn piece with him because if you didn’t pay, he’d blow your ass away. So I made sure I had that motherfucker’s money, you know? Hey man, I paid for my organ. Anyway, I got to playing some blues one night and people be shouting…you know how black people holler, like they in church! Piercing sound—it hits you. Well, Bob was getting into it. He had been drinking and he got excited and puts up his hands in the air and yells out, “Yeah!” And his piece falls on the floor. Somebody shouts, “Man got a gun! Lord have mercy, man got a gun!” Cleared the fuckin’ bar! And you know how black people are…they can move, boy! Now there’s a spiral stairway in this club. Can you imagine a bunch of black folks trying to get up a spiral stairway—crawling all over each other, ladies got their dresses up, their bloomers showin’ and shit…and I’m lookin’. It’s hard to get past somebody on a spiral stairway, but niggas can tiptoe past each other, man, doin’ ‘bout a hundred mile an hour. Man, with a gun? You kiddin’? They were flying up that damn staircase like a black Batman or something. And the poor little Jewish club owner comes out in the middle of all this...“Vat iz goink on? Ver de people go? Vat gun? Ver iz de gun? Whooz got de gun?”

Sounds like a scene from a movie.

Yeah, man. We had some fun back in the day. Still do.

NEXT: MY AUDIENCE WITH DR. LONNIE SMITH (AKA THE TURBANATOR

As I reported in Part I of this diatribe last month, it was unavoidable for anyone with ears and a modicum of curiosity to not encounter the Hammond B-3 organ during the ‘60s and ‘70s, in either the rock or jazz worlds.

Rockwise, you had multiple organ-fueled hit singles from 1967 in the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man” (with Steve Winwood on Hammond B-3 organ), Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (with Matthew Fisher on organ) and Vanilla Fudge’s bombastic take on The Supremes hit from the previous year, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” The following year saw Jimi Hendrix’s bluesy jam on “Voodoo Chile” from 1968’s Electric Ladyland (with Winwood on organ), Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (organ by Doug Ingle) and Deep Purple’s 1968 “Hush” (with Jon Lord on B3). Early ‘70s into the Hammond B-3 organ sweepstakes included Allman Brothers’ “Tied to the Whipping Post” (from 1971’s At Fillmore East) and Argent’s 1972 hit “Hold Your Head Up” (with a fantastic B-3 solo by Rod Argent that was cited by Rick Wakeman as the “greatest organ solo ever”).

Jazz-wise, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the B-3 during the ‘60s was Jimmy Smith, whose soulful blues-gospel approach mixed with bop complexity on a string of Blue Note albums including 1960’s Crazy! Baby!, 1961’s Midnight Special and 1963’s Back at the Chicken Shack set a high bar for organ group work.

There followed a succession of great B-3 players who emerged on the scene in Smith’s wake, including Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Don Patterson, Baby Face Willette, Big John Patton, Shirley Scott and funkmeister Lonnie Smith (before he began wearing a turban and referring to himself as Dr.), all of whom conveyed requisite chops and abundant soul.

One prodigious player who departed from the soul-jazz pack was Larry Young. Known as “the Coltrane of organ jazz,” his complex modal improvisations with avant garde leanings, both with Tony Williams Lifetime and as a Blue Note recording artist during the ‘60s, blazed a new trail for the B-3.

No list of Hammond B-3 players from my youth would be complete without some mention of The Mighty Burner, Charles Earland. A man as hulking as the Hammond itself, the Philly-based Earland started off playing tenor saxophone at age 17 in Jimmy McGriff’s band before switching to organ and forming a band with fellow Philadelphian and South Philadelphia High School classmate Pat Martino. As Martino recalled in Here And Now: The Autobiography of Pat Martino: “Charles was a tenor player in the high school band, and a good one at that. At some point he got turned on to the great organist Jimmy Smith, who was also from Philadelphia, and we went down to Atlantic city one time to see Jimmy perform at the Jockey Club. We were both teenagers at the time. Charlie hear Jimmy Smith play the Hammond B-3 that evening and was just floord by the magic. He was just so compelled he thought he was hallucinating it. And that’s when Charlie decided he was going to switch from tenor saxophone to Hammond B-3 organ. Charlie and I then got together and we practice for two, three weeks, then went to play a gig in Buffalo at a placed called the Pine Grill.”

After forming his own group, Earland scored a hit with 1970’s Black Talk! for the Prestige label on the strength of his groovy shuffle-swing instrumental version of The Spiral Starecase’s ebullient 1969 pop hit, “More Today Than Yesterday.” Earland would continue to feature that tune as a smile-inducing set-closer until the end (he died from heart failure on Dec. 11, 1999 at age 58 the morning after performing a concert in Kansas City, Missouri). I still have fond memories of seeing The Mighty Burner on multiple occasions at Smoke in NYC, unleashing on that infectious tune while snapping his head and blinking his eyes to the beat.

(Part III will examine a flood of new Hammond B-3 releases that have recently caught my attention).

He blazed the fusion trail with The Free Spirits, the renegade NYC band he formed in Greenwich Village in the mid ‘60s with bassist-vocalist Chris Hill, guitarist Columbus “Chip” Baker, saxophonist Jim Pepper and drummer Bob Moses. Bridging the worlds of rock and jazz before anyone was doing that, The Free Spirits’ debut on ABC Records, Out of Sight and Sound, was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studio on Sept. 14, Oct. 5 and 18, 1966, just a few months after Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Revolver came out. Released in January, 1967, it preceded the release of Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced by seven months, Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency! by two and a half years and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by three years.

“I have to give Coryell credit,” said his Free Spirits bandmate Moses (listed as “Bobby” Moses on Out of Sight and Sound). “He was the first musician that I met in New York who was equally dextrous in both the jazz bag and the rock bag. He understood both worlds really well, and I think it took somebody like that to make the rest of us all appreciate rock & roll. I have to admit that I was a terrible bebop snob before I met Larry. I used to think that if you couldn’t swing and make the changes and play bebop, you were bullshitting. The very first time I heard Larry, he was playing bebop like Wes Montgomery, and I thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s a great player!’ Next time I heard him, he was playing a Chuck Berry thing, and really playing it well. I think that because of the fact that I saw his jazz chops first and had the respect, it made me take the rock thing seriously. So I started to listen to rock after that and found that there were things I liked.”

A Texas-born, West Coast-bred lad of 24 when he arrived in New York City from Seattle in 1965, toting a Gibson Super 400, Coryell dug Kenny Burrell and Barney Kessel while his favorite album at the time was The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery. He had great taste and unlimited potential, plus chops to burn. But something happened to alter his plans of becoming the next Wes Montgomery. By 1966, culture shock had set in, resulting in an abrupt change of course. “Everybody was dropping acid, and the prevailing attitude was ‘Let’s do something different,’” Coryell told me in a 1984 Downbeat cover story. “We were saying, ‘We love Wes, but we also love Bob Dylan. We love Coltrane, but we also love the Beatles. We love Miles, but we also love the Rolling Stones.’ We wanted people to know that we were very much a part of the contemporary scene, but at the same time, we had worked our butts off to learn all this other music too. It was a very sincere thing. And what came out of it ultimately became a very big, lucrative movement.”

“The Free Spirits was absolutely like nothing else. It was like Coltrane/Albert Ayler meets Motown, B.B. King and the Beatles. Because the songwriting was great in that band, but it was also so free having Jim Pepper blowing tenor the way he did. We were supposed to be playing rock ’n’ roll but we’d start our sets with Pepper doing a 20-minute unaccompanied tenor sax solo. Things like that were unheard of in 1965 for rock groups.”

“And Coryell was like...WOW!,” Moses continued. “He was getting feedback with his guitar long before I heard Hendrix or Sonny Sharrock or Derek Bailey do it. Now there’s probably a bunch of avant-garde guitar players using feedback, but he was the first one that I heard doing that. So Coryell was really an electic guy, but he could also play as beautiful and straight ahead as Wes Montgomery. He did a record later on called Lady Coryell(Vanguard, 1969) where he does a beautiful jazz ballad version of ‘You Don't Know What Love Is.’ So he had that whole world covered as well."

Coryell’s 1970 album Spaces, which included guest appearances by John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Miroslav Vitous and Chick Corea (before the formation of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report and Return To Forever) was a seminal fusion offering in that burgeoning movement. He followed with such powerful albums as 1971’s Barefoot Boy and 1974’s Introducing the Eleventh House before settling into a purely acoustic guitar zone with three releases in 1976 — Two For the Road (with fellow guitarist Steve Khan), Twin House (with guitarist Philip Catherine) and The Lion and The Ram — along with 1978’s Splendid (with Catherine) and 1979’s Tributaries (with John Scofield). He subsequently tackled imposing classical pieces by Maurice Ravel (Bolero), Rimsky Korsakov (Scheherazade), de Falla (Noches En Los Jardines De España) and Stravinsky (Petrouchka).

Following a brief stint with the Guitar Trio (with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia) Coryell would enter a rehabilitation hospital to help him deal with a debilitating alcohol problem. He emerged with a new lease on life in 1984 with Comin’ Home, his straight ahead bop-flavored outing with pianist Albert Dailey, bassist George Mraz and drummer Billy Hart. Along with versions of Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation” and the Rodgers & Hart show tune “It Never Entered My Mind,” Coryell performs three swinging originals, including “No More Booze Minor Blues” and “Good Citizen Swallow,” which was dedicated to bassist Steve Swallow. It was then that I interviewed Coryell for the first time. My piece, entitled “Back To The Roots,” was a cover story in the May 1984 issue of Downbeat. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship (to quote Bogart in Casablanca) that lasted until Larry’s passing on Feb. 19, 2017.

I saw Coryell perform numerous times around New York City over the years, including memorable gigs at the Blue Note, Fat Tuesday’s, Birdland, the Jazz Standard and Iridium. I interviewed him several times for various magazines, both Stateside and abroad. And I wrote numerous sets of liner notes for his albums, including 2006’s Traffic, 2008’s Impressions: The New York Sessions and 2011’s Night of Jazz Guitars. I’ll never forget his outrageously boisterous laugh, his wicked sense of humor or the kindness he showed my daughter on the couple of occasions that I brought her along to recording sessions. She was just a cute little kid back then, just starting out on violin. And she must’ve made a big impression on him because everytime I would interview him after that, the first thing he would say was: “How’s Sophie?”

Miss you, Larry!

You flick on the beast and it rumbles to life. It breathes. Its massive silhouette — “as distinctive as the flaring fans of a ‘60 Coupe de Ville,” as Keyboard magazine senior writer Robert Doershuk once put it — encompasses 300 pounds of musical beef (400 when you add in the pedal board and bench). Add another 100 pounds or so for the Leslie speakers and it’s really a 500 lb beast. So moving it around is like schlepping a Sub-Zero refrigerator.

I first encountered the beast in person as a little kid through my Uncle Tom Garrison, a kindly gentleman on my mother’s side of the family who lived out in rustic Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin and was, in fact, a Hammond organ salesman. Uncle Tom would give us demonstrations of what his Hammond could do, pointing out its two 61-note keyboards, four sets of nine drawbars, vibrato dial and 96 tone wheels inside that were powered by an actual oil-lube motor. And I always marveled at the bass foot pedals (which Uncle Tom always played with his shoes off) as well as the cheesy-sounding Rhythm II beat box that was attached to the hulking anachronism.

The sound of Hammond B-3 organ underscored my rock youth in tunes like Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” (1966), The Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” (1966) and “I’m a Man” (1967), Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967), Sly Stone’s “Dance to the Music,” Deep Purple’s “Hush,” Steppenwolf’s 1968 hits “Born To Be Wild” and “Magic Carpet Ride,” the Allman Brothers 1969 hit, “Tied to the Whipping Post.” Going back even further, I have distinct memories of my older brother Tom playing Dave “Baby” Cortez’s 1959 hit single, “The Happy Organ.” I was five at the time and that may have been when the sound of Hammond B-3 organ first snuck into my consciousness. And the theme song from the 1960 CBS tv show, Henry Mancini’s “Mr. Lucky,” was yet another early organ-fueled number that must’ve fueled my young imagination in ways I couldn’t have even known then (I was six).

A real breakthrough for me came with the October 1968 release of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. Of course, I had already been over the moon about his 1967 debut, Are You Experienced (released that summer, and the first album I ever bought with my own money) and his followup, Axis: Bold As Love (released on Dec. 1 of that same year). But what set Electric Ladyland apart from those two groundbreaking releases was the use of Hammond B-3 organ (played by Steve Winwood of the aforementioned Spencer Davis Group) on the slow grinding blues jam, “Voodoo Chile,” which at nearly 15 minutes was Jimi’s longest studio recording.

Shortly after, I heard strains of “Night Train” from Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes by Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery wafting through some guy’s car down at the Alternate Site, a natural green alcove located directly across from McKinley Beach on Lake Michigan where hippies congregated on weekends to attend free rock concerts. That blew my mind, as did “The Cooker” from George Benson’s 1966 album, The Cookbook, which featured Lonnie Smith on Hammond B-3 organ (before he began wearing turbans and self identifying at Dr. Lonnie Smith.

From there I delved deeply into the whole lineage of organ jazz groups, from Brother Jack McDuff’s 1969 Prestige compilation, Steppin’ Out, which featured Benson on a monstrously killing version of the slow blues “Our Miss Brooks” as well as Pat Martino on “Chicken Feet,” Grant Green on “Godiva Brown” and Kenny Burrell (under the hip pseudonym K.B. Groovington) on “Shaky” and “Moody McDuff.”

After moving to New York in 1980, I had a wealth of B-3 lounges to choose from, including Dude’s Lounge, The Lickety Split, The Lenox Lounge and Showman’s in Harlem as well as the funky Savoy (formerly a biker’s bar) on 40th Street near Port Authority, where Adam Scone held forth on Hammond B3 organ, often alongside drumming great Jimmy Cobb.

By the late ‘80s, organist Larry Goldings began playing a regular Thursday night gig with guitarist Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart up at Augie’s on 106th & Broadway. That club near Columbia University would later close in 1998 before transforming a year later into Smoke, co-owned by Paul Stache and Frank Christopher, who both previously worked at Augie's as bartenders. Nearly 27 years later, Smoke remains the premier organ group club in New York City. And Goldings has emerged as one of the premier organists on the scene today for his trio work with Bernstein and Stewart (they have released a dozen recordings since 1991’s Intimacy of the Blues (the latest being 2022’s Perpetual Pendulum) as well as past endeavors like 2006’s Suadades, a powerhouse Tony Williams Lifetime tribute featuring guitarist John Scofield and drummer Jack DeJohnette, with Goldings assuming the Larry Young role on organ) and more recent projects like his funk band Scary Goldings (featuring Sco as a guest).

Over the years I got to interview organ greats like Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff and Dr. Lonnie Smith. I attended Joey DeFrancesco’s “coming out” party in 1993 at The Five Spot featuring an all-star crew of saxophonists in Illinois Jacquet, Grover Washington, Jr., Kirk Whalum, and Houston Person, and got to interview Joey numerous times over the years for feature stories and liner notes. I’ve gone back into the archives to appreciate such past greats as Big John Patton, Charles Earland, Reuben Wilson, Don Patterson, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Baby Face Willette, Winston Walls, Shirley Scott, Rhoda Scott, Melvin Rhyne and Gene Ludwig. And I’ve also discovered newer talents like Brian Charette, Pat Bianchi, Mike LeDonne, Tony Monaco, Sam Yahel, Jared Gold, Chris Foreman, Gregory Lewis, Barbara Dennerlein, Delvon LaMarr and the late Akiko Tsuruga. Oh yeah, and John Medeski, who as co-founding member of jamband godfathers Medeski, Martin & Wood also collaborated with Scofield on 2006’s Au Go Go.