Hard Bop by the late David H. Rosenthal;

Author:the late David H. Rosenthal;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 1992-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

If the tenor was one pillar of soul jazz, the other was the electric organ—to be exact the Hammond B-3—which in effect was given its jazz debut by Jimmy Smith in 1955. Although Smith legitimized the instrument in jazz, he did not, of course, invent it. As early as the 1920s, we find Fred Longshaw accompanying Bessie Smith on harmonium. Fats Waller also made some brilliant recordings on pipe organ in the late 1930s. He had started playing the instrument in his father’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and later worked as house organist at the Lincoln Theatre in the same neighborhood. The detail about Waller’s church backgound is significant, for the electric organ really evolved as an important instrument in black music in the context of gospel. It also gained a certain standing among Swing musicians. Count Basie doubled on electric organ, while Milt Buckner, a veteran of Lionel Hampton’s band, made it his primary instrument after 1952. But perhaps the most important piano-to-organ switch prior to Jimmy Smith’s was Wild Bill Davis’s—among other things because hearing him in 1953 inspired Smith to do likewise.

Davis, who had been pianist and arranger for Louis Jordan’s jazz-and-blues ensemble between 1945 and 1948, pioneered a roaring, excitement-building approach to his instrument that made him a natural choice when Lockjaw Davis decided to cut a tenor-and-organ album: “One of the ventures I did at that time was a tenor and organ record. This was in 1951. I wanted to do it with Wild Bill Davis who was working as a single then, but he had a contract with another record company so I used Bill Doggett, who had been a pianist with Ella Fitzgerald. On bass we had Oscar Pettiford and the drummer was Shadow Wilson. This was the first organ and tenor album. It came out on Royal Roost Records and sold very well in the States. I made some more afterwards with Doc Bagby for King.”14

Doggett, who had also worked with Louis Jordan, went on to record a string of hits for King. The biggest of these was “Honky Tonk,” which sold four million copies and helped him win Cashbox magazine’s awards as top R & B performer in 1957, 1958, and 1959. Another pioneer (this time in jazz rather than R & B) was Les Strand, whom Smith has called “the Tatum of the organ.”15 Strand began playing bebop on his instrument in the late 1940s and recorded several albums for the Fantasy label in the fifties.

The Hammond B-3, a now endangered species no longer being manufactured, offered jazz/R & B performers a number of advantages. It produced a huge sound that could compete with the ghetto’s most boisterous audiences. It was also the first synthesizer, and as such could generate a variety of tones. While these tones had little in common with the instruments they purportedly replicated—such as “trumpet”—they certainly offered a wide range of effects. The B-3’s pedal could produce a bass line that enabled the organ to replace both piano and string bass.

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