Jimmy Smith Has Passed

[Lazaro Vega]

The "back to basics" description was held out for blues and gospel as those root forms found their way into modern jazz of that era...Smith, in other words, helped define "hard bop" as players began to get away from the headier aspects that bop had wandered off into and tried to reconnect with the listener's heart, or ass, as the case me be. But because the back to basics aspect was there does not mean it was mutually exclusive to bop. It was based on bop.

[Jim Alfredson]

What about this film?

Jimmy O Smith

what tha faaa.....HOW DO I GET THIS!!!!!

Same here. Been search since I came across this today. Hopefully it still exists somewhere.

JOS Organist:

Closest we can get

---

Now playing: WKCR - Columbia University

Is there SERIOUSLY any way of finding this. It's GOT to be out there somewhere. Any ideas?!

What's with the "wild cock" thing?

Mike, have you seen the trio's appearance on the old Jazz Hour show? It's floating around on VHS... it's Jimmy Smith, Don Bailey, and Quentin Warren. Cool to see them in the flesh, jammin' away.

[Soul Stream]

What about this film?

Jimmy O Smith

what tha faaa.....HOW DO I GET THIS!!!!!

Same here. Been search since I came across this today. Hopefully it still exists somewhere.

JOS Organist:

Closest we can get

---

Now playing: WKCR - Columbia University

Is there SERIOUSLY any way of finding this. It's GOT to be out there somewhere. Any ideas?!

What's with the "wild cock" thing?

Mike, have you seen the trio's appearance on the old Jazz Hour show? It's floating around on VHS... it's Jimmy Smith, Don Bailey, and Quentin Warren. Cool to see them in the flesh, jammin' away.

Jim, I have that DVD of them on JAZZ Scene USA, w/Oscar Brown Jr. hosting...is that the one you're talking about...they do "Walk On The Wild Side" "Mack the Knife" and "The Champ"...

is that the one you're talkin' bout?

[Jim Alfredson]

Yes, that's the one. I need to get a copy of that myself. A buddy of mine showed it to me awhile ago.

[Free For All]

Yes, that's the one.  I need to get a copy of that myself.  A buddy of mine showed it to me awhile ago.

Get 'em all. All worth owning. I particularly like the Cannonball and of course the Rosolino.

[CJ Shearn]

I have that on VHS. Would like to get on DVD

[Free For All]

I have that on VHS.  Would like to get on DVD

Here ya go my man!

[CJ Shearn]

thank you. I knew it was available from there. I will have to snap it up sometime down the road though.

[Peter Johnson]

Well, of course this happened when I was in Seattle. Just pulled it off of the Philly Inquirer website tonight...even at that, a day late and a dollar short. Enjoy yourself on the other side, J.O.S...

Jimmy Smith services set

• Funeral services for jazz legend Jimmy Smith [were] today [Thursday, 2/17] from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Deliverance Evangelistic Baptist Church, 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia. A viewing will take place from 8 a.m. to noon.

A jam session to honor Smith, who died last week at 76, will follow from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Clef Club, Broad and Fitzwater Streets. Musicians are urged to bring their instruments to send Smith, hailed as the world's greatest jazz organist, off in style.

[Free For All]

A jam session to honor Smith, who died last week at 76, will follow from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Clef Club, Broad and Fitzwater Streets. Musicians are urged to bring their instruments to send Smith, hailed as the world's greatest jazz organist, off in style.

I'd be interested to hear about this. Would've been a cool event to attend.

Damn, he's really gone.

[Peter Johnson]

From the Inquirer:

Posted on Fri, Feb. 18, 2005

Jazz pioneer Smith gets musical tribute

By Daniel Rubin

On the day they buried Jimmy Smith, no one rushed to sit at the Hammond B3 organ that he'd made famous.

The Philadelphia Clef Club was filling with old friends and fans about 4 p.m. yesterday for a jam session to honor the jazz great. Kids in hoods with horns, old men and their sticks - everyone stood waiting.

Then Tony Monaco stepped up. He'd been crying on the sidewalk as he waited for the door to open. After canceling his regular gig at a club in Columbus, Ohio, Monaco flew here to honor the man whose records had changed his life at age 12.

Monaco, 45, handed off his coat, fiddled with the floor pedals, then filled the hall with "I'll Close My Eyes," a song Smith owned.

As the applause faded, he said softly, "I just wanted to make sure the organ worked before everyone started," and disappeared into the crowd.

Three times yesterday the legendary player from Norristown was honored - at a funeral service at Deliverance Evangelistic Church at 20th and Lehigh, at the Clef Club, and at Yoshi's, in Oakland, Calif., where two massive Hammond B3s face each other on the stage.

One was to have been played last night by his protege, Joey DeFrancesco, who grew up in Delaware County. The other was to remain silent, its lid closed, its light left on. That was to have been Smith's, who died Feb. 8 at age 76.

The two had been scheduled to start a string of shows together this week in support of their album Legacy, released Tuesday.

At the noon service, DeFrancesco's father, John, read a note from his son, saying how he felt obliged to continue with the show.

"That's what Jimmy would have wanted him to do," the elder DeFrancesco said. "Keep the cats working."

As evening approached, the cats kept coming to the Clef Club. Following Monaco was Keith Hanratty, a 51-year-old lawyer from Minneapolis, who had flown in for the event as well.

He was 16 when his keyboard teacher invited Smith to hear the teenager play. "He came by one more time then invited me out to study with him in L.A.," Hanratty said. "He had this club where his mother cooked in the back.

"I'd play and he'd growl, 'Here's how you do it,' and he'd show me. I was always asking questions. He'd say, 'Shut up. You'll learn something.' I learned to listen."

Said Rich Budesa of Camden, the third to sit at the organ: "He was a giant man. He was the biggest genius that ever touched the Hammond. Jazz organ is Philadelphia's music - that whole style is our music - and he was the best at it, the originator."

Smith did not discover the jazz organ. In 1951, he heard Wild Bill Davis playing it in Atlantic City, and Smith, who'd been winning audiences at the piano since age 8, asked how long it took learn the instrument.

"Four years," Davis told the young man (in some versions of the story, it was 15 years). Smith hung a chart of the organ's foot pedals on the wall of the warehouse where he worked. Within three months, he played a fluid, walking bass line with his feet.

By 1956, he was recording for Blue Note. Smith made a name for himself mastering an instrument so foreign to jazz that it was several years before Downbeat Magazine created an award category for organ.

But it was the private Jimmy Smith who was remembered yesterday at the church service: the uncle so beloved that when he visited, his Norristown family shucked corn and picked string beans for him. The man they knew as Sonny, Smitty, Big Jimmy and Boo.

At the funeral, four musical friends were each given two minutes to send a final message.

Bill "Mr. C" Carney called Smith the "Charlie Parker of his instrument."

Carney's wife, Trudy Pitts, apologized to the pastor, saying words could never express what was inside her. And so after a few remarks, she walked up to the church organ and silenced the room with a 10-minute performance of "Amazing Grace" and "I'll Be Seeing You" that raised shouts of "Amen" as arms extended toward the church's ceiling.

"Hey," she said afterward, as family and friends clapped. "Two minutes for Jimmy Smith? Don't mean a thing to me. I had to let my spirit fly."

[Soul Stream]

Hey Peter, thanks for posting that. I was wondering all day yesterday about what was going on up there in Philly. Beautiful. Wish I could have been there. I did do my own little Jimmy Smith Tribute yesterday at the club and had a lot of people out remembering Jimmy. Still saddens me to think of it.

[RDK]

Great piece, Peter. Thanks. That had me tearing up more than any of the obits I've read.

[Peter Johnson]

Great piece, Peter. Thanks. That had me tearing up more than any of the obits I've read.

Me too...Amazing Grace, man...wouldn't have been a dry damn eye in the place...

[Jim Alfredson]

Hey Peter, thanks for posting that. I was wondering all day yesterday about what was going on up there in Philly. Beautiful. Wish I could have been there. I did do my own little Jimmy Smith Tribute yesterday at the club and had a lot of people out remembering Jimmy. Still saddens me to think of it.

We dedicated the entire first set last Thursday with my R&B band to Jimmy Smith. Just me, the guitarist, and the drummer. The audience at the casino didn't like it (NASCAR & truck country up there) but we didn't care.

[Soul Stream]

Hey Peter, thanks for posting that.  I was wondering all day yesterday about what was going on up there in Philly.  Beautiful.  Wish I could have been there.  I did do my own little Jimmy Smith Tribute yesterday at the club and had a lot of people out remembering Jimmy.  Still saddens me to think of it.

We dedicated the entire first set last Thursday with my R&B band to Jimmy Smith. Just me, the guitarist, and the drummer. The audience at the casino didn't like it (NASCAR & truck country up there) but we didn't care.

I know what you mean Jim. Saw my share of cowboy hats at my JOS tribute too! But still, had some people who were there to remember Jimmy so that made it nice. Felt like I had some good Jimmy channeled on A Night In Tunisia, Lover Man and The Sermon in particular...so I hope Jimmy was listening .

Edited February 18, 2005 by Soul Stream

[Aftab]

Wow . . . I just found out about Jimmy's passing - a sad time for sure.