James Oscar Smith (December 8, 1928 – February 8, 2005) was an American jazz musician who helped popularize the Hammond B-3 organ, creating a link between jazz and 1960s soul music.
In 2005, Smith was awarded the NEA Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor that America bestows upon jazz musicians.
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An organ trio is a form of jazz ensemble consisting of three musicians; a Hammond organ player, a drummer, and either a jazz guitarist or a saxophone player. In some cases the saxophonist will join a trio which consists of an organist, guitarist, and drummer, making it a quartet. Organ trios were a popular type of jazz ensemble for club and bar settings in the 1950s and 1960s, performing a blues-based style of jazz that incorporated elements of R&B. The organ trio format was characterized by long improvised solos and an exploration of different musical "moods".
In organ trios, the Hammond organist plays several roles, including playing the basslines (either on the bass pedalboard or on the lower manual of the organ), playing chords ("comping"), and playing lead melodic lines and solos. In organ trios with a guitarist, the guitarist usually 'fills in' the musical parts that the organist is not performing. For example, if the organist is soloing and playing a bassline, the guitarist may play chords.
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and amplifying the electric signal into a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker.
Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in genres such as rhythm and blues, rock (especially progressive rock), and reggae.
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