The Hammond organ, named after its inventor Laurens Hammond, debuted in 1935 as a cost-effective electro-acoustic alternative to the gigantic pipe organs mainly installed in churches. Among Hammond’s first customers were George Gershwin and Count Basie. Jazz pianists like Basie, Fats Waller, Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner were the founding fathers of the instrument’s international conquest, which led across all styles of popular music, from jazz to progressive rock, with its heyday in the 1960s and '70s.
The man who gave those swinging beginnings a necessary new drive was jazz pianist Jimmy Smith (1928-2005). After hearing Wild Bill Davis in 1954, he bought himself a Hammond organ and spent a year practicing the instrument in an old warehouse. Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records discovered Smith at a club performance in Philadelphia and signed him. Jimmy Smith's second album already, released in 1956, marked his commercial breakthrough and also made Blue Note rise to a new level. For eight years, Smith recorded hit after hit for the label and also inspired a generation of successors in the new organ trio format with electric guitar and drum accompaniment, often with the addition of a tenor saxophonist (or vice versa).
The term Soul Jazz best describes this new direction in jazz, spearheaded by, alongside Smith, organists like Richard "Groove" Holmes, Freddie Roach, “Brother” Jack McDuff, Johnny "Hammond" Smith, John Patton, Mel Rhyne, Baby Face Willette, Don Patterson and Shirley Scott . Leading saxophonists of the genre include Gene Ammons, Ike Quebec, Oliver Nelson, Sonny Stitt, and Stanley Turrentine. Larry Young, who came up on the tail end of this development, was an innovator equal to Jimmy Smith, turning towards avant-garde jazz and electric fusion with Miles Davis, Tony Williams and Carlos Santana after initially grooving in a more traditional way. Maceo Parker rejuvenated Soul Jazz in the 90s and today organists such as Larry Goldings and Joey DeFrancesco mark their territory somewhere between Jimmy Smith and Larry Young.
