By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 11, 2005; Page C03

"A New Sound, A New Star," proclaimed the cover of Jimmy Smith's debut album in 1956, and that title proved prophetic.

The new sound emanated from Smith's Hammond B-3 organ, an instrument previously associated with gospel churches, movie theaters and roller rinks. Smith transformed the organ into a front-line instrument and helped launch a "soul jazz" movement that lasted into the '70s. His organ-guitar-drum lineup seeded hundreds of neighborhood bars and cocktail lounges where funky organ combos would be a mainstay for decades.

Along the way, Smith inspired a battalion of organ-playing progeny, from jazzbos Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes and soul man Booker T. Jones, to rockers Steve Winwood and Gregg Allman and next-generation B-3 virtuosos like Larry Goldings, John Medeski, Barbara Dennerlein and Joey DeFrancesco. Smith had recently finished an album with DeFrancesco and was to begin a tour with him next week. Last year, DeFrancesco told Reuters that "anyone who plays the organ is a direct descendant of Jimmy Smith."

Until his death Tuesday in his late seventies, Smith was the embodiment of the perpetually modern jazz organist: hunkered behind his B-3, literally walking the bass lines as his feet danced over the instrument's pedals, his fingers flying across the keyboard, showering furiously paced single-note lines and blues-drenched improvisations from his right hand, propulsively chording with his left.

As jazz critic Gary Giddins once noted, Smith was a master of the slow build who knew how to manufacture excitement without succumbing to it. That is why his best albums were either live recordings or those that re-created jazz-club ambiance in studio sessions that were little more than focused "blowing sessions" -- a specialty of both Blue Note and Verve, the two labels Smith was most closely identified with.

Blue Note was the primary incubator of soul jazz, which emerged around the same time rhythm and blues was transforming into soul. Both soul jazz and soul were rooted in the blues and gospel, and evoked a strong sense of down-home community, qualities found in such classic Smith albums as "Home Cookin'," "House Party" and "Prayer Meetin'," as well as "The Sermon!," whose title track was a side-long, 20-minute 12-bar blues tribute to a fellow soul jazz pioneer, pianist Horace Silver. It became one of Smith's signature pieces, along with "Walk on the Wild Side," "The Champ" and "The Preacher." Through such well-known tunes, Smith, like his peers Silver, Stanley Turrentine and Cannonball Adderley, achieved a level of commercial success and popularity rare for jazz musicians. ("Walk on the Wild Side" made the pop charts as a single in 1962.)

Smith wasn't the first to address the electric organ, which had been introduced in the mid-'30s: Fats Waller and Count Basie both toyed with it, and Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett had some R&B-flavored hits with it in the '40s and early '50s. But just as Charlie Christian wasn't the first to play amplified guitar but was the first to play it with a modern conception, Smith pioneered the melding of rootsier blues, gospel and R&B elements with fiery bebop.

He'd studied both piano and bass while playing in jazz and R&B combos around his Philadelphia-area home ground. But in 1953 Smith was galvanized after catching a performance by Davis. For more than a year, Smith woodshedded on organ at a Philadelphia warehouse where he and his father worked as plasterers. When Smith emerged, it was with an original approach and sound that would become the standard for nearly all jazz organists who followed.

By 1955, Smith had also established the organ trio format, creating a small ensemble with a sound big enough for any size venue, later augmented by a stellar tenor saxophonist like Turrentine or Lou Donaldson. In 1956, after hearing a Smith set at Small's Paradise in Harlem, Alfred Lion, founder of Blue Note, announced to his wife that he was selling the label to follow this newfound genius on tour. Lion calmed down and relented, but his enthusiasm proved catching: "A New Sound, A New Star" unleashed a flood of recordings from Blue Note. Later at Verve, Smith's classics included "Organ Grinder's Swing," as well as collaborations with guitarist Wes Montgomery and big bands conducted or arranged by Oliver Nelson.

Smith's recordings over the past 25 years never matched his earlier work, although even recently his live performances showed remarkable consistency in terms of his improvising skills and devotion to hard-swinging, blues-based jazz. In the '70s, the jazz scene had changed with the introduction of lighter, high-tech keyboards. The bulky B-3 fell out of favor with both musicians and audiences, though it found fans in retro-movements in jazz, hip-hop, soul and, appropriately, jam-band circles. That the B-3 refuses to fade into obscurity is testament to the man whose letterhead boldly stated "The World's Greatest Jazz Organist."

Who'd argue that?