The Organ Summit With Jimmy McGriff + Dr. Lonnie Smith + Joey DeFrancesco

How Many Organs Do You Have? Invented by a tone-deaf clockmaker 70 years ago (alleged first customer: ol’ Henry Ford), the Hammond organ — a 400 pound beast whose guts consisted of cranky tone-wheels and clanking keys all housed by a skin of thick wood — looked more furniture than instrument, but soon, via the popular B3 model a few decades later, brought forth millions of Hallelujahs across the land, from church pulpits to bar-room pits. Pushed by the likes of Wild Bill Davis and the irreplaceable Jimmy Smith, soon nearly everyone was pushing away the piano and pulling out the stops on this behemoth that utilized all four limbs (‘look Ma, no hands’), from soul-jazzers McDuff, McGriff and Groove Holmes to rockers Santana, Traffic and the Band (okay, and the Dead). But then the world’s first synthesizer was out-synthesized, the Hammond Co. went bankrupt and disco ruled. Fifteen years would pass before those bloody English acid jazzers would scavenge the junkyards and dig up — much to the joy of labels Blue Note and Prestige — that unique Hammond sound (and resurrecting some of the original players with it) passing the crusty parts on to Guru, those crunchy American jambanders and a mega-talented chubby white kid named DeFrancesco. Despite the Hammond B3’s resurgence, however, you’d be lucky to find one whose keys outglimmered the duct tape holding them together. Until now. That’s right, the Hammond/Suzuki company has jumpstarted their Illinois-based B3 conveyor belts again to create a digital model. The slightly trimmer 300 pound result was on display all week at the Iridium’s Organ Summit, a triumvirate organ affair which featured old-school B3 giants Jimmy McGriff and Dr. Lonnie Smith along with pal saxophonist Houston Person, accompanied by Joey DeFrancesco and his pals, drummer Byron Landham and guitarist Paul Bollenback. Claiming hit records before Joey D. was born, the old-timers stuck to their analog guns and analog humor (LS: “Hey Griff, how many organs do you have?” or LS: “Hey Griff, give me a blues!” JM: “Just one?”), while the relative newcomer strutted his mighty vibrato and glissando on the new digital model which, housed in lovely prototypical B3 wooden cabinetry, sounded almost (well okay, perhaps a little thinner in the bass) as good swinging blues, jazz and funk as its ancestors. But don’t take my word for it. Ask Reuben Wilson, Melvin Sparks, Seleno Clarke, Rodney Jones or George Benson, who were all there, clapping and hooting, the latter putting down knife and fork and coming forward to adorn a guitar upon long-time mate Lonnie’s request, helping close out a rambunctious show the way they used to back in the day when the duo “came to New York with two songs.” Though a few dollars richer today, the muscular Benson showed he could still burn with the mighty burners, helping push the funk as he did in 1970 on “Play It Back”, then crisping us with the finale, “If You See Kay”, leaving midtown Manhattan a little toastier in his wake.