Celebrating the King of the Hammond B3 and National Endowment for the Arts #JazzMaster, Jimmy Smith's birthday (December 8, 1925 - February 8, 2005). He helped popularize the Hammond B-3 organ, creating a link between jazz and 1960s soul music. While the electric organ had been used in jazz by Fats Waller, Count Basie, Wild Bill Davis and others, Smith's virtuoso improvisation technique on the Hammond helped to popularize the electric organ as a jazz and blues instrument. The B3 and companion Le

One of the all-time giants of the Hammond B-3, #JimmyMcGriff sometimes gets lost amid all the great soul-jazz organists from his hometown of Philadelphia. He was almost certainly the bluesiest of the major soul-jazz pioneers, and indeed, he often insisted that he was more of a blues musician than a jazz artist; nonetheless, he remained eclectic enough to blur the lines of classification. His sound — deep, down-to-earth grooves drenched in blues and gospel feeling — made him quite popular with R&