jimmy mcgriff 1936–2008
his talents and sternly sat him down at the organ bench. Thusly, McGriff became smitten in a town seemingly minting world-class organists daily, including the Tiger Woods of the B-3, the incompa- rable Jimmy Smith, who’d, ironically, record a McGriff tune several years before McGriff would. “Jimmy Smith is king of the jazz,” McGriff would say in a radio interview, “but when it comes into the blues thing, we got a dif- ferent outlook on things.” True enough, McGriff insisted he was indeed a blues—not jazz—organist, and though he recorded his share of Basie- and Ellington-inspired shuffles, he found his voice melding gospel, blues, and jazz like no organist before or since. “Jimmy McGriff was the greatest blues organ player I ever heard,” says organ maestro Dr. Lonnie Smith. “He had that gospel, bluesy feeling, so beautiful . ’Griff played for the people!” And millions of people responded, shelling coin for his 1962 Sue Records smash debut—which included a screaming cover of Ray Charles’s “I’ve Got a Woman”—and later LPs throughout the ’60s and ’70s, where his groove became more funk laden, as evidenced by nuggets “The Worm,” “Blue Juice,” “The Bird,” “The Main Squeeze,” “Tiki,” and many others. “Funk had been good to me,” McGriff said, “and me and that organ had been good to funk.” “McGriff was so funky, man, truly a standout,” concurs organist Reuben Wilson. “Even funkier than Jimmy Smith. A real crowd-pleaser.” Bernard Purdie, timekeeper for many a McGriff platter, adds, “What I loved about McGriff was his touch, the way he could play the most beautiful ballad, then hit you hard.” He kept on hittin’ into the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s as many of his peers synthesized into oblivion. And while rappers began rhym- ing over his McGrooves for a new generation, ’Griff returned to his bluesy roots by tag-teaming with veteran saxophonist Hank Crawford for an applauded string of tours and albums, all the while avoiding James Brown’s occasional plea for an organ lesson that would never materialize. .
Beautiful Blues text Matt Rogers photo courtesy of the McGriff Family
“This is what we call the love instrument ,” said Jimmy McGriff, while sitting at the helm of the 400-pound love child of pipe organ and furniture piece, better known as the Hammond B-3. “If you love it and play it like you mean it, it will work for you.” And work for him, “the Beast” certainly did, propelling a sixty-year professional music career in which McGriff loved and played the indefatigable instrument in clubs and concert halls the world over. He greased heavyweight grooves onto a plethora of albums for numerous record labels—including Sue, Solid State, Blue Note, Capitol, Groove Mer- chant, and Milestone—that would be sampled by hip-hop heads for years to come. Sadly, on May 24, 2008, the great Jimmy McGriff died—age seventy—just outside his hometown of Brotherly Love, due to complications from multiple sclerosis. James Harrell McGriff Jr. was born April 3, 1936—not long after the first Hammond organs were being rolled out of Chicago—into a family steeped in the thick sacred and secular Philadelphia music scene. Growing up in the Germantown neighborhood known as the Brickyard, it wasn’t uncommon for folks such as Count Basie to be jammin’ at the McGriff household and encouraging Jimmy Jr. to take a taste. And he did, sampling piano, violin, drums, and vibes before landing his first gig at age thirteen playing bass for singer Big Maybelle. Officially bit, McGriff then picked up sax gigs with Ham- mond organ–based groups, most notably organist Richard “Groove” Holmes’s, who insisted Jimmy—now earning his bread as a city po- lice officer (he’d given Miles Davis a parking ticket)—was misfiring
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