2023.01.09 Brian Charette on Jimmy Smith

Jimmy Smith didn’t invent the electric organ but, for several decades at least, you wouldn’t know it.  The response to his Blue Note and Verve LPs in the Fifties and Sixties made him a festival headliner and earned him the nickname “The Incredible Jimmy Smith.”  To this day, no one in the Jazz idiom can sit down at a Hammond B3 without contending with his influence or his very life force, even 17 years after he left this earth.

Brian Charette knows.  He has been in the top 10 in Downbeat Magazine’s critics’ poll of best organ players for most of the last 10 years because he is a player of wit, passion, and intensity.  On this Monday’s Deep Focus, Mitch Goldman will lead Brian through the WKCR archives and ask him to show us what kind of live performer The Incredible Jimmy Smith really was.

It’s only on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR HD-1 and wkcr.org Monday night from 6pm to 9pm NYC time.

Next week it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/

Photo credit: fair use.

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