Jimmy McGriff

Preacher and musician who saw himself as king of the blues-rooted Hammond organ

Jimmy McGriff


The Heath Robinsonian contraption that is the Hammond organ was invented in 1935 to give American travelling preachers a portable sound system for holy-rolling services - and was designed to mimic a church organ's sonorities. The blues and gospel music of America's black churches fuelled the repertoire of Hammond players from the 1940s, all the way up to the early 1990s acid-jazz dance boom. One of the most devotedly blues-rooted was Jimmy McGriff, who has died aged 72 of complications from multiple sclerosis.

Unlike his childhood friend - and the Hammond organ's biggest star - Jimmy Smith, McGriff rarely chose to lay a bebop-derived improvisation over the top of the expected funky swing and anthemic, riff-rooted melodies. In the early 1960s, he made the pop charts with dance floor-angled versions of Ray Charles's I Got a Woman and his own All About My Girl, and the record industry and McGriff's early fans then wanted that hit formula repeated at regular intervals.

He did not seem to mind: he was happy to be a mix of preacher and entertainer, privileged to feel that his work was about lighting up a room. "I began as a blues player, and that's what I am to this day," McGriff told the Chicago Tribune in 1991. He acknowledged Smith as the king, and the technical and imaginative liberator of the Hammond organ in jazz, but saw himself as king of organ blues. A good deal of his work was repetitious, but latterly, McGriff made some good albums on variations of the classic methods, mixing soul-jazz stars like saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie with rising young postboppers like tenor saxist Eric Alexander.

McGriff was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Encouraged by his pianist father, he learned the instrument from the age of five, and sometimes played organ in his parents' Baptist church, but by his teens was also playing vibraphone, sax and drums. Like Smith and the New Jersey organist Richard "Groove" Holmes, McGriff also played double bass. The Hammond jazz techniques developed in the 1950s depended on a grasp of the rhythmic and harmonic role of a bass part's interaction with a melody.

McGriff attended Philadelphia's Combe College of Music, but the Korean war turned him briefly toward a career in law enforcement. He was a US army military policeman, and then spent two years in the Philadelphia police force. But mid-1950s Philadelphia was boiling with bluesy music. Smith, at first a local R&B and jazz pianist, had taken up the Hammond B3 organ in 1953, and his development of an astonishing technique involving pedalled walking basslines, note-packed bebop solos, and thrilling vibrato effects using the revolving Leslie speaker and other sonic modifications made him an explosive jazz star by 1956.

That same year, McGriff heard the Smith-influenced Groove Holmes play at his sister's wedding. He promptly took up the Hammond himself, with Holmes as his teacher. McGriff familiarised himself with the Hammond B3 in six months, and took organ lessons from Smith and Milt Buckner as well as attending New York's Juilliard School.

By 1960, he was working in Philadelphia with the then tenor saxophonist - later to be a popular organist - Charles Earland, accompanying classy touring performers, including the singer Carmen McRae. But the following year was the turning point. The independent Jell Records label invited the organist to record I Got a Woman, and the McGriff version became a favourite with Philadelphia radio DJs. For another small label, Sue Records, McGriff composed his own popular classic of the organ-funk genre, All About My Girl, and released an album.

Unlike Smith, who had launched his career at jazz clubs like New York's Cafe Bohemia and at the Newport Jazz Festival, McGriff was already an organist veering toward the Hammond's increasingly popular R&B incarnation. It was not coincidental that the legendary Stax Records house rhythm section, organist Booker T and the MGs, also released a Hammond version of I Got a Woman in 1962.

McGriff recorded throughout the 1960s, with his materials broadening to include Count Basie swing hits - pianist Basie, occasionally an organist himself, was also an early McGriff influence - movie themes and pop covers. He toured extensively, moved to New Jersey and opened a supper club, the Golden Slipper, where he recorded his 1971 live album The Black Pearl.

In 1968 McGriff came close to another success with The Worm, an engaging piece of jazz-funk featuring the heated trumpet sound of Blue Mitchell, and he performed with a big band on the following year's Electric Funk. He also became an attraction in the big band led by swing drummer Buddy Rich.

The organist briefly retired in 1972, but with the rise of disco, he had discovered another dance form that could benefit from his Hammond treatment. The albums Stump Juice (1975), Red Beans (1976) and Outside Looking In (1978) represent this shift, and though the materials are often thin, the sessions are lifted by McGriff's coolly grooving lines and stalking-cat deliberation.

When he moved to the Milestone label in the 1980s, McGriff mingled more jazz with his soul sound, playing alongside Hank Crawford and "Fathead" Newman, who had also been Ray Charles's sideman.

In the 1990s he experimented with the synthesiser effects on the new Hammond XB-3, but returned to the original sound for some of his most freewheeling and engaging later recordings, like Straight Up in 1997 - which included a typically slow-burning, soul-savouring account of the Isley Brothers' It's Your Thing - and McGriff's House Party (2000) which was formidably enhanced by the presence of charismatic McGriff organ heir, Lonnie Liston Smith. The McGriff-Newman-Crawford partnership continued as the Dream Team. McGriff went on playing until 2007.

He is survived by his wife, Margaret, his two children, five grandchildren, mother, two sisters and brother.

· James Harrell McGriff, musician born April 3 1936; died May 24 2008