The legendary Jimmy Smith popularized the Hammond B3 organ back in the mid-1950s.
On the B3, musicians can play the bass, the rhythm, and match the melodic notes of a horn section, note for note. It can be beautiful and shiny. It can also be percussive and gritty.
But no matter the sound, it seems to add a lot of feeling and soul to any ensemble.
It has a big sound; and it also has a physically mammoth footprint.
Delvon Lamarr is one of today’s premier organ trio leaders, and he’s got roots here in Seattle.
During a visit to KNKX to 2017, he shared a story about how he and a couple of others had to push the big instrument through a downtown marathon route just to get to a gig.
“I couldn't drive across the marathon. I couldn't drive across the parade. So what I had to do is, we parked over by the Seattle Center on the backside, kind of lower Queen Anne area, and me, Adam Kessler, Kareem Kandi pushed a B3, Leslie, pedals and bench all the way, I think it was like eight blocks or something like that, right down the middle of Second Avenue. I said, since there ain't no cars down here, this got to be like a world first.”
If you haven’t seen a B3 before: it’s a wooden box about three feet wide, four feet tall. It’s got two rows of piano keys and foot pedals for the bass notes. And on top of that, the organ is generally accompanied by another big box; a special rotating speaker called a "Leslie" that helps achieve the swirling sounds you often hear with the instrument.
They stopped making the classic B3 organ in 1975. That means parts for the originals are few and far between, and because they’re so old, they’re always breaking down. That’s what happened to Lamarr when he was in the KNKX studios for a session back in 2023.
“Yeah, we showed up, loaded in, turned it on… nothing…”
Lamarr made a run to Jazz Alley to see if he could find a replacement part from the Leslie there.
“So no, that didn’t work either. So it happens, you know; you play a 60–70 year old instrument, you get 60–70 year old problems.”
Lamarr’s organ trio has risen from Seattle clubs to international renown since 2015. And Lamarr was originally a drummer. He first played the instrument thanks to Washington’s own resident B3 maestro, Joe Doria.
“I used to play at the Art Bar with Joe Doria, Dan Heck. And then one day a drummer comes in and sits in. It was Julian McDonough is who it was, I didn’t know who he was back then. He sat in. I asked Joe if I could play the organ. He was like, ‘If you can.’ And so I sat down at the organ, played a blues, and it’s like I’d been playing the thing the whole time. So it ended up, that was my thing. Found an organ. Was all downhill from there.”
You can hear the B3 organ in the flesh all over town. Doria’s band McTuff plays regularly across the state, and he also loads in the mammoth instrument each and every Tuesday at the Sea Monster Lounge. McTuff and the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio have recorded a few studio sessions here at KNKX as well.
