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whatever it is. But that was how I first got started with getting all that shipment for
my uncle and I was off and running.

BiTS: Do I gather from that that you still play the organ? I've been listening to your

music, and I don't hear much organ these days.

JI: Oh, I'll have to send you a link. I had a band called, Oh My God about 25 years ago
that was organ-based and drums. I mean, you could say it was the Emerson Lake

and Palmer line up that
way, but the organ was
Jimmy Smith
played through the Leslie

so loud and distorted that
I always say it made John
Lord sound like a church

organist. You wouldn't
even know it was organ. I
have a 1945 Hammond

organ in my basement.
Jimmy Smith grew up 25
minutes from where I grew

up, in Norristown,
Pennsylvania, where he grew up and I was too young to have gone to the clubs when

he went, those people were playing clubs in Philly, but I have a signed Jimmy Smith
poster downstairs.

Actually, it's not signed but I played an organ that he had played the day before on

my first trip with Junior Wells to Australia and New Zealand. Jimmy Smith had just
played the same organ I played and had signed it. The ink was still wet. So I play a
lot. I love playing organ. Out here in Chicago, I think I'm more of a legit organ player
than most of the people who play it out here because Philadelphia is the world capital

of Hammond organ players with Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott, Groove
Holmes. So Chicago had Jack McDuff, but Philly is really where it took root. For some

reason in Chicago early on, I got pegged as the Spann guy, so I'm on a lot of people's
records doing kind of Otis Spann style piano, and they would have someone else do
organ. But in fact, whenever anyone asked me to do organ, they find out that I know
those drawbars. I've been doing that a long time. I love it.

BiTS: Absolutely fabulous. I love Jimmy Smith. I've been a huge fan of Jimmy Smith,
and I have two blues radio shows in the UK, and I often play his music on those shows.

JI: I have one vinyl copy that my father-in-law gave me where he's holding an
umbrella upside down. It says, “The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith”, and it's Oliver
Nelson and he's got ‘I'm An Old Cowhand’ on there. I love that record. It's so kind of

mellow and bluesy for Jimmy Smith. Sometimes I find it a little fatiguing because he
goes off into outer space and he's kind of like two levels past virtuoso, and it can be