When I was a kid in Michigan, I used to play ball with a town team on Sunday. Of course, I'd go to church first. Played the church organ, as a matter of fact.
I want to learn to sight-read music. And to play the bass pedals on the organ. Those are my only ambitions.
My grandma was a church organist for 40 years, and she got me into jazz music and great songwriters, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, all those folks. I can't do it, but I have a profound respect for it.
I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.
I started playing on my grandmother's organ at a really young age. I learned 'Chopsticks' and that kind of thing, but I didn't really start picking it up and start taking it super seriously until I was probably about 13, 14.
I'm basically a keyboard player, so if it's got a keyboard on it, I'll give it a shot. I played a lot of organ in the early days. I can make a few chords on guitar, but that's about it.
I would sit at the organ and just start making up things by myself - I was maybe 7 years old, which was too young to even know how to notate music. So I never wrote anything down, but when I'd make things up, I'd memorize them.
I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.
I would have loved to record with Paul McCartney on some of his early solo recordings, wonderful music. Playing some lovely organ, perhaps. I would have loved to record with John Lennon. He was a dear friend. I had lunch with him just two days before he died.
Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.
I have a church background. I've been playing piano and keyboard and organ all my life in church.
I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
I've been doing two things my whole life: I've been cuttin' hair, and I've been playing the organ at church. Those two things are what I looked at as my life: this is how I'm gonna make my money, this is how I'm gonna make my living... It helped me to be stable in what I do.
Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.
