RIP Jimmy McGriff

Some good anecdotes here:

Born April 3, 1936, in Philadelphia, McGriff began playing the organ when he was still a boy. Both his parents played piano and, by age 5, McGriff was also playing. Later he learned the saxophone and the bass, but the sound of the organ captured his attention. With the encouragement of his father, he switched from piano to organ.

"He was hearing something I wasn't hearing," McGriff said in a 2006 interview posted on the website allaboutjazz.com. "He told me to play the organ, because I had that gospel thing."

From 1953 until 1956 McGriff served in the United States Army and was stationed in Korea as a military police officer. Afterward, he entered the police academy and spent two years as a police officer in Philadelphia.

McGriff trained at Juilliard and the Combe College of Music in Philadelphia and also took private lessons from Smith and another legendary organist, Richard "Groove" Holmes. The music of Count Basie, whom he met, also influenced McGriff.

"It was big band music. And I liked that big band kinda thing. That's what turned me on," McGriff said in the 2006 All About Jazz interview.

"[Basie] was the father of Harlem musicians. He wouldn't teach you nothing wrong. If you did something wrong, the changes I would play, he would just say, 'That's wrong. You don't wanna do that.' . . . I liked that."

'I've Got a Woman' via the YouTube 'point a camera at the vinyl' trick, but hey, it's there at least.