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'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.
I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.
