You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Jazz Organ LEGEND Reveals Favorite Tracks

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

We’re sitting down with one of the greats! Organist Larry Goldings is in the house to spin the B3 tracks that shaped him – from Jimmy Smith’s revolutionary runs to Billy Preston’s blending brilliance behind Aretha Franklin. Along the way, Larry breaks down the nuts and bolts (err… drawbars and percs) behind his favorite players, offering expert insights into Larry Young’s pedal-less playing and Ray Charles’ “dry-as-dust” sound. And somewhere in the midst of Larry’s fave five, we get into how to find your own voice (and why it might involve throwing all these great records out the window). Whether you’re chasing that perfect drawbar sound or just here for Hans Groiner’s alter ego, this one will change how you hear the Hammond forever.In this episode, You’ll Hear:Jimmy Smith’s masterful expression pedal comping and turnaroundsHow to build your organ sound through a track like Wild Bill DavisWhy Larry listens to singers and horn players (it’s all in the breath).The power of the organ + guitar comboWhat Larry’s listening to these daysStart your FREE TRIAL to Larry’s new course: Jazz Organ Essentials | Open StudioWatch Adam’s organ lesson with Larry: Jazz Pianist Has To Learn Organ In 14 Minutes

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Hey, instead of our regular theme song today, because we're going to be doing a B3 episode. Oh, really? I didn't notice. Yeah, why don't we have Larry Goldings play a new theme for us? Well, hello there.

Hi. How about this? Hey. Oh. And Mattamanus. And I'm Peter Mark. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Is that Latin music?

I don't know. I don't speak Greek. That's good. It's all Greek to me. Or Latin. Okay. All Greek brought to you today by over. Open Studio, go to Open StudioJadioJazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs.

Sorry, I should have prepared you for that. Larry, welcome to the show. Larry, Peter, my name's Peter. I know you will. This is Adam. It's so great to be here. Introduce the band. Okay.

Yeah, Larry, you've been with us here for an incredible two days in the studio. Yeah, it feels like longer, but it's been great. Yeah. We've had a blast. We're making a B3 course here. Open Studio with... We've done made it. Truly, I would say.

It is made. About time, guys. That's right. That's right. But we thought we could bring you in on the podcast to talk about your favorite organ tracks because we have a lot of listening sessions right here. We talk about our favorite, all kinds of our favorite tracks. And I've realized we never have hit our favorite B3 tracks.

Really? Yeah. Kind of an impossible task. There's so many, in a wide range of music that the organ finds its way in. Yeah. If anyone's up for it, it's you, I would say. Let's go. So right here we've got Larry's bespoke playlist.

Oh, bespoken. Right here for some of your favorites. Spoken. And I think we're going to start at a very appropriate place. I like that. Which is the incredible Jimmy Smith. And this is, oh no, babe, from organ grinder swing. Let's have a listen.

Grady Tate on drums. Yep. Chills. Yeah. They don't teach that fingering at Giulio. They don't, no. Annex. Burrell.

Kenny Burrell. You don't hear a lot of that high hat shuffle these days. No. And it's Grady Tate. Different from the drummer he normally had, who was, I'm embarrassed. I can't remember the name. San Francisco guy. It's like hitting that up.

Mm. Get. On the up trip. Right. Get. Get committed on them. The breathing. When I talk about.

about the expression pedal. Yeah. See, Jimmy's so soft. Just a master. Yeah. Did Jimmy, like, this way of comping, did he create that or what was the influence on him there? Do you know about that?

Because he was definitely influential with it. I know everybody picked that up. I think so. I think after Jimmy Smith, like it became a thing. This whole sound, right? We were talking about in the chorus, the whole drawbar sound of this, you know, with the added percussion.

There's some exceptions. Mel Rhine played with Oregon with West before Jimmy followed a different path. Sonically and also vocabulary wise. From the Milwa K. Yes. See how soft Jimmy is now? But the bass still speaks. It's gorgeous. Jimmy would keep that mic. They would keep the mic open. Right. Rudy's, I think it's probably at Rudis. Yeah. So you also got the key click of the organ from the open mic. Nice. Common tones.

Yeah. Minor four. I still can't get over that hi-hat. Sheffield. I know. I don't say he's committed. So, tip. Yeah.

But how do you do that? Oh. He's an A-flat. Damn. I was a G, sorry. I mean, Joey got close to duplicating some of his weird touch and fingering.

Yeah. Nobody can't really imitate it though. Yeah. Every turnaround's been unique too. Yeah, yeah. It's all been different. Yeah, this one's a little different. It's such a great lesson, actually.

Yeah. Like those turnarounds. Jimmy is not afraid of the boo scale. No, he's not. And the more I think about it, it really does help to hear the key physically clicking from the open mind. Right. There's an attack.

Yeah. Now, how close are you set up? It sounds very close. Sounds like. I think it's the same. Yeah. Now why does that work so well when he's doing the turnaround and it's not even the same as the base coming up? And it still works, you know?

Because it's been different every time on this turnaround. So great, he's like, ah, the hi-hats all is important now, see? I set it up. But it does set that up. It makes everything built. A little foreshadowing. What I was saying about the turnaround? Yeah.

That's like a really useful lesson. lesson that you have all of this leeway in those moments especially. Yeah, those turnaround moments to do different things. Very right. Just on cue. I heard a non-court tone there. I mean, that's untranscribable. I know.

This might fade, you know, might be one of us. We don't know what, yep. Yeah, we don't know how to end it. Classic. Oh. Right, you set the bar high. That's a pretty high bar. Let's go, uh, uh,

Let's go in a little bit different vein. I was really kind of surprised by this. This is Duke Ellington. This is the New Orleans suite. Opening track, Blues for New Orleans. And on Oregon is... Wild Bill Davis. Wild Bill Davis.

That is a totally different sound. Yeah. Yep. And later in the track, when he pulls out more stops and gets the Leslie going, I think he does on this track. That's more of what I think of when I think of Wild Bill. I don't know this album at all.

You know this album? Yeah, well, I used to listen to it back in the day a lot. I had the LP. I haven't heard in years. It's a good record. Definitely kind of overlooked Duke Gallagher, later Duke Gallagher. Does he have any chorus or vibrato on that? Yes.

He's got something going on. But he doesn't have the percussion on. He's got some of the highs out. Yeah, he's got a high stopper. Two. Whoa. We have Duke's riding a little bit the way. Right, jumping in.

Here he goes. So everything is starting to kind of swirl and open. Now he's got the Leslie going, opened up the drawbars. And there's a bassist. Yeah. So he's doing that locked hands thing on there. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It sounds like something the horns. Yeah, it's a big band figure. That's blues for New Orleans. Yeah. From the New Orleans suite. Duke Ellington, Wild Bill Davis. Yeah. On the Hammond organ.

Why don't I move along here to something a little bit different? This is from Ray Charles. Now, this is an album that you hipped us to this week. Yeah. You know, the other one, the Mone and track starts right out with Ray. Why don't you go to that one instead of the one-minute julep? Okay. It takes a minute for Ray to get in there.

Let's check out. I can hear the really raw sound of, I think, a non-lesley, like it was a speaker that just had no rotating speaker, no movement at all, just raw, almost like transistor-y kind of sound. And it's just all the more reliant on one's own feel, you know. So this is Ray Charles, Genius Plus Soul equals Jazz. This is arrangements by Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns, and this is... Bobby Timmons' moment. Hmm. Cool.

No percussion. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Nasty. It's really... Yeah, it's super wrong. Yeah. It's crazy.

We're going to space, but we're not in outer space. You said something in the course when we were talking about this. You said, you can pretty much get anywhere with Jess Ray. Yeah, yeah. Which I think is so true. I mean... Yep Hey

You know People are too scared to go this dry Totally Yeah They are not They don't have The courage No

To record this dry Whoa That's so good That's way Charles Genius plus soul He has jazz That is going into

my listening playlist For the week Amazing Quincy Jones too Incredible All right

Let's go to something probably a little bit more familiar to most, I think, like straight-ahead jazz fans. And this is Larry Young's Unity. This is one of the great albums of the 1960s. This is Monk's dream. Oh.

Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, and Elvin Jones. But this one's just a trio, right? Just with... Or just... Duo. Yeah, Larry and Elvin. No guitar. Just the decision to have no guitar.

It's very modern, you know. No. Yeah. So much space. Yeah. Very light bass. Yeah. No pedals.

Ah. He never did pedals? Not maybe until the, like, emergency days. Oh, right. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. But then he had a bass player then, anyways, I think.

Did he there if you guys ever play with Elvin Jones? No. I did. Did you? On Michael Brecker's Time of the Essence. Three tunes. That's right. How was he?

Unbelievable. Now, this is Jimmy's, three drawbars. Yeah, same as Jimmy Smith. But I think it's a different vibrato. I think he's the C-1. That sounds like... Yeah.

So a little less wavy. Yep. And still percussion. The fifth percussion? Definitely the fifth percussion. And he was like... Those fourth force is where you were showing yesterday. Yeah.

Fourths. Yeah. I remember when I first heard this record when I was like... 14 or 15 or I had no business. I was like, and I was trying to like transcribe those voicing. And I think I kind of had them, but they sounded so different on piano.

I was like, damn it, I still have them, you know. It's so great. And the time field is so loose. I think it would be constrained by heavy pedal play.

Yeah, it's so like, it's very connected that bass on it. Yeah, but it makes it so conversational with Elvin. Yeah. Like, they're just having this dance together,

you know. And I will look at it. know that Elvin Jones is doing some of the best Elvin shit right now. He's very well. Very good. Ruth Fiff. Right. And also listen to his pedal use, too. I don't know about y'all.

This is a hard tune to improvise it. It is. I mean, it's an easy tune to learn. It's hard to play. It stays in the same zone. I think of like, it's like weighing shorterish. Yeah. And, yeah.

And Johnny and Joe. Yeah. whole train stuff on the mix of Lydia. There's certain people that I, you know, actively stop listening to because I just don't want to try anymore to do it. Yeah. Because it's futile. Yeah.

It's the reason why I stopped listening to Oscar Peterson years ago. Yeah. And Bill Evans, I really don't consciously think these days to put on certain records, because of how long it took me to try to get away from their influence. Because you can't help but try to put that thing. It's going to come out. And it's never as clean as Oscar, is it?

It's never as clean as... But is it like because it starts to creep into your playing kind of unconscious? Yeah, it does. And I don't want that to happen anymore. Just would you say because it gets in the space of what your story is? Or because you feel like it's... I think what I really want to do is... I mean, it's so arrogant for anybody to say,

I don't, you know, I want to stop listening to Bill Evans because if I do I'll sound like Bill Evans. No, you won't. Right, right. You'll never sound like Bill Evans. You'll never have his touch, you'll ever have his sound. Yeah. You'll never have his ideas. But I was playing at the Village Gate years ago.

Yeah. And in walks, in walks, Paul Blay, who I, I liked. I didn't know much about him, but I respected him. And I never met him before. And he was listening, and he comes right out to me as if we were already in a conversation. He goes, yeah. So I think that we started. You know what I think you ought to do?

You should collect up all your favorite records and throw them out the window. And he said that to me when I was about 28, maybe, already kind of on the scene. Maybe I was a little younger, but I was starting to make a number. around New York and stuff. And I was maybe a little hurt at the same time. But then he was like, you want to get some coffee? And, you know, he hung out. But I thought about it later, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

It's like, wow. Yeah. I mean, maybe he wouldn't have said that if he hadn't heard some germ of originality. One of those people. Yeah, yeah. In my playing to say, you know, you got it. You don't need those people forever. find your own thing.

That's cool. And it was Paul Blay. You had their own thing more than Paul Blay. Yeah, that's right. Who started out, sounding like Bud Powell. That's right. Oh, wow. So I think about that all the time.

It's very cool. And Jim Hall said a similar thing when I told him that a friend of mine just had a habit of looking for every example of Winton Kelly on record. And I was telling Jim this, and he said, huh, it's interesting. But, I mean, after a while, don't you kind of get the point?

Is what he said. Right. And in the case of Whitney Kelly, I mean, he was one of the great artists, but he wasn't one of these guys, like, train who, you know, year by year. He's got a thing. He's got a thing that was, like, just the greatest thing. But it was every time. It's like, don't you kind of get the point?

Move on, you know? And I thought, wow, that's deep. So how do you temper that with just your, like, everyday ongoing, you're in your car, driving around, you're on the road? Like your musical, like, what do you listen to for music? It's vast and it's often not jazz at all. Yeah. I mean, because we love harmony, we love classical music.

We love, we love, I mean, Herbie said, you know, it's all about Ravel, right? I mean, and so I. But could somebody, like, could you go up to Herbie and be like, you know, at a gig and be like, Herbie, you sound great, but throw away the Ravel, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, what is? No, really? Like, is that what it is?

for him, though, at this point? He already has. He already has. Like, where does Revell? Obviously, we know where Herbie starts. And when you're talking about Winnie Kelly, that was a huge influence on Herbie. But we don't go hear him now and be like, ah. So I'm listening to the way, because he probably did give that up a long time.

I think for me it's about not over-listening to piano, to piano players or organ players, for one thing. Right. Because we have to be influenced by everything. Yeah. Chastral music, music from other countries. Yeah. Cush and music. great singers.

And I think ultimately what we're doing as non-singers and as non-breathing people is try to sound like we're breathing. So I think that's one big reason for listening to horns and singers and people who have to breathe in order to phrase and play. I mean, between guitar players and piano players were the most, you know, as Rand Blake used to say about,

about Oscar Peterson that he had Diary of the Hands, whereas I just have plain old diarrhea. And hands. And, you know, so I think it's really about getting away from your instrument, thinking about how can I get an or, you know, how can I, how can I, how can I, what's an orchestral move that I could make? Yeah.

You know, what would Nelson Riddle do with the flutes? Or a vocal move? Yeah. What can I do with the melody here? So that's how we transcend the so-called limitations of our instrument. What about, you were talking about breathing? How much, as opposed to being at the piano, when you're at the organ, the right foot, like how much that does that get into supplemental breathing or?

It's all of phrasing, you know. So much about the pedal, you know, because I'm, Otherwise, it's just here. It just never, never move, no dynamics, you know. And this is always going to be that volume if you don't move anything. Yeah, but you don't always play like that, see. No. You're doing that for dramatic play.

I got you. No, but, you know. It is what it is. In rock and roll or in a song where dynamics aren't that important, you know, you can just leave it there and it'll sound fine. But, you know, that's why we're always trying to manipulate the draw bars. and make this thing. You know, I didn't really mention Joe Zahannal once

during the last one. I was talking about stacked fifths, you know. This kind of... I wrote a tune with these... Just two notes, right? But each of these notes have a fifth, have fifths on top of it. Or below them, I'm not even sure.

Can you play just one note on that anymore? So there's like the fundamental... Right, and then this. And then this. So this gives you... It's four. It's like a minor nine or something or a minor seven. Is that it?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It takes four fingers to play this. Yeah. Two fingers to play this. So you can get all kind of. So I'm just as influenced by someone like Joe Zowanol. I think about Joe a lot at the organ.

Yeah. To me, he kind of feels like an organ player. Yeah. You know, those duets that he did with, or if you ever seen the pictures, volume pedals all over the place. It was all about expressing... Right, no matter what keyboard is playing.

Expression pedal, you know, with these, you know, potentially very cold, you know, synthesizers that don't have any dynamics. He was using volume puddles. Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah.

Well, we've got one more track. We're going to go out on this track, and this is a really interesting pick. This is... It better be. This is really good. I mean, you were mentioning breathing, and we were talking about very...

vocalists and what we can learn. This is Aretha Franklin on the Whirlitzer with the Whirlitzer Electric Piano, but with Billy Preston on the organ behind her. And this is... Yeah, Brazil of Trouble Water. And just as impressive as Billy is Aretha playing the melody.

Yes. Her phrasing. Her phrasing. It's unbelievable. We're going to go on this till next time. All right. You'll hear it. You'll hear it. I won't get it on. Why don't you want to? Why don't you want to?

That could have been a dangerous move up. I don't know. Yeah, right? And Worley's can be hard to play that expressively on a single line like that. Yeah, talk about just a very static attack and decay. She's making it sing. And that organ is truly support. I mean, it's a great connection there.

Yeah. How many times will I use that? There's a great video of Billy Preston when he's, I think, five or six years old. On the knack and cold. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The right. Cornell degree maybe or Eric Gail.

I had the details on this regardless of, every time I hear this is my play. Yeah, the placement and details. Oh yeah. Hey. Just like Billy with the Beatles, he's incredibly supportive without taking the limelight, you know? It's just an areith at the piano.

Yeah. Base players saving the day there. Yeah. I totally agree with dressing his soul, like, ears and support. But he's also not afraid to get in there and get aggressive at the right time to say something and get out. A lot of taste there is so tasty. Larry Goldings, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, man.

Thanks, guys. Thank you, Larry. You're the man. So much fun. All right. We will not bar you from being on this program. Oh, bar. Wow.

Would you like to go to the bar with me? Can we cut it? Caleb, can we cut? Horrible. That was semi-comber time.