In the mid-1950s, a working musician bought a 400-pound Hammond B3 organ, rented an empty industrial warehouse because the instrument was too loud for any apartment, and locked himself inside for over a year. When Jimmy Smith emerged, he had turned a machine built for church services into the beating heart of soul jazz. This episode explores how one obsessive musician laid the groundwork for funk and generated grooves that 1990s hip-hop producers would build hits on.

We trace his rhythm back to tap dancing in clubs with his father at age six in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a boogie-woogie radio contest win at nine, Navy service, and formal study at the Royal Hamilton College of Music and the Leo Ornstein School. The conversation covers the 1954 moment he heard Wild Bill Davis, the Philadelphia gig where Blue Note's Alfred Lion signed him on th ...