Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner had already done much of the pioneer work, but it was Smith who brought the Hammond organ into modern jazz. In Philadelphia, in his 20s, he had a very good ear – despite two periods studying harmony and theory he claimed never to be able to read music – and he worked as a pianist in routine R&B bands until he took up the Hammond at the age of 27. After a period of intensive practice before he made even a single public appearance using the instrument, he soon acquired a hot reputation in the Philadelphia area, and when he made his New York debut in 1956 – at the Café Bohemia – he was an almost immediate sensation. Within a year he had signed to Blue Note and made the first of dozens of albums for them, and created another sensation at the 1957 Newport Festival. Frank Wolff's first impressions of Smith – 'a man in convulsions, face contorted, crouched over in apparent agony, his fingers flying . . . the noise was shattering' – make clear what an impact Smith had. At a time when there was still very little electricity on jazz bandstands, the effect of Smith in full flow must have been enthralling. His simple style – a walking bass on the pedals, thick chords with the left hand, spidery decoration with the right and a smart use of the organ's stops to alter the attack and tone in the playing, getting rid of the old ice-rink vibrato and replacing it with a hot, almost chewy texture that was both ominous and mellowed – was bolstered by a rhythm guitarist and a punchy groove from the drums, and the formula was finished and available for endless recycling. To some extent, every jazz organist who has come after him has followed directly in Smith's footsteps, no matter how much they may have varied the details.

Smith worked continuously for the next 20 years. He moved from Blue Note to Verve in 1962, and recorded more ambitious projects, including the memorable Oliver Nelson orchestrations for The Cat (1964) and a fruitful alliance with Wes Montgomery. At the end of the 70s he opened his own supper club in Los Angeles, but he returned to touring in the following decade and was still playing in Japan, Europe and the US until only weeks before his death. He made more records for Milestone in the 80s and had a brief reunion with the 'new' Blue Note, but made his last albums for another one of his old labels, Verve, in the 90s. By this time the real fire had largely left his playing and he had long since settled into a routine, but he remained an ornery character to the end, a great kidder and, when the mood took him, not a bad blues singer too.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.