Nobody–and I mean nobody–rocks the Hammond B-3 quite the way the great Jimmy Smith does (did). As I descend into the weeds of my new musical obsession (the Hammond B-3) I find the greatest jazz organists–for me Jimmy, Shirley Scott and Joey DeFrancesco–have a way of dominating the instrument and bending it to their own will as if they were mocking its original intentions, which was to be played by little old ladies in churches. Smith is always ahead of the pack, but you might not realize it by looking at the audience response to this amazing set of music shot for a BBC TV special in 1965. The audience of Limeys seem perplexed, unmoved and frankly puzzled at what they’re seeing and hearing. Could the English be that stiff a bunch? (Or a bunch of stiffs?) Music has never really been a great British export with the exception of one band from Liverpool (all right, a couple of others I suppose) so maybe Jimmy’s trio act just wasn’t their thing. As for Smith, the cool reaction doesn’t go unnoticed–at one point he gives the unresponsive audience a glare that kills. Anyway if you dig jazz, you will certainly dig this half hour of material. Note that somewhere around nine minutes in, Jimmy–in his right treble hand–puts his thumb down on an F, holds it there for about three minutes and solos madly with his other four fingers on top of it. The thing is–this can’t be done. But here we have visual proof that it’s not a gimmicked up audio trick. The Limeys seem blind to it. One of them is smoking in the TV studio audience. Ah, the 60s…