James Oscar Smith was born December 8, 1928, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and learned piano from his parents, performing with his father in a dance troupe from an early age. After serving in the Navy, he studied bass and piano at the Hamilton School of Music and the Ornstein School of Music, then toured with Don Gardner's rhythm-and-blues group the Sonotones through the early 1950s. Hearing swing-era organist Wild Bill Davis, one of jazz's few organ voices at the time, inspired Smith to take up the Hammond himself.

He recorded quickly and prolifically for Blue Note starting in the mid-1950s, first in trio format and later with larger ensembles, many sessions loose jam settings that gave musicians room to build soulful, extended solos. Smith's adventurous late-1950s work was instrumental in developing both hard bop and soul jazz, a style folding R&B, gospel, and blues directly into a jazz vocabulary. In 1962 he signed with Verve Records, a relationship that lasted into the early 1970s, though Blue Note continued issuing his recordings through 1963.

Smith's revolutionary approach fundamentally changed how the organ was heard in a jazz context. He had a career revival in the 1980s and '90s, recording again for Blue Note, Verve, and Milestone. He died February 8, 2005, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

More than any other musician, Jimmy Smith is credited with establishing the Hammond B-3 organ as a serious jazz instrument, and his soulful, blues- and gospel-inflected style directly shaped the soul-jazz organ tradition carried forward by every organist this project covers.