# Larry Young: A true innovator on the Hammond B3: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/10/07/larry-young-true-innovator-hammond-b3-video/
- Published: 2017-10-07T09:00:41+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**07.10. – Happy Birthday !!! A true innovator on the Hammond B3, Young took a different
musical path than any of the other organ masters of his time: Although he started
out drawing his major influences from the work of Jimmy Smith and the gospel and
blues elements that other players employed, but eventually turned to a more complex,
modal approach to the organ with sophisticated harmonic and chordal structure.**

Larry Young was born on October 7, 1940, and hails from Newark, New Jersey. His 
background includes study of both classical and jazz music on the piano, but had
a natural family bond with the organ. Larry Young, Senior, his father, was an organist
and was the first major musical influence on his son. The father, moreover, provided
an organ in the family home so that Larry Young, Junior, who had studied piano, 
could gravitate easily and at his own pace to the organ. In his teen years, Young
was relatively inactive musically; but a reawakened interest in the organ, encouraged
by his father, propelled Young into music in 1958. After a rhythm and blues apprenticeship,
Young gained wider experience with Lou Donaldson; worked around New York and New
Jersey with Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley and Tommy Turrentine, among others; and then
began heading his own units.

He recorded his first sides for Prestige in 1960 with the offering “Testifying,”
followed up with “Young Blues,” the same year, then into “Groove Street,” in ’62.
He jumped over to the Blue Note label, and in ’64 put out “Into Somethin.” Young’s
premier album is thought to be “Unity”, with Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, and Elvin
Jones, which came out in 1965. This is considered to be his best outing, and still
holds up as a hard bop organ classic. Young’s work for Blue Note (as both a leader
and a sideman) was compiled for Mosaic’s limited-edition six- CD box set “The Complete
Blue Note Recordings.”

Young was attracted to the novel concept of fusion, he played with Miles Davis in
1969, on the “Bitches Brew,” sessions, worked with John McLaughlin, and then Tony
Williams’ groundbreaking ‘Lifetime’ in the early ’70’s, where he was an important
third of that band, one of the first jazz fusion groups. From here he recorded two
solo albums for Arista, “Larry Young’s Fuel,” (1975) and “Spaceball.” (1976)

Larry Young was only 38 when, in 1978, he checked into a hospital suffering from
stomach pains, and died from untreated pneumonia.

He was technically superb, playing pedal bass, and independent left and right hands,
but with a lighter touch than previous organists, often preferring to solo pianissimo,
sometimes being only slightly audible over the drummer. Young also differed from
his contemporaries in that he loved to play duets with the drummer, who was invariably
his Newark pal, Eddie Gladden.

Young was the sole major transitional figure responsible for shifting away from 
the blues-based style of Jimmy Smith and moving toward a free approach, and he revolutionized
the instrument comprehensively, in composition, arrangement, and technique.

![Картинки по запросу Larry Young](https://i0.wp.com/kevernacular.com/wp-content/
uploads/2016/06/larry-young.jpg?w=640)

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