Collection: Larry Young

Larry Young grew up in Newark in a household where the organ was already in the room. His father, Larry Young Senior, was an organist himself, and provided an instrument at home once it became clear his son was drawn to it. Young started on piano, absorbed Jimmy Smith's soul-jazz Hammond vocabulary through his teens and early career, and released three Prestige albums between 1960 and 1962 that showed exactly how good he already was at doing what Smith and Jack McDuff were doing. Then he went to Blue Note in 1964 and did something different. "Into Somethin'" (1964) with Grant Green and Elvin Jones applied Coltrane's modal vocabulary to the organ, an instrument nobody had previously thought to run in that direction. "Unity" (1965), with Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson and Elvin Jones, completed the argument: the most fully realised modal jazz organ album ever recorded, the Hammond used as a harmonic and textural vehicle rather than a blues or gospel instrument, and the record that stands as Young's definitive statement. He was twenty-four years old. He went on to reshape jazz fusion as the organist in Tony Williams's Lifetime alongside John McLaughlin on "Emergency!" (1969), appeared on Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew," recorded sessions with Jimi Hendrix at the Record Plant, and served as organ teacher to a young Los Angeles musician named Doug Carn who later recorded for Black Jazz Records. He also converted to Islam and performed under the name Khalid Yasin Abdul Aziz through parts of his career. He died of pneumonia on March 30, 1978, aged 37.