Hammond Organ | 1934-2002

Shirley Scott played the Hammond B-3 with a lean, swinging attack, favouring blues-rooted lines and tight trio interplay over volume. Born in Philadelphia, she came up with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis in the mid-1950s before leading her own sessions for Prestige, including Great Scott! (Prestige, 1958) and Soul Searching (Prestige, 1959). Her partnership with the tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, her husband through the 1960s, produced some of her best-loved soul jazz. She moved to Impulse! for Queen of the Organ (1964) and to Cadet in the early 1970s for Mystical Lady (1971), then kept working into the 1990s for Muse and Candid. A graduate of Cheyney University, she later taught jazz history and piano there.