Four jazz virtuosos explore the unlimited possibilities of jazz organ music!

In a career dating back to the 1960s, keyboard master Doug Carn has released eight solo albums and played alongside such artists as Stanley Turrentine, Shirley Horn, Melvin Van Peebles, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Nat Adderley, as well as appearing more recently on albums by Cindy Blackman and Wallace Roney. His early recordings on the Black Jazz label combined “a looser feel with a political mood that emphasized peace, love, and independence,” according to the website jazzwax.com. Born in New York City, raised in St. Augustine, Florida, Doug played organ in church, graduated as valedictorian of his high school class, and studied oboe at Jacksonville State, where he later taught for many years. Downbeat Magazine praised his composing and arranging as well as his playing, declaring that the “most attractive component of the group’s music” is Doug’s “deft orchestrations, which give it a much larger sound than its instrumentation would suggest.”

Growing up in Hercules, California, Howard Wiley started playing piano at age three and gravitated to the saxophone at 11. His grandfather, who played sax in Count Basie’s Orchestra, was an early mentor. He has played with Marcus Shelby’s Jazz Orchestra and is currently a member of Lavay Smith’s Red Hot Skillet Lickers. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, he’s “a tenor titan when he tacks off on something, swinging like crazy, leaping all over the chart like it’s a jungle gym; blowing hot, then cool, first strident, then tip-toeing through a chorus.” His most recent album, The Angola Project, was inspired by gospel music and slave chants recorded at Angola Prison in the 1950s.

Calvin Keys has been leading bands and making beautiful music on the guitar for nearly 50 years now. He’s played with many of the greatest jazz organists, including Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Trudy Pitts, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Papa John DeFrancesco, as well as such jazz giants as Ahmad Jamal, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, and Bobby Hutcherson, just to name a few. Plus he’s appeared on videos with MC Hammer and Luther Vandross, backed Martha Reeves, and worked for years with Ray Charles. He’s a consummate guitarist, known for his impeccable, single-note style.

Deszon Claiborne is the dynamic drummer for Clockwork and the Tammy Hall Trio.

Presented by the Jazz Organ Fellowship

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Listen to a track from Doug Carn: