'Home Cooking': A soulful, joyful celebration of Philly organists

The preeminent Philadelphia instrument? How about the organ? Its legacy runs deep. Consider: the world's largest operational pipe organ, the Wanamaker "King of Organs," right here in Center City since 1911; Girard College Chapel's prized Aeolian-Skinner organ, worked magically by avant-garde jazz iconoclast John Zorn just last May; and much more.

On Wednesday night at World Café Live, a free concert called "Home Cooking: Celebrating the Philadelphia Jazz Organ Tradition" focused on the Hammond B-3. The number of soul-jazz B-3 masters from Philly has been staggering: Jimmy McGriff, Don Patterson, Trudy Pitts, Joey DeFrancesco, and more. Onstage, more than 20 local musicians, including an array of organ virtuosos, combined for three highly entertaining thematic sets.

Homer Jackson, the personable director of the Philadelphia Jazz Project, hosted an evening he put together with Temple University's WRTI and the University of Pennsylvania's WXPN. All was recorded for airing this spring on Jazz Night in America, a radio show/video webcast produced by National Public Radio and New Jersey-based jazz station WBGO, and hosted by Grammy-winning bassist and native Philadelphian Christian McBride.

The music began, as it must, with a set dedicated to the Incredible Jimmy Smith, the pioneering funky wizard of the B-3, who was born in Norristown in 1925. The set moved from the knotty bop of Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia" into the loping blues of "See See Rider," showing both his roots and his range. The capable hands of Kenny Gates and Billy Holliman, each seated at an organ on opposite sides of the stage, danced over the keys in evocations of Smith's legerdemain (feet working the bass). Drums, congas, guitar, and horns complemented all. Organist Rich Budesa rotated in for "Organ Grinder's Swing." The finale was Smith's epic "The Sermon," with local vocalist Toby Vent adding lyrics of her own.

Set two focused on Shirley "Queen of the Organ" Scott, prolific composer and B-3 sensation, highlighted by her "Basie in Mind" and concluding with "The Boogaloo," with sterling play by organists Dan Kostelnik, Sonny Keaton, and Azel Dixson. Set three centered on the music of Charles "The Mighty Burner" Earland. Jeff Knoettner and other musicians did "The Prowler," but the closing tune was the evening's peak: a funked-out, jazzed-up, all-hands-on-deck romp through Earland's version of the pop-rock group Spiral Staircase's lone hit, 1969's "More Today Than Yesterday." If it had to end, that was the way.