Wilson became so obsessed with the hard-driving, "East Coast sound" of his mentor, he moved to New York City on Christmas, 1966. Moonlighting piano gigs around LA eventually led him to the burgeoning sound of the Hammond organ gaining traction in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, and being propelled by the likes of Bill Doggett, Jimmy Smith and Richard "Groove" Holmes, the latter taking the time to show Wilson the instrument's nuances during jam sessions. In his early twenties, a stint playing defensive back for the semi-pro Orange County Rhinos convinced Wilson it was time to permanently swap cleats for keyboards. "After I moved to New York years later," Wilson recounted, "every time I ran into Harry he'd put his dukes up and say, 'Alright, man, let's go!'" "I knocked a lot of guys out." His relationship with the Hollywood star landed him the role of the knocked out boxer in Carmen Jones, the 1954 film featuring Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. "Kirk Douglas was my sponsor," Wilson told me in a 2004 interview. He earned All-City football honors playing defensive end, and gravitated to the ring as a professional heavyweight boxer, becoming a sparring partner of future champ, Floyd Patterson. He loved the boogie-woogie sounds the delivery guys would stick around to play after dropping off ice for the family's ice box, and was further piqued after a visit to the house by rising pianist Sonny Clark.īut music was second-string to his love for hitting people. As a teen, Wilson tinkered on the home piano. When Reuben was five, Dust Bowl conditions forced the family westward to Pasadena, Calif., where his father Amos worked odd jobs and his mother Elizabeth was a domestic worker. "And in the '90s, his music was revitalized when English DJs like Giles Petersen started playing all these old funky tunes he had recorded decades earlier."īorn April 9, 1935, in the tiny town of Mounds, Okla., Reuben Lincoln Wilson was the second youngest of thirteen siblings. "Reuben Wilson helped usher in what we now call Soul Jazz," says Pete Fallico, founder of the Jazz Organ Fellowship Hall of Fame, an organization dedicated to honoring the history of jazz organ, and into which Wilson was inducted in 2013. After battling dementia the last several years, and recently being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, he died in Harlem. Wilson's death was confirmed by his son, Reuben Reuel Wilson. These landmark LPs provided his peers with "a groovy situation," (as one album was titled), and would inspire acid jazz DJs and hip-hop luminaries worldwide a generation later. The funk-ridden grooves of his music could feel larger than life, however, particularly those he created for Blue Note Records in the late 1960s and early '70s. 5 inch frame behind the dual-manual keyboard, quick hands and size 15 feet sparring with the drawbars, pedals and electromagnetic tonewheels housed in a wooden box that could be mistaken for living room furniture - it didn't seem so big after all. But Reuben Wilson - who died on May 26 at the age of 88 - was one such organist. Few are the folks who could cast a literal shadow over the iconic Hammond B-3 organ, nicknamed "the Beast" by many of the jazz musicians who have helmed the hefty 425 lb.
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