A Musical Tour Through 
Recordings of a
Master of the
Hammond B-3

Jack McDuff always said that if you could hear and feel, you could enjoy his music. "I play music that is not hard to understand," said McDuff, a master of the Hammond B-3 organ known for his blues-influenced jazz style and his skill on pedals.

A new WILL-FM production, Message From Home: A Tribute to Brother Jack McDuff, is a musical tour through more than 40 years of McDuff recordings. Airing on WILL-FM at 8 pm on Saturday, September 15--two days before McDuff would have turned 75, the program starts with his 1959 recordings with Willis "Gatortail" Jackson and continues through his 1999 release, "Bringin’ It Home." The special will be followed by a two-hour live program featuring more McDuff music and local reminiscences about McDuff, who grew up in Champaign-Urbana.

McDuff worked with some of the most famous names in jazz music, influencing countless young artists. "McDuff was to the organ quartet what Art Blakey was to the hard bop quintet," says WILL’s Paul Wienke, producer of Message from Home and host of the live follow-up special. "He was where all the great guitarists and sax players went to school to learn how to make his music."

When McDuff died earlier this year, he left behind fans who miss his music, and friends in central Illinois who remember him fondly. Gerald Foster, a singer better known as Candy Foster who performs with the Shades of Blue, recalls that McDuff scared club owners half to death by waiting until the last minute to show up for a gig. "He’d always make it, but he was the spontaneous type. Go with the flow. Easy come, easy go," says Foster. "But when he got started, he didn’t want to stop. They had to turn off the lights and shut off the electricity to get him to stop." McDuff played at the AmVets and later at the Elks Club on Chester Street in Champaign.

Foster recalls that when he was a kid learning how to be a singer, McDuff’s wife, a jazz singer, offered to help him. "She told my mother to bring me on over to the house. She got McDuff and his band up early after they’d been playing all night. I remember McDuff sitting there in his pajamas at the piano looking at me like, ‘I could kill you little boy,’ " says Foster.

Message from Home is narrated by University of Illinois assistant professor of theatre Lisa Gaye Dixon, and features interviews with McDuff friend and fellow B-3 artist Russell Cheatham; McDuff’s cousin, singer Victoria Capo Britt; and tenor saxophonist Ron Bridgewater, a U of I assistant professor. The program will be distributed by WILL-FM to radio stations around the country.

Although McDuff became famous as an organist, he started out as a bassist and pianist. A club owner wanting to save money suggested that McDuff take up the organ, which could play both bass and piano parts, resulting in a trio instead of a costlier quartet. McDuff hadn’t the slightest idea of how to play organ, but he didn’t want to lose the gig, so he said "yes." Once he learned to maneuver the pedals, his career took off.

In the mid-1960s, he fronted Heatin’ System, a popular band featuring guitarist George Benson, horn player Red Holloway and drummer Joe Dukes. When the organ fell out of favor in jazz during the ’70s, McDuff retained an audience by turning for a while to electronic keyboards. By the mid-1980s, he returned to the Hammond B-3 and experienced a resurgence in popularity on the instrument that made him famous.