Master Chops T and the Burning B-3

Armed with blazing chops, explosive creativity, and a joyful approach to making music, Tony has more than earned his nickname, “Master Chops T.” His star continues to rise with his latest album, East to West, and its companion collection of alternate takes (available via digital download) West to East. From energetic bop originals like “I’ll Remember Jimmy” to tight covers such as “Recordame,” Tony’s playing soars, and support from guitarist Bruce Forman, saxophonist Byron Roker, and drummer Adam Nussbaum is as nimble as a bandleader could ask for.

East to West comes out on Tony’s own Chicken Coup Records, a young label that already claims four keyboard-centric releases, in addition to Tony’s own work. A savvy businessman as well as a dedicated educator and proponent of old-school jazz, he’s also developing the Rising Coup, a division of his label dedicated to producing digitally downloadable recordings of up-and-coming jazz students.

In between scouting out new talent, running the business of Chicken Coup, and earning standing ovations at festivals around the world, Tony invited us to Ohio for the weekend to hang, hear his inspiring story, and talk all things organ.

Squeezeboxing Jimmy and Neuralgic Amyotrophy

“I got hooked when I was eight by a door-to-door salesman selling accordion lessons,” says the Ohio-born Tony of his first keyboard instrument. Playing largely by ear, the young squeezeboxer quickly learned and excelled, winning an international competition while still in single digits. “I’d hand the music to the judges, unstrap the bellows, and go at it. And that’s how I play the organ now: full on.

“My dad played in a wedding combo,” he continues. “When I was 12, their accordion player was going to transfer to the Farfisa organ, so they could get rid of the bass player. That was economics at work,” he adds, grinning. “[The accordionist] bought this record when he was transferring to organ, and it wasn’t what he was looking for, so he gave it to me: Jimmy Smith’s Greatest Hits. When I put that album on, it was more than lightening bolts. I loved it instantly. It grabbed me so strongly that it sculpted my emotional state. It became a big part of who I am.”

Still on accordion, Tony started copping licks from the album — on his Cordovox squeezebox linked to a Lowry organ tone generator, which then played out of a Leslie 145 — and sent cassette tapes of his work to Jimmy himself. “I found an address for his supper club on a record label and he called me, coincidentally, on my sixteenth birthday, while I was sleeping. There was this grouchy voice: ‘Hey Anthony. Jimmy Smith.’ Jimmy Smith!?! ‘Listen to me. Don’t worry ’bout playing all them notes. You gotta learn to play the right chords first, then you’ll know how to play the right notes.’ That was the most valuable lesson you could ever have. If you don’t have the foundation, what are you going to play on top of it?”

Deeply inspired, the teenage Tony soon after faced a challenge that transformed his musical life. “I got this disease called neuralgic amyotrophy,” he says. “It damages your nerves, then it either kills them or, sometimes, you recover. They don’t know when or how.” First attacking his shoulders, the disease made it impossible for Tony to put on the accordion and, after two weeks in the hospital, he returned home to find a B-3 as a gift from his father. He dove in and practiced hard, using Hanon and his favorite records as resources. “Jimmy Smith was more than my idol,” says Tony. “He was the glue that kept me together when I was going through all this stuff. And I can still take lessons from him; all I have to do is listen to a record.”

Tony doesn’t let his condition stop him from creating joyful music, but it is something he must deal with every time he sits at a B-3. “When you watch me play, it looks like I’m slouched over,” he says. “It’s ’cuz my shoulder blades wing out and the muscles to hold my hands up are very weak. I rest my left hand on the rail, and my thumb slides along it — that’s so I can hold my arm up for that long a time. I play with four fingers, like a bass player.” Do any aspiring organists mistakenly try to cop Tony’s body position, as well as his licks? “I’ll have to say in my next instructional video, ‘Don’t look at my posture and my hands. Think about the music! This is just what I have to do so I can show you all this.’”

Given his warmth and openness, we felt obligated to double-check that he was cool sharing such personal stories with the Keyboard community. “Absolutely, man!” he says. “This is what makes me who I am. It’s the blood and the fuel I bring when I play.”

From Laying Concrete to Burnin’ Grooves

Though he’d been playing music for decades, Tony’s first release, the impressive Burnin’ Grooves, didn’t come until 2001. B-3 lounge gigs, community festivals, and small jam band performances were the order of business up until that point, and Tony’s days were spent running his family’s successful concrete business. That is, until a killer opportunity came unexpectedly, born equally from the organist’s tenacity and a series of happy accidents. “My drummer told me that the 501 Club was opening up, and Joey DeFrancesco was going to open it,” says Tony. “I wanted to have dinner with him, two Italian guys. Honest to God, I didn’t even think about my music at that moment. My motivations were one, organ player to another organ player, and two, he was always rated number two when Jimmy was alive.”

Meeting Joey at a clinic, Tony soon found himself sitting behind the organ, thanks to a local fan who’d asked him to play a tune. “My legs were shaking,” says Tony. “I’ve entertained and I’ve performed for a long time, so I know not to do things somebody just did. My bag was, let’s find a groove, so I broke into a squabble. The squabble is where you pull out the first drawbar and the last four and you turn the Leslie on fast with a little reverb. It’s an Errol Garner thing that Jimmy Smith does. I broke into that and Joey’s eyes lit up. He knew I was into something because at least I knew those styles.”

In the car ride after the clinic, Joey told Tony that he wanted to produce what would become Burnin’ Grooves. “Joey gave me the confidence,” says Tony. “Chicken Coup Records is founded in the same spirit. Look at what that spirit did for me!”

Lifelong Learning

Though he now tours internationally and plays festivals with the best players on the scene, Tony continues to explore music from a student’s perspective, hearkening back to the sage advice given on his sixteenth birthday by Jimmy Smith. “Whenever I hear myself playing a bunch of crap, I think ‘Stop. Play the right chords and figure this out.’ I’ll be celebrating 40 years as a musician soon, and I’m just now really starting to understand sus chords. Man, took you long enough, right? I’m talking about what it means in relation to the tonal center of the piece of music you’re playing. If you’re on an Fsus7, you’ve got a Cmin7 in there, which gives you some room, because Cmin7 could be the II of Bb, and F is the V to Bb. Now you start thinking, I could play off the Dorian, the II, but I could bring it up a step and play it off the Locrian. Now I’ve got the half-diminished. . . .

“If you understand where the tonal center is and where these chords are, when you’re comping under a guitar player, these are the colors you can feed him,” he continues. “It all comes from thinking, ‘What is this sus chord and why is it here? What is it representing? They’ve added something for a reason,’ instead of thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to get through this sus chord.’ What makes this thing challenging and lifelong is that you never run out of ideas and little stop signs along the way that make you learn. That’s a beautiful thing.”