Dr. Lonnie Smith remembers vividly that he experienced what can only be called a life-changing epiphany when he first sat down at a Hammond B3 organ. It was in a music shop owned by a man called Art Kubera. Smith was in his early twenties. " You know when you open up a Bible, and you see that they have a picture sometimes with the rays coming from the sky?," the organist asks me. "That's what it was like for me. I was sitting at the organ and then everything hit me, and I could hear the voices and everything." For Smith, it was confirmation that playing the Hammond organ was going to be his manifest 1 / 7
destiny. He started going to Mr Kubera's shop everyday to practice on the keyboard from opening to closing time. The proprietor didn't seem to mind but one day, intrigued by Smith's perseverance, asked him about his fascination with the big, chunky piece of musical equipment in his shop. Recalls Dr. Smith: "He said, 'can I ask you a question, son?' I said 'yes, sir,' and he said, 'why do you come in every day and just sit until closing time?' I said 'well, sir, I want to learn to play the instrument and if I can go out and play it, I can make a living.'" Smith recalls that seemed to make a deep impression with Mr Kubera who a few days later, closed up the shop early, beckoned the young organ grinder to the back of the store where "he opened a door and the organ was looking dead at me. He said, 'if you get this out of here, it's yours.'" Smith, who was born in the city of Lackawanna, New York, was incredulous at Art Kubera's generosity. "I didn't pay anything for it, and they were like over three grand back then," he says. "I call Art Kubera my angel. He watched my whole career. He just passed, a little over a year ago. We were doing a documentary on me and he died the next day before he even got to tell a story." 2 / 7
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