Recorded at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul, Minnesota, this CD documents the phenomenon which is the Tuesday Night band: Soul jazz at its finest, served up fresh, hot, and dripping with grease. The band is Kenny Horst on drums, Gary Berg on saxophone, and Billy Holloman on the Hammond B3 organ.

Mozart called the organ “the king of instruments,” and the king is still ascendant on Tuesday nights at the AQ. The key to the B3’s sound is its mechanical-electric tone generator, coupled with the Leslie speaker. Together these make one instrument. I can talk frequency modulation, amplitude modulation, and Doppler effect, but the thing is, the rotating speaker in the cabinet makes the sound good. With the right musicians, a B3 organ, a drum kit, and a saxophone are one hell of a band, and believe me, these are the right musicians. They are seasoned veterans who have been playing together every Tuesday night at the AQ for almost 10 years.

Kenny Horst, the owner and manager of the Artists’ Quarter, has played drums with everyone from Lee Konitz to Jimmy McGriff. His musical roots are deep, and he swings like nobody’s business. Kenny was the heartbeat of Bobby Lyle’s organ trio and also the Organ Grinders with Mikkel Romstad.

Reedman Gary Berg is a master of the tenor, alto, and soprano saxes and that instrument of many reeds, the chromatic harmonica. He lets the bop riffs ride on the groove in a way that’s true to the music and the feeling. In the early years of the Tuesday Night Band, Gary was still working his day job driving a city bus. He would show up in uniform to take the stage at the last minute. Although he is featured as a sideman on many recordings, this recording is the first to really spotlight his talent and allow him to stretch out on every track.

The center of it all is Billy “The Legend” Holloman on the B3 organ. Holloman is no newcomer to the genre or the B3. His brother-in-law, Bobby Lyle, was a Twin Cities organist who moved to L.A. and found commercial success. Billy has developed his own voice on the organ, but pays appropriate homage to the greats (Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, etc.) who established the genre. He is a genius at manipulating the sweet sound of the B3.

The Tuesday night gigs started in the previous AQ location at 5th and Jackson. At first, the crowd was mostly older. Then Kenny got the idea to offer free food to lure people in. Billy would cook up a big pot of greens. Kenny and the bartender would fix up some wings and spicy chow mein. It was great, and it worked. The free food started bringing in the college students, who liked what they heard and stuck around. The free food is long gone, but the crowd has stayed on. When St. Paul bars were allowed to extend their closing hours until 2 a.m., the AQ was one of the first places to exercise that right on Tuesday nights, and it has become the late-night hang for the Twin Cities.