Creativity Quote by Benmont Tench

That opening “Fortunately” is doing a lot of sly work: it frames artistic originality not as a lofty ideal, but as a practical relief. Benmont Tench isn’t just praising Jimmy Smith’s unmistakable organ voice; he’s letting every would-be imitator off the hook while quietly warning them, too. If you can’t truly copy Jimmy Smith, good. Stop trying. The joke lands because it flips the usual musician’s anxiety - influence as contamination, style as something you can “steal” - into a kind of liberation.

Tench, a keyboard player himself, is speaking from inside the ecosystem where imitation is both apprenticeship and trap. Jimmy Smith didn’t just play the Hammond B-3; he rewired the instrument’s cultural meaning, pushing it out of churchy respectability and into jazz swagger, blues grit, and nightclub heat. So when Tench says only Jimmy can sound like Jimmy, the subtext is about embodiment: touch, timing, attack, the almost vocal way Smith phrases. Gear can be purchased; feel can’t.

There’s also a gentle jab at the marketplace that loves “the next” version of a legend. Tench’s line deflates that hype with a wink, insisting that singularity isn’t branding, it’s biography. The compliment is absolute, but it’s also a manifesto for working musicians: your job isn’t to clone the masters. It’s to let them haunt your hands and still come out sounding like you.