Monday Night Jam Session: Chris Hazelton at the Blue Room

Chris Hazelton was a bassist when a Medeski Martin & Wood album pulled him toward the organ in 2004. His professor at Kansas City Kansas Community College told him he had to hear Everette DeVan, and at nineteen Hazelton snuck into Bobby's Hangout, where DeVan's trio was the house band. "I was blown away and floored," he told Kansas City Magazine. Of the organ, he said, "This is the instrument I was meant to pick up."

DeVan invited him over the following Tuesday, the start of a mentorship that lasted until DeVan's death in 2021. As 2022 approached, with three of his greatest musical mentors gone, Hazelton wrote in his liner notes to After Dark that he "suddenly felt a new weight of responsibility for carrying on the tradition of the Hammond B-3 Organ in jazz."

He's made records with no bassist at all: Peregrination (2012) is organ, Danny Embrey's guitar, and Kevin Frazee's drums, and In Rotation, released in May, sets vibraphone and saxophone over organ and drums. Monday he plays the opening set, and then the bandstand belongs to whoever signs up.

He teaches applied organ at KCKCC now, his alma mater, on DeVan's personal Hammond B-3.

The Blue Room, 1600 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108. Monday, December 7, 2026, at 7 pm. $10 general admission; complimentary for AJM members, musicians, and students.