the mighty organ ...

...we were at a friends house last night for food and music - we had a great time - the company was excellent, and our host Karl and his friend Rich are fine musicians. In some ways the star of the evening was Karl's Hammond organ - a full two manual job with pedal bass and a Leslie cabinet.
The sound is truly magnificent - gritty, percussive and harmonically complex. The engineering details are amazing - the Hammond is essentially an electro-mechanical, rather than electronic, device, and in a way, the engineering limitations are the source of much that is distinctive about the sound.
I realised just how much of the music that I love - particularly from the 50s and 60s - had the Hammond sound at its centre. Amongst other things Karl played a thoroughly convincing intepretation of Jimmy Smith, a true blues great - I must get a CD or two....

... the sound also brought back Steve Winwood (especially from his Spencer Davis days), Booker T and the MGs, The Nice (I'd rather forget ELP), The Small Faces, a ruck of gospel, Ray Charles, John Mayall and many more...

Of course the Hammond "inspired" much cheesy music - terrible pub music, crap interpretations of "jazz" standards, awful ballads - I remember as a teenager growing up in Clacton-on-Sea, the Marine Hotel had a huge back bar where "Kathy and her Organ" (the cause of much adolescent sniggering) - played throughout the summer season to the delight of massed holiday-makers.

...aahhh memories