Defenders of the pipe organ failed to grasp that not every church wanted or needed a pipe organ, and that the Hammond was actually well suited to many religious musical practices. We can only imagine what other kinds of testimony would exist had the Commission considered the experiences and opinions of the congregations who worshiped with a Hammond. The exclusivity was the point, though. Because instruments like the theremin and the Hammond first circulated in spaces outside of elite compositional spheres, their performers, practices, and receptions seem to exist outside of history altogether.
Kelly Hiser is co-founder and CEO of Rabble, a startup dedicated to empowering libraries to support and sustain their local creative communities. Kelly holds a Ph. As a historian she focuses on gender, race, music, and technology; as an entrepreneur and executive she works at the intersections of technology, the arts and humanities, and the public good.
NewMusicBox provides a space for those engaged with new music to communicate their experiences and ideas in their own words.
Articles and commentary posted here reflect the viewpoints of their individual authors; their appearance on NewMusicBox does not imply endorsement by New Music USA. The Hammond and Leslie amplifiers became my favorite instrument and remains the same today.
I owed a Hammond X77 and matching X77 Leslie a few years ago and sold them to a musician very reasonably and he was a happy camper. The greatest electronic keyboard still.
I have owned and performed with a hammond since Other than the piano, in my opinion no other keyboard has enfluenced modern-day music more. Or was the B3 the gold standard?
If memory serves, many even most Hammond organs were played through a Leslie speaker, which imparted a unique warbling effect to the sound. Wonderful article, but I wanted more. As an avid fan of Chicago Blues music, I have enjoyed many hot sets of live music in Chicago over the last two decades that were pushed to the boiling point by Hammond players that have found an exquisite voice by virtue of what that instrument can do in the hands of a skilled and inspired musician.
Every devoted musician is looking for a voice that most accurately represents the tonal qualities they hear in their head. When they find that voice, the sounds they produce inspire them to continue their quest for perfection, sometimes over an entire lifetime. It Worked! At first he thought it would be just a toy, a plaything, selling for thirty to forty dollars, but thinking again, he saw that this could be a major advancement in musical instruments, and proceeded to sketch out the blueprints for what would become the Hammond Organ.
On April 24th, Laurens Hammond filed for a patent on his musical machine. The paper was a whopper, spanning 18 pages and twenty thousand words.
Ford summoned Hammond to Dearborn to find out if he could help get the fledgling organ company up to speed. It is a common misperception that Henry Ford got the first Hammond Organ. The reality is actually much tamer.
Upon its retirement, it went to the Smithsonian in Washington, where it now resides. The Great Theatre Organist Jesse Crawford switched from the Mighty Wurlitzer to the Hammond, and made popular recordings, some of which, like his Wedding music, remain available to this day.
Another early star of the Hammond was Ethel Smith, whose dazzling technique and equally dazzling looks took her to the heights of stage and screen. On the west side of Chicago, near the original Hammond Factory, Black Gospel Churches began to use the Hammond Organ, and a tradition was born that has never stopped growing, and has had incalculable influence on nearly every facet of music. Hearing the Hammond in church inspired Wild Bill Davis to try the instrument in a jazz setting.
Fats Waller followed, and an entire movement in Jazz was born. But the Hammond needed one more thing to become the King Of Instruments, enter We think of them now as inseparable, fraternal twins, but the truth is, the Birthday of the Hammond organ predated the Leslie by seven years.
The man behind the invention was Donald J. Leslie, an engineer who worked for a firm that made parts for the Hammond Organ Company. Laurens Hammond intended his organ to play in churches and classical concert halls. Don took a horn speaker and made it go around in a circle.
And Bingo! The spinning horn gave the Hammond Organ what is called in the pipe organ world a tremulant. It made the Hammond Organ sound completely different. This variation gave the musician millions of combinations of harmonics, and assured that every Hammond player would be able to summon a unique voice.
An extra level to the expression a Hammond Organist had at their fingertips was added because the Drawbars could be manipulated in real time. The B-3mk2 features 4 sets of real drawbars in the size, shape and configuration of Vintage Hammonds. Few musicians realize the Chorus effect pedal widely used for Guitars and Electric Pianos had its genesis as a component of the Hammond Organ.
This effect added a high "attack" to the Organ tone at either the octave or the twelfth, with a fast note decay. This sound was reminiscent of an xylophone or clave, and became immensely popular, immediately. Perc gave the Organ a bright highlight, and every generation of music has embraced this sound. Controls for the Perc have the classic nomenclature, familiar to anyone who has ever played a Hammond. On the B-3mk2, Perc is executed in the Digital realm, allowing a wide range of controls the organists back in the day did not possess.
The 1' drawbar muting, characteristic of the Vintage Organs can be defeated, as can the drop in Drawbar volume level that accompanied the engaging of the Percussion voice. You can control the volumes and decay times as well. The inclusion of this obscure feature demonstrates the commitment to authenticity Hammond has brought to the B-3 mkII. Inside the Vintage Hammond B-3, on one side of the tube preamp, there was a "Screwdriver Pot" with the engraved legend "Tone".
This control was adjusted by the Technician installing the organ in order to tame the treble response in the instance of the organ's installation in a Church or Mortuary, where a more muted organ was desired.
The control was a cocktail of upper Mid and High frequencies the proportions of which were, until recently, held secret. The "Tone" control was basically a "hi cut" control and only went "down".
You could not direct the control to go "up" for "boost". The B-3mk2 has 5 banks of 9 presets each, controlled by the Traditional "Reverse color" Preset keys at the lower end of each Manual.
The entire B-3mk2 setup may be saved to a common CF Flash card for backup or restoration. You can play these external zones with or without the B-3mk2 voices sounding.. The Xk-1c features real drawbars in the size, shape and configuration of Vintage Hammonds. The Drawbars also serve the Combo and Pipe Organ divisions, but with a slightly different function. On the Xk-1c, Perc is executed in the Digital realm, allowing a wide range of controls the organists back in the day did not possess.
In order that every key and pedal of the Laurens Hammond's Organ could access every Tonewheel as predicated by the Drawbar settings, an electro-mechanical apparatus lurked behind the keyboards, with 9 contacts corresponding to each drawbar for that keyboard and a series of contacts attached to each key. As a key was depressed, the contacts sequentially touched, and the circuits were completed to produce the Organ tone that was registered by the Drawbars.
The very nature of Electric circuitry dictated a click could be heard at the top of each note played when the current-carrying key contacts touched.
Laurens Hammond considered that click to be a nuisance, and worked to no avail in order to rid his organ of that imperfection. The jazz players who embraced the Hammond Organ, however, found the click to be a percussive highlight, and wanted nothing to do with its eradication. To make matters worse, as the Vintage Hammonds aged, the click became more pronounced, and by the Rock and Roll era, the Key Click assumed a role of importance that Laurens Hammond could never imagine.
The timbre of the click may also be adjusted. That would be jazz organist Jimmy Smith. Before Smith, the Hammond had a distinctly more conservative role in chapels, theatres and for providing music and sound effects in radio plays. Smith's dazzling virtuoso grasp of the pedals and drawbars of the Hammond led the organ to infect jazz, gospel, soul and blues, before crossing over and being mangled by rock. So what was so great about the B3?
It was the B3 that Hammond enthusiasts began combining with the Leslie speaker — a spinning horn, the rotation of which can be sped up or slowed down to create effects from tremolo to chorus. Although Laurens was initially aghast at the pairing, it was the combination of the Leslie speaker and the Hammond that gave s jazz and rock its overdriven, scrambled organ tone.
Production of the classic tonewheel organs ceased in the s, but in , with the reputation of the B3 towering over its odd siblings, "The New B3" was issued. A conscious attempt to mimic the sound and functionality of the B3, but with modern electronic rather than clunkier, motors-and-cogs components. Jimmy Smith lent his official seal of approval and the B3's descendent was well-received by musicians.
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