The Hammond Pages
Beauty of The Beast
Select a Page
- 1-Original Standard Registrations
- 2-Drawbar Description
- 3-Blending Tone Colors
- 4-Tonal Resources
- 5-Drawbars in Closed Position
- 6-Flute Tone
- 7-Another Flute Tone
- 8-More Flute Tones
- 9-Return to Closed Position
- 10-Typical Reed Effect-oboe
- 11-Chorus Reed Tone-Trumpet
- 12-Light Reed Tone-vox humana
- 13-Return to Closed Position
- 14-Foundation Tone-Diapason
- 15-Foundation-Full Organ
- 16-Foundation-Full Theater Organ
- 17-Return to Closed Position
- 18-String Tone-violin
- 19-String Tone-string chorus
- 20-Novel Tone-xylophone
Talkin' about the Hammond
My first experience with this marvelous beast came at age 12, where a church organist showed me how to turn it on, and how you had to pull the drawbars to get sound. I didn't get serious on it until I started playing at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel in Miami. The band frequently backed second-line R&B acts like Chuck Jackson and Etta Jones, and I got my first taste of what it was like to coax the sweetness out of the monster.
cont'd...
Eventually, I wound up in Hartford, Connecticut playing with a great old soul band called the Nite Riders. They were great teachers, and when that gig went away I found a place with Spider Martin, an ex-Lionel Hampton saxman. Jimmy McGriff would come sit in at the gig from time to time. What I learned from the master has informed my style to a greater degree than I sometimes admit, but despite having a great love of Jimmy Smith's harmonic progressions and extensions, I tend to push further into the roots side - or take it outside...
