Well folks, here is Issue 4 -- finally! Having had a few difficulties getting Issue 4 out, we are back on track. I would like to thank all the readers who have sent encouraging emails during this period.
Summer NAAM was in Austin, Texas, July 14-16, 2006. The summer show is always considerably smaller than the winter show in Los Angeles. In Austin, there were about 20,000 attendees (as opposed to 80,000 in LA). The show only had one booth that introduced new products of interest to the organ aficionados -- the Hammond-Suzuki booth. However, Hammond-Suzuki introduced six new product and we have all the details.
Like many Jimmy Smith tunes, "Oh, No, Babe," contains riff after riff that are the envy of many organ players. Although, the opening riff of "Oh, No, Babe" uses only notes from the blues scale in G, Smith puts such an urgency into the riff that it just comes alive.
Brian Hamby examines the many different aspects that Smith has hidden in his dissertation on the blues, "The Sermon." This article looks at the first 48 bars of "The Sermon" and expounds on the techniques that Smith demonstrates with ease.
In two examples from Jimmy Smith recordings in the key of 'G,' I will introduce the concept of playing grace notes (tiny "ghost notes" that are played right before the beat), and in the second example, notes that are played before the beat with specific timing in a 12/8 feel.
In this article, we examine the organ part in one of Eric Clapton’s signature songs "Wonderful Tonight." This song was released in 1977 on the album Slowhand.
Tommy Young has the B3 in his blood: he is a player -- blues, country, gospel, jazz and rock, he runs the Young Music Co. the Hammond Dealer in Dallas, Texas, and he is a man that thinks and lives the B3. We sit down and talk to Tommy and transcribe one of his songs, "So What."
In my discussions with Dennis Capiga (President, Hammond-Suzuki), at Summer NAMM we got to the bottom of the supposed XK-3 software upgrade and hardware changes in the near future..
Valhalla Woodworking is one of the best kept secrets in the Hammond / Leslie world. Byron Coy, the owner of Valhalla Woodworking, starts with kiln-dried hardwoods (just like the originals) and then shapes and joins them with precision craftsmanship into an assortment of quality reproductions. The reproductions that we are interested in are the replacement wood parts for vintage Hammond organs and Leslie cabinets. With Leslies, Valhalla goes even further and makes exact reproduction Leslie cabinets.
