Results for "organ, Hammond B3"

Billy Hawks

Born: September 3, 1941

William Hawkes known professionally as Billy Hawks (without the 'e'), was an American R&B and jazz organist. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up singing, playing piano, and listening to the blues. In 1961 he joined Steve Gibson's Red Caps, and the following year joined the Modern Flamingos. Under the guidance of manager Clifford Doubledee, he formed his own group, the Billy Hawks Organ Trio, in Philadelphia in 1964, with guitarist Maynard Parker and drummer Henry Terrell. The group performed along the East Coast, notably at Atlantic City. He recorded his first album, The New Genius of the Blues, for Prestige Records in November 1966, with Terrell, and with guitarist Boogaloo Joe Jones replacing Parker

Charles Earland

Born: May 24, 1941

Charles Earland came into his own at the tail end of the great 1960s wave of soul-jazz organists, gaining a large following and much airplay with a series of albums for the the Prestige label. While heavily indebted to Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff, Earland came armed with his own swinging, technically agile, light-textured sound on the keyboard and one of the best walking-bass pedal techniques in the business. Though not an innovative player in his field, Earland burned with the best of them when he was on. Earland actually started his musical experiences surreptitiously on his father's alto sax as a kid, and when he was in high school, he played baritone in a band that also featured fellow Philadelphians Pat Martino on guitar, Lew Tabackin on tenor, and yes, Frankie Avalon on trumpet. After playing in the Temple University band, he toured as a tenor player with McGriff for three years, became infatuated with McGriff's organ playing, and started learning the Hammond B-3 at intermission breaks. When McGriff let him go, Earland switched to the organ permanently, forming a trio with Martino and drummer Bobby Durham. He made his first recordings for Choice in 1966, then joined Lou Donaldson for two years (1968-69) and two albums before being signed as a solo artist to Prestige. Earland's first album for Prestige, 'Black Talk!', became a best-selling classic of the soul-jazz genre; a surprisingly effective cover of the Spiral Starecase's pop / rock hit 'More Today Than Yesterday' from that LP received saturation airplay on jazz radio in 1969. He recorded eight more albums for Prestige, one of which featured a young unknown Philadelphian named Grover Washington, Jr, then switched to Muse before landing contracts with Mercury and Columbia. By this time, the organ trio genre had gone into eclipse, and in the spirit of the times, Earland acquired some synthesizers and converted to pop/disco in collaboration with his wife, singer / songwriter Sheryl Kendrick. There followed a succession of successful jazz / soul / funk albums including 'Odyssey' in 1976, featuring 'Intergalactic Love Song', 'The Great Pyramid', featuring 'Driftin' and perhaps his best remembered album from this period 'Revelation', featuring the Randy Muller (Brass Construction) produced 'Let The Music Play'. He moved into the Eighties with 'Coming To You Live' featuring 'The Woman In You' and the title track. There were further CBS outings with 'Street Themes' and 'Earland's Jam'. In 1983 he released an odd twelve inch single entitled 'It's A Doggie Boogie, Baby', popular on the UK dancefloors. Sheryl Kendrick's death from sickle-cell anaemia in 1985 left Earland desolate, and he stopped playing for a while, but a gig at the Chickrick House on Chicago's South Side in the late '80's brought him out of his grief and back to the Hammond B-3. Two excellent albums in the old soul-jazz groove for Milestone followed, and the '90's found him returning to the Muse label. Earland died of heart failure on December 11th, 1999, the morning after playing a gig in Kansas City, he was 58.

Bill Doggett

Born: February 16, 1916

William Ballard Doggett was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, a church pianist, introduced him to music when he was 9 years old. By the time he was 15, he had joined a Philadelphia area combo, playing local theaters and clubs while attending high school. He later sold his band to Lucky Millinder, and worked during the 1930s and early 1940s for both Millinder and arranger Jimmy Mundy. In 1942 he was hired as The Ink Spots' pianist and arranger. In 1949, he replaced Wild Bill Davis in Louis Jordan's Tympany Five. It was there that he first achieved success playing the Hammond organ and he is also reputed to have written one of Jordan's biggest hits, "Saturday Night Fish Fry", for which Jordan claimed the writing credit

Barbara Dennerlein

Born: September 25, 1964

Born in Munich, Germany, in 1964, Barbara Dennerlein fell in love with the Hammond organ sound at an early age. She was eleven when the first home organ was given to her for Christmas. After only one and a half years of lessons she decided to continue autodidactic, relying upon her highly visible talent. She began to develop her own inimitable style and finally her jazz enthusiastic parents decided to buy an original Hammond B3.

Barbara became acquainted with the history of the instrument and went on her own journey of discovery in the world of music. In addition to studying the classical repertoire of standards, she also began to compose her own numbers very early on. Following first performances as a thirteen-year-old, she began to play in clubs at the age of fifteen. In the early eighties she was already fêted as the “organ tornado from Munich”.

Papa John DeFrancesco

Born: September 12, 1940

On September 12th, 1940, John DeFrancesco was born in Niagara Falls, New York, the son of a remarkable Sicilian-born musician, Joe DeFrancesco, who was a member of the Dorsey Brothers swing band and had the uncanny ability to quickly learn and play nearly any musical instrument. Exposed to music at an early age by his father, John DeFrancesco began playing bugle and trumpet at age 6. After forming a band with several school mates, DeFrancesco played his first professional gig at just 13, at a local nightclub in Niagara Falls. In 1959, at age 19, DeFrancesco encountered jazz organ legend Jimmy Smith and the course of John’s life was seemingly forever altered

Joey DeFrancesco

Born: April 10, 1971

Joey DeFrancesco’s emergence in the 1980s marked the onset of a musical renaissance. Organ jazz had been a form of music that literally went into hibernation from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties largely because of the introduction of high-tech, light-weight keyboards. It was Joey, however, that ignited the flame once again with the sound of his vintage Hammond organ and Leslie tone cabinet.

He not only illuminated this once dormant music form but brought back the many proponents of jazz organ who had been shuffled by record producers and club owners to lesser roles within the music industry. Befriending and supporting those who preceded him, Joey became the new-age proponent of an instrument that had been pushed aside in favor of the growing technology. Considered a child prodigy, Joey remembers as far back as age four, playing jazz tunes modeled by his father, Papa John DeFrancesco and memorizing music from the many jazz albums in their home. Papa John, a jazz organist himself, took young Joey under his wing and nurtured his rapidly developing skills, bringing Joey along with him to gigs, Joey would sit-in with as many seasoned Philadelphia musicians who were around.

Wild Bill Davis

Born: November 24, 1918

Wild Bill Davis was the top cat among organists prior to the rise of Jimmy Smith in 1956. He could be credited for taking the instrument from the swing era into the R&B infected jazz of the early ‘50’s, and was a pioneer in the organ trio format. He could swing like crazy, grind out dirty blues, or could play in a laid back easy listening style. He originally played guitar and wrote arrangements for Milt Larkin's legendary band during 1939-42. Davis also played piano with Louis Jordan's Tympany Five (1945- 49) before switching to organ in 1950 and heading his own influential organ/guitar/drums trios

Milt Buckner

Born: July 10, 1915

A colorful and versatile musician who was comfortable while on the piano, or stretching out on the Hammond organ. Milt Buckner was also quite the character and very much the jovial entertainer.

Orphaned as a child, Buckner was taught music by an uncle in Detroit. He started playing piano and arranging for local bands such as The Harlem Aristocrats and The Dixie Whangdoodles - by the late 1920s. After joining drummer Don Cox's band in 1932, Buckner began experimenting with patterned parallel chords, becoming famous as the earliest purveyor of what came to be known as "block chords" or "locked hands" style;, he then attracted the attention of McKinney's Cotton Pickers in 1934 for whom he wrote arrangements.

James Taylor Quartet

Emerging from the tragic bankruptcy of Stiff Records, James Taylor, founding member of the infamous group The Prisoners - formed The James Taylor Quartet JTQ's first single, Blow Up, was released on the Re Elect The President (Acid Jazz) label in 1985. It was a huge success, immediately attracting the attention of John Peel who championed it; the track appearing three years running on Peel's seminal Festive 50 Chart. After an impressive 13 weeks in the Indie Singles Chart, the band decided to start work on a mini album, titled Mission Impossible. This debut, released in '86, was naturally featured around Taylor's Hammond organ sound to produce classic covers of Sixties film themes Mission Impossible, Goldfinger, Mrs Robinson and other heavily grooving instrumental punk funk tunes

Lonnie Liston Smith

Born: December 28, 1940

The Great Lonnie Liston Smith is one of contemporary music’s most versatile musicians. In a career that spans some 40 years, he has been heard in a variety of context as a featured sideman for some of Jazz music’s most illustrious leaders before stepping out to reveal his own original concepts as a bandleader in the mid 70’s. He is a keyboardist of the first rank and has influenced a generation of young players that have acknowledged his rhythmic urgency (swing), harmonic acumen and composing skills. Lonnie was born in Richmond, Virginia into a musical family. His father was a member of the Gospel Group, “The Harmonizing Four”