General Music Chat

Name some of your favorite bands that featured the organ. I'll start:

Deep Purple
Uriah Heep
Pink Floyd
ELP
Yes
The Doors
Jethro Tull
Santana
REO Speedwagon
James Gang (occasionally)

DP used a B3? wow, I honestly didn't know that..

Well damn,

You already named some of the best.

I would include these, although not all these bands are strictly organ using bands, but some are, and the rest have used them famously on certain songs or albums...


Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Led Zeppelin
Styx
Kansas
Boston
The Allman Brothers
Iron Butterfly
Tangerine Dream
Radiohead
Booker T. Jones (Green Onions - Gotta love this one!)
Phish

I really have not payed that much attention to keys over the years (now my violinist son wants to learn keys) You have a pretty darn good list there already.

The Doors
Led Zepplin
Neanderpaul (of course)
and others...

Animals
Booker T & the MGs
Vanilla Fudge
E.L.P.
People
The Blues Project
Atomic Rooster
Gentle Giant
Procol Harum

Nobodys named MR B3 yet...I aint gonna say yet..Ill let it go aittle longer..I humped a B for 6 solid yrs all over the US and NEVER complained once.This B had been thru a fire and flood and never failed to start..The legs collapsed one nite while it was in a van and almost turned it over cause it was sittin on a hill... ...Ill be back alittle later..


KIDD

Three Dog Night
Steppenwolf
Eagles
Poco
Uriah Heep
Edgar Winter
Benmont Tench (Tom Petty)
King Crimson
Dr John
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Reo Speedwagon
Sugarloaf
Grateful Dead
Boston
Guess Who
Genesis
Procul Harum
Atlanta Rhythm Section

"Mr" B3? I would think Booker T...Mention B3 - "Green Onions" - that B3 intro is what pops into my head...that or Deep Purple's intro to "Lazy".

All right Allright now dang it..Ill tell..

Who other than........JIMMY SMITH (THE CAT)..Who wrote many instrumentals for the B..Im sure if ole Irmy was still on here , he woulda got it.Our old Keyboard player who was a MONSTER on the B turned me on to this guy back in the 70s'..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJsE9fo9pT0


John

Scott, how could you possibly have missed Tony Lords' keyboards in DP? They were SO cool, & SO necessary!

I loved Steppenwolf's Goldy McJohn's work, too.

Jethro Tull

Dead Can Dance

Phish

Tonto's Expanding Headband (mostly MOOG)

Beatles

Procul Harem

Steve Miller

ELO

Spooky Tooth

Live (OK, admittedly little if any B3 work, but nice keys anyway)

Uriah Heap

Frank Zappa

Chicago

Genesis

Peter Gabriel

Gosh, there's so many, yet they're all so unsung!

Pete,
I has come to my attention that two of the great organ works of popular modern music, the aforementioned Booker T's "Green Onions", AND Boston's "Smokin"(one of the most asskickin' rock tunes ever recorded), were NOT performed on the B3, but rather on it's "little sister", the Hammond M3.

Kidd,
Jimmy Smith my ass!
If were talkin' "godfatha'" of modern day Hammond organ grindin', my vote goes to the guy that Jimmy Smith first seen do it. ... None other then the great,

WILD BILL DAVIS! (Shirley Scott wasn't "chopped onions" either)

Booker T and the MGs was the first band I ever saw. They opened for Santana, Sept.25, 1971 at The Olympia in Detroit. The sound of "Green Onions" reverberating through that old stadium was haunting. Santana was touring in support of the great third album that featured Neil Schon dueling with Carlos. A week later I saw Pink Floyd at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor.

Hey Gang,

Id say most of us over 45 played " Green onions" as a break tune in bands when we were teens..If we werent playin that one ,we were playin "Hold It"... .THOSE was actaully the tunes that started my B3 obsession..I didnt notice it in records till seeing the MONSTER actually played in my 2nd band when I was 15.Every keyboard that came out after that Could NOT duplicate that...? that...? I dont even wanna call it a "sound"...I cant even put a label on it...You guys know what Im talkin about...
OK HOWLIN , I stand corrected... ...Just didnt go back far enough...

John

KIDD: It's called a Leslie...they can duplicate everything else, not the Leslie. I don't think anyone has devised a way yet to duplicate the sound of a speaker and horn spinning around...they also have internal tube amps, that probably has something to do with it too.

Howlin: Just proves what I said a while back, you can't tell a B3 from an M3, I think they both used the same amp, but not sure, the M3 just had fewer options. (whaddya call the pull/push thingies???) Yeah, less of the pull/push thingies...I think the M3 was a little smaller too. Still a beast to try and get onstage, I helped move one a few times years ago. Sounds great once you get it there, if you don't wind up with a hernia in the process...

I missed a M3 at a local auction last year, it sold for $85, I was trying for $90 when the auctioneer didn't see me and sold it to someone else. Just needed a little work on the amp, new tubes and probably a cap job, I was going to fix it up and put it in a friend's guitar store on consignment, probably could have got over a grand for it without trying hard. 85 bucks...damn...I guess I need to be kicked for not getting into the bidding earlier, I thought it would go for a lot more and wasn't trying to bid...

To show you how weird things are at this auction though, a few weeks later they sold a broken mandolin (really busted up bad) for $35 and a violin in need of repairs for the same. (Needed some gluing, kid scribbled on back with a ballpoint, parts missing...) I talked to the auctioneer about the mandolin before the auction, they tried to sell it the week before and got no bids, I told him no way 'd pay more than 10 bucks for it, since it was literally busted in half. I thought it would be an interesting project, to see if I could put it back together and make it playable.

Hey Pete,

Yeah, the Leslie...I shoulda been more specific....OH YEAH,I know about a LESLIE.. We carried 2 of them dang things around for the first 2 yrs of my first road band in 78...AT THAT TIME, I couldnt understand why Mike HAD TO HAVE those ugly things..I use to say,"now come on, cant ya just run that thing thru the PA or use my TNT bass amp"? The older guys would laugh at me...I still have old cassettes of band practice and the B still sounds great on those old worn out tapes..


John