Hammond B3x

The Hammond organ, named after its inventor Laurens Hammond, debuted in 1935 as a cost-effective electro-acoustic alternative to the gigantic pipe organs mainly installed in churches. Among Hammond’s first customers were George Gershwin and Count Basie. Jazz pianists like Basie, Fats Waller, Wild Bill Davis and Milt Buckner were the founding fathers of the instrument’s international conquest, which led across all styles of popular music, from jazz to progressive rock, with its heyday in the 1960s and '70s…

Albert Hammond is one of the more successful pop/rock songwriters to come out of England during the 1960s and 1970s, and has also enjoyed a long career as a recording artist, his work popular in two languages on three continents across four decades. Hammond was born in London in 1944 – his family actually came from the British colony on Gibraltar, but wartime considerations caused his mother to be evacuated to London, where she gave birth. He spent his childhood and youth on Gibraltar, where he became fluent in both English and Spanish – that bilingual ability would serve him well in his later career. His family lived modestly on his father's fireman's pay, and one of his early diversions was music – he sang in church and became head choir boy. He also became interested in popular music, sang for his own enjoyment, and also took up the guitar.

Hélène de Montgeroult’s life reads like a novel: showing a precocious musical ability as a child in pre-revolutionary France, she became fêted as one of the finest pianists and improvisers of her time. Imprisoned during an attempt to reach Naples at the time of the Revolution, she was able to return to France. Here she worked for the Institut National de Musique, only to be imprisoned again during the Reign of Terror. Finally freed for good, she was made professor of piano at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris, the first woman to occupy such a position. Meanwhile, she managed to compose an important body of work for the piano as well as a complete method, including 114 études.

Thanks to the 1970s and '80s soul jazz movement and its 21st century counterpart, acid jazz, the Hammond B-3 organ has shown a remarkable ability to survive and adapt to changing musical trends – all without changing its swirling, pulsing tone one little bit. The Hammond Street anthology from Acid Jazz mixes in tracks from a couple of veteran B-3 players like Jimmy McGriff and Reuben Wilson with tracks from newer combos, and even though these newer groups cover songs like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," what is immediately obvious here is how much a B-3 sounds like a B-3 no matter what kind of clothes you drape over it. Highlights include the hard-charging "Itchy Feet" by the Past Present Organisation (which opens the disc), the ragged and energy-overloaded "Clubtown" by the Trashmonkeys, McGriff's "Ain't It Funky" (which indeed it is), and Wilson's "Sugar," a classic piece of soul jazz.

Pop/rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. is the lead and rhythm guitarist and songwriting member of the GRAMMY® and BRIT Awards-winning band The Strokes. He has released 4 solo albums to date, most recently the acclaimed “Francis Trouble” in 2018 which spawned the radio single “Far Away Truths”. In the 4 years, since then, The Strokes released their US Top 10 charting GRAMMY® nominated rock record “The New Abnormal” and toured the world extensively. Albert also began the songwriting process for his 5th solo album “Melodies on Hiatus”, a 19-track album, crafted in a most experimental style.

The cleverly-conceived cover shot tips you off to the fact that this 1967 record–comprised of outtakes from sessions for his John Hammond, Big City Blues, So Many Roads, and Country Blues albums–displays two different sides of the great white bluesman John Hammond, one electric, one acoustic. The electric side features a backing band for the ages, consisting of Band members Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson plus Mike Bloomfield (on piano!) and Charley Musselwhite, while the acoustic side is just Hammond on guitar.

Although it kicks off with the first (and only) song John Hammond has ever written, Ready for Love is a worthy and unusually varied follow-up to the surprise success of 2001's Wicked Grin. It would have been easy and possibly expected for Hammond to churn out another album of Tom Waits songs to capitalize on the unanticipated momentum created by Wicked Grin. After all, at age 60, considering he's been chipping away at his craft for the past 40 years, Hammond has certainly earned the right to coast on some better-late-than-never success. And the Waits catalog is bursting with plenty more gems perfect for the singer/guitarist to wrap his throaty, emotional blues voice around.

The cleverly-conceived cover shot tips you off to the fact that this 1967 record–comprised of outtakes from sessions for his John Hammond, Big City Blues, So Many Roads, and Country Blues albums–displays two different sides of the great white bluesman John Hammond, one electric, one acoustic. The electric side features a backing band for the ages, consisting of Band members Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson plus Mike Bloomfield (on piano!) and Charley Musselwhite, while the acoustic side is just Hammond on guitar.