I was listening to the Nuggets box set over the past few days and started wondering - why so many organs? I’d say at least half the tracks by these unknown/semi-known (mostly) one-hit-wonders have some sort of electric organ on the track.
Was there some sort of fad in the late 50’s where people went out and bought organs, had them in their homes for a few years, then dumped them in the garage where the kids and their new band discovered them? Did one definitive track set the example that you MUST have a Farfisa or Hammond on your song for it to be any good?
This might well be explained in the book that comes with the box set, but I’ve only borrowed the CDs themselves, I haven’t read the book yet. So I’m sorry if this is covered there.
They hadn’t developed all the electronic sounds we have now. If you wanted keyboards in your band, your choice was piano, Fender-Rhodes, or Organ, and a piano weighs a ton and is difficult to amplify (plus it sounds kind of weenie). That’s my guess, anyway.
From what I can gather, people like Buddy Holly (with his two guitars/bass/drums setup) were not the rule, and the rapidly evolving pop music of the day still drew influences from “more-advanced” types of music which involved a keyboard instrument of some type. And, as blowero said, there simply weren’t as many options as there are now (not by a long, long shot), and portability was often a factor, which sometimes threw the Hammond B-3 organ out of the running in favor of the Farfisa, Vox, Hohner, maybe the Mellotron (the then-leader for varied sounds) or Fender-Rhodes types of keyboard instruments.
It is mildly appropriate to insert at this juncture that in the case of the Hohner Pianet (featured on “These Eyes” by the Guess Who") the electronic capabilities were strictly for amplification. The sound source was actually accordion reeds, which were plucked by the keys in similar fashion to a harpsichord. Touch was controlled by apparatus similar to a piano action, which sometimes meant broken reeds during a particularly expressive strain.
I’m too young for the 60s, but in the seventies and the early eighties I knew several kids who had electric organs, including myself - the kind which made the whirring sound and had the chord keys as well as the usual black and whites. They weren’t that uncommon, maybe as common as electronic keyboards are today among kids.
I remember my first electronic keyboard - it was a Casio, it had five voices and I believe four rhythms, and cost around $200. Now you can get far better keyboards for under $10.
As a former 60’s garage band drummer, I have to say that the organ really “rounded out” the sound, especially if you only had a lead guitar , bass and drums as my many bands sometimes did.
For a great Farfisa-sound check out Nick Lowe’s Half A Boy And Half A Man off the cd Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit
What virtually everyone else has said is very valid. But let me add (I had/have no musical talent so I was an agent/manager for a number of groups back in the '60s) and the thing that has not been mentioned is that rock ‘n’ roll at that time was not as segmented as it has become. A rock and roll group was not limited to covers of Elvis, the Beach Boys and Buddy Holly, but at any given gig, they would be called upon to do Hank Williams (country), Acker Bilk (instrumental middle of the road), Perry Como (vocal middle of the road), Conway Twitty (twangy country), Howling Wolf (throaty blues) and a number of other tastes that might exist. That’s how you paid you dues on the way up.
An organ allowed a band to go a bunch of different direction that just guitars and drums would not (it could even get a bit funky when that became popular). When a couple of my groups made it relatively big, the organ was there along the way so it stayed when they were basking in their success.
Let me add, as a former garage band kid of the 60s, that a decent organ could cost less than a decent set of drums. I believe the mini-Farfisa cost less than $200. Plus there were a lot of kids whose parents had been giving them piano lessons for years, so there was a good selection of decent keyboardists for bands.
Also, hammonds were popular home organs in the 50’s, and slightly more portable than a piano…(my hammond C3 weighs about 600 pounds). And although they have to be oiled regularly(the hammond is mechanical, not electronic), they dont have to be tuned.
So, when playing in a band, if you dont have the money to buy a rhodes, or a helpinstill(bet ya dont know what that is, do ya?) you might be able to borrow that old hammond sitting in the living room that nobody ever plays.
Hamonds are one of Gods greatest gift to man…Farfisa’s, vox’s etc are evil(although Ray Manzerik did wonderous things with a vox, I couldnt get rid of mine fast enough).
Now days, my hammond doesnt leave the studio. Its too heavy, and too expensive to fix if something bad happens to it. Same with my Rhodes…I love to play it, but if If I am playing a bar gig somewhere I use something more modern and replaceable.
When that great Hammond organ solo in The Buckingham’s “Kind of a Drag” kicks in, I see Toni Basil and Teri Garr dancing in vinyl boots and miniskirts on Shindig, and I’m in heaven.
Is that really fair? Styx released their first album in 1971. Before that they pretty much were a “dues paying garage band” (listen to those early albums and you’d say they still were).
Well, maybe the point is valid. Did any other band ever use the word ‘synthesizer’ in their lyrics? (album: Crystal Ball, year: 1976, title: Put Me On).
The other fact that no one’s mentioned has to do with the plain sexiness of the organ. Remember, the sixties, free love and all that. As a very good musician friend of mine once noted: a rose on the piano is all very nice, but I’d rather have tulips on my organ…
