I realized that I liked playing my Rhodes but never was really good at it. A few months back I found a superb Rhodes imitation that is man portable–a Crumar Seven. That has the tines mathematically modeled and sounds absolutely like the real deal which I refuse to cart around anymore. Includes a good Wurli to boot.
Then my mind drifted to Hammond organs and I found a thing called a Ferrofish B4000+ used at Guitar Center.
After some teething pains, Steppenwolf walked into my studio.
Boy am I having fun.
“What song had the Hammond organ in the 1970s?” my daugher asked.
“All of them.”
Last night I was playing “Eclipse” by Pink Floyd, followed by “Green is the Colour” and “A Saucerful of Secrets”
I’ll eventually take it to church and watch the pearls being clutched. That growl!
The darned thing even has a knob to adjust how “old and broken” it is.
I’m really no expert on instruments, but I once read somewhere that the Hammond organ originally was developed as a church organ, to resemble the sound of big pipe organs. Of course, musicians soon took it for also making worldly music.
My high school jazz band had a Hammond B-3 with a Leslie speaker, and I loved playing it.
The B-3 by itself had a rich sound, but a lot of that famous “fat” Hammond sound actually came from the attached Leslie speaker. The organ produced a fairly clean, steady tone; the Leslie sent it through physically rotating speakers, creating that swirling mix of pitch shift, volume changes, phase effects, and room reflections. A sustained chord suddenly sounded much bigger than it had any right to.
The best part was switching the Leslie from slow to fast and hearing the rotors gradually wind up. You could hold one chord and make it sound as if something extremely dramatic was about to happen, even if the rest of the band was just trying to get through “Louie Louie.”
Add a little tube overdrive and the thing could go from church organ to gospel roar to full-blown rock growl in seconds.
So whenever I hear that classic Hammond sound, I still think of that B-3 in our band room. The Hammond supplied the notes. The Leslie supplied the attitude.
Details are sketchy, but I remember reading that Paul McCartney put headphones on a violin and ran the cord into a Leslie cabinet and then mic-ed the cabinet. I don’t remember which song.
Don Leslie thought he had hit on a miracle, and rightly so, He promptly took his hot invention right to Laurens Hammond but as fate would have it…Laurens Hammond hated the idea! He meant for his organ to play church and classical music. But Don Leslie knew he had something golden, so he went into business for himself, producing the musical innovation that was called “Vibratone-The Pipe Voice Of The Electric Organ”
The Dean of Theatre Organists Jesse Crawford was among the first to popularize the sound of the Hammond and Vibratone combination, and did he ever! For a while, what we now know as “Leslies” were popularly called “Crawford” or “Hollywood” speakers. And yes, the rumor is true…Hammond Dealers were NOT allowed to sell Leslie speakers. They couldn’t even acknowledge there was such a thing.
I’m curious: how does the Leslie effect change to the listener if s/he walks from the back of the church to the front or the reverse? For that matter, the effect must sound different in every location in the church, no? Fascinating accessory.
The real ones must have sounded amazing. My device simply produces the same sound via stereo, as if you were listening to Steppenwolf with headphones as they kick in the Leslies.
Still, it’s an amazing sound, and it really adds energy to the scene.
I did a 3D print of a half-moon switch to put on the front of my Crumar keyboard and used a Stratocaster 3-way switch to replicate the original Leslie control. Left = slow, middle = brake, right = fast.
It does mean a quick swipe of the hand is needed, but I was getting annoyed at yet another foot pedal. The swell pedal is enough for me.
I found out, through the controls on my device, that there are two speeds involved. There is a horn and a bass output with both rotors running at the same time, and they spun up and down at different rates because of the differing mass, so the horn spins up quicker and stops quicker, while the bass spins up slower and down slower. This combines to add something special to the Leslie sound.
