Back for about five years in the late '60s, organ music was very groovy. Not just the Doors, but the Allman Brothers, Santana, and others who y’all are no doubt going to add to the list – a bunch of very hip groups had an organ thing going on.
Then, poof, the instrument completely disappears.
What are other examples of organ in '60s rock? Where did it come from? Where did it go?
Boston did it well, too. Kansas. Lot of prog bands in the seventies too- ELP, etc.
The Guess Who had lots.
Where did it go? I think it was just replaced by whatever was the current ‘latest and greatest’ technology. Organs gave way to synthesizers which became more powerful and had hundreds of sounds, these somewhat gave way to samples.
Let us not forget about YES and thier incredibly talented keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, Electric Light Orchestra and Styx. Though these are mostly after the 60’s
Like Opengrave,I’d hazzard to guess that the organ gave way to the synthesizer.
When I think “organ” and “60s rock” I immediately think of The Animals “House of the Rising Sun”.
Come on. Procol. Harum. 
John Lord and Deep Purple.
Where did it go - I think the above answers sound just about right.
I’m more interested in “Where did it come from”. I hope someone here has a more profound musicology knowledge than I, because I 'd love to know. Who were the pioneers of organ rock?
Al Kooper, Steve Winwood, Booker T. Jones.
Where did it come from? My guess is the gospel music of black churches. So many of the early R & B stars (Notably Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles) had their roots in gospel music, the organ seems a natural instrument to accompany them as they crossed over into pop.
People who worked at churches and funeral homes…
oh yeah, I’m gonna take a beating for that one
Okay, “new technology” explains where it went – but it’s interesting that it’s such a distinctive but short-lived sound. Though, yes, you’re right, not quite as short-lived as I made it sound in the OP – it definitely continues into the early '70s. (TelcontarStorm, remember Wakeman’s Six Wives of Henry VIII? I’d be curious to hear it again and find out if it was a tenth as cool as I thought it was at the time.)
But if you hear something with organ – you know it’s from between '65 and '75 – and it sounds funny and old-fashioned, like a player piano or something.
[RevLovejoy] “Let’s all join in singing In the Garden of Eden by I. Ron Butterfly.”[/RevLovejoy]
No one’s mentioned Keith Emerson yet?
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were at the forefront of organ-based rock music. Emerson himself became a superstar when the played for the Nice.
And, quite possibly, he put an end to the genre at the same time. His bombastic playing and classical riffs were in part a cause of the punk and new wave movements (Yes and Wakeman also were a factor). Musicians in the 70s revolted against this particular sound and returned to a guitar-only model, and the organ hasn’t returned.
This has been discussed in earlier threads, so I’ll keep this brief.
Where did it come from? A combination of a lot of kids in the 50s who took piano lessons and some really inexpensive organs that were available in the 60s (a pretty good organ cost less than a not-very-good drum set and was a lot easier to haul around.)
Where did it go? Overproduced bands started using string sections, less overproduced bands went to synthesizers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the story of the amazing Hammond B-3 organ:
http://www.hollowsun.com/vintage/b3/
http://theatreorgans.com/grounds/docs/history.html
Developed as a cheap, compact replacement for pipe organs in the 1930s, the Hammond was initially widely used in churches. It didn’t have much of an effect on secular music until jazzman Jimmy Smith showed the world what it could do in the 1950s:
Smith’s gospel-drenched sound created a whole new genre of music – soul jazz – and had a huge impact on Ray Charles and other early soul musicians. The B-3 became a mainstay of soul and R&B; from there it spread to rock in the early to mid 1960s.
During the 70s the B-3 fell out of favor as many turned to synthesizers. But it never entirely disappeared, and the B-3’s warm, versatile sound has many prominent fans (you’ll hear it on many a Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty track, for example.)
The B-3 staged a major comeback in the jazz world in the 1990s, with a full fledged soul jazz revival (e.g. the jam band Medeski Martin and Wood.)
Hell, yeah, the Hammond B-3 with a Leslie speaker. Make that mother scream! No synthesizer can reproduce the sound to my satisfaction - you need that big, whirling speaker in the Leslie cabinet to get it just right.
Other proponents of the Hammond B-3 have been Charlatans UK, Brent Mydland of the Grateful Dead, Sheryl Crow, and Widespread Panic.
A friend of mine used to play a Hammond B-3 in a bar band but had to stop for a couple of reasons: the Hammond, pushing a Leslie speaker, can be incredibly loud and his hearing was suffering, and the thing weighs an absolute ton and his back couldn’t take it anymore.
The Leslie speaker was only part of the Hammond B-3 myth.
The other part was the “tone wheel,” the mechanical part responsible for what Hammond called “percussive” - or the tone “pop” (how I describe it) at the beginning of each note. You want to hear the percussive sound to it’s best effect, listen to Green Eyed Lady by Sugarloaf - especially the unedited album version.
To start a Hammond Tone Wheel organ, there were two switches - the “power” switch and the “start” switch. You would hold the “start” switch up for approximately ten seconds, this started the tone wheel spinning. Then you would throw the “power” switch, while holding the “start” switch for another 5 seconds or so, then release the “start” switch. It was an interesting start procedure.
When I was a teen, our church received the gift of an Aolean-Hammond player organ. It was basically a B-3 with a player device that took rolls very similar to player pianos. It also had a Leslie speaker - and the sound was awesome!
I’ve been the Organist at several Elks lodges over the years - and at the Big Bear Lake (CA) Elks, they have a C-3 (a B-3 without the full wrap-around cabinet) with Leslie that was an absolute joy to play and figure out all the fun settings. Too bad I didn’t have the money to offer to buy that wonderful instrument when I left the mountain. I hope it doesn’t burn in the firestorm currently in the mountains.
Don’t forget Jimmy McGriff playing “The Happy Organ”, an early B-3 hit.
I don’t know (and haven’t checked Google) whether Dave “Baby” Cortez made it into the 60’s, but he was definitely there in the 50’s. And I think I recall that Perez “Prez” Prado, whose hits might be classified as “rock” as well as Latin, had an organ in his band.
Wasn’t that Dave “Baby” Cortez, or did he cover it?
I love the Hammond B-3 sound, especially Jimmy Smith and Joey DeFrancesco.
Sorry, I was referring to Cortez making a hit out of “The Happy Organ.”