Yeah, it sounds pretty cool in certain classic jazz standards, but I still don’t get the cult following over the Hammond B3.
Can someone clue me in?
I can’t even describe it, but it’s one of my favorite sounds in the world. Nothing’s as cool as Jimmy Smith on the Hammond B-3.
Are you asking about the sound of an electric organ in general*, or about the Hammond B3 model in particular?
*[sub]Since an organist can play bass with his feet, the combo saves money on a bass player.[/sub]
**Big Bad Voodoo Lou ** nailed it. It’s just those two words: Jimmy Smith. The man is a virtuoso on the B3 and gave it big time recognition as a worthwhile jazz instrument.
I just think of it as the Official Organ of cool music - like Les Pauls and Fender Strats are the Offical Guitars of Rock n’ Roll or something.
B3’s just sound amazingly amazing…
I know - you are looking for more historical background and I think BBVLou nailed it - but there are lots of great B3 players over the course of rock, jazz, etc. It’s just a great tone…
The B3 has a great sound and can really do a ton for the mood of the song. You can make it sound angry, you can make it sound sad- but whatever you do with it, it really comes through in the song. I’ve never heard any electric keyboard that has the same strength and full sound.
The Hammond’s following isn’t confined solely to jazz, by the way; a number of ‘classic rock’ bands also use them. (It’s all because of Jimmy Smith, though.) Gregg Rolie, Ray Manzarek, Gregg Allman and Rick Wright all play/ed Hammonds.
Well it’s also a generational thing. My father loves jazz and can’t abide any keyboard that doesn’t cause hammers to strike strings.
It’s just one of those things, like why people will kill for an authentic vintage dispatchers’ microphone for that growly distorted vocal sound. When Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones toured with one, and I saw the little horn spinning around like a Loony Tunes air raid siren, I was hooked for life.
That’s the Leslie, an attempt at a tremolo/vibrato/stereo effect made by a vertical speaker topped with a rotating, sideways-pointing cone. I believe that was once used as a standalone effects box away from a Hammond. And a Hammond doesn’t have to have the Leslie turned on.
The Hammond is also one of the most versatile instruments and can be made to create a wide variety of sounds with the drawbars.
You are right. That’s the Shure Green Bullet, originally mounted on a desk stand. It is THE world standard for blues harmonica players, and when you sing into it, you get a growly, lo-fi tone. After years of watching the prices rise on the old ones, Shure started making them again.
Part of the B3’s sound is the Leslie speaker cabinet. There’s a rotating pair of speakers inside, giving sort of a skirling warble to the sound, and the speed of the rotation can be adjusted. Electronic wizards have come up with flangers that sorta sound like the Leslie, but only a Leslie sounds that way.
There’s more to it than the speaker, too. Dealers of antique instruments scour the countryside for old B3s.
Jeez, what generation is he? Fats Waller was playing jazz solos on pipe organ back in the 1920s.
– Not that it became a popular jazz instrument until Jimmy Smith came along. Followed by Wild Bill Davis, Brother Jack McDuff, Charles Kynard, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Les Doyle, Don Patterson, Shirley Scott…
While Manzarek certainly has used the Hammond B3 on recordings, his sound is more associated with the Vox Continental (think “Light My Fire”) and the Gibson G101.
Simply put, the Hammond B3 (and other Hammond tonewheel organs like the M3) has balls. Serious balls. The key that separates these Hammonds from other manufacturers is the method it produces its sound: the tonewheel. Rather than botch the technical explanation the curious can look here. Basically, tonewheel organs relied on a mechanical method to manipulate an electromagnetic field to produce their sounds, rather than electronic oscillators using vacuum tubes or transistors. The result in using the mechanical method was a very distinct and much richer timbre than in oscillator-based organs.
Also, the ability to sculpt sounds on the fly via the drawbar is a distinct advantage of the Hammond. There are non-tonewheel organs that employ drawbars (the Vox Continental being one), but most oscillator organs at that time employed toggle switches named after classical pipe organ stops (diapason, flute, nazard, bourdon, cello, gamba, etc…)
In drawbar organs, you normally have 8 drawbars (for each manual), all which can be pushed or pulled to settings from 0 to 8. You can think of drawbars as a sort of graphic equalizer. From left to right, the drawbars control the following frequencies:
Sub-Fundamental (octave below)
Sub-Third (fifth)
Fundamental (the primary, or unison)
2nd Harmonic (octave)
3rd Harmonic (twelfth, or a fifth one octave above)
4th Harmonic (fifteenth, or two octaves)
5th Harmonic (seventeenth, or major third two octaves above)
6th Harmonic (nineteenth, or fifth two octaves above)
8th Harmonic (22nd, or three octaves above)
A typical Jimmy Smith registration is 888000000, emphasizing the lower harmonics of the organ sound. Another common setting is 80000008, emphasizing only the lowest and highest harmonics. Still another is the full organ setting of 88888888 (“pulling out all the stops” to borrow a pipe organ phrase.)
Furthermore, you have cool percussive effects (a little click on the very beginning of the note) and vibrato effects. Combine that with a Leslie speaker, and you have a rather large swath of tonal color you can play with to sculpt and shape your sound.
In summary, the B3 is a very distinctive organ with an organic sound. It does not suffer from the sameness of tone and timbre that oscillator-based instruments do. Because of the mechanical way it produced its tone, it has an organic (no pun intended) and nunaced sound. Add to that all the options I’ve mentioned for sculpting and shaping the timbre of the instrument, and you’ll see why it is the organ of choice for many performers.
Man, did I overuse the word “organic” or what? Gotta edit more before I submit.
Don’t forget Keith Emerson (rock & roll Hammond dude #1; though technically he didn’t play a B3), Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman, and Matthew Fisher (creator of the “Whiter Shade of Pale” lick).
Joey DeFrancesco is a great younger jazz Hammond B3 player.
Or John Medeski.
Nice to see a little love for Lonnie Liston Smith.
Hammond B3.
Is there a specific piece/song/work I should check out?
I think he was referring to the other Lonnie Smith, who is more closely associated with the B3.
One of the most amazing feats of roadie-ship I’ve seen at a concert was when Mike Finnegan’s B3 crapped out during a CSN concert at Red Rocks in the 80’s. How did the roadies fix it? They didn’t. They hauled it away and brought in a new one. Always nice to have a few extra B3s in the truck.
Brent Mydland brought a fantastic B3 sound to the Grateful Dead.
Younger? I saw him when he was “younger” with John McLaughlin and Dennis Chambers. That was like 15 years ago. Must be his baby face. 
OK, I guess mid-40’s is still young in jazz circles