The Hammond Organ: Beauty in the B

By Mark Vaill

Now fully updated, The Hammond Organ: Beauty in the B traces the technological and artistic evolution of the B-3 and other tonewheel organs, as well as the whirling Leslie speakers that catapulted the Hammond sound into history. You'll discover the genius that went into the development of Hammond's tonewheel generator, drawbar harmonics, percussion, scanner vibrato and other innovations, as well as the incredible assistance Don Leslie provided for Hammond by creating his famous rotating speaker system. Plus – B-3 legends including soul-jazzman Jimmy McGriff and progressive rocker Keith Emerson share their playing techniques; technical experts offer tips on buying, restoring, and maintaining Hammonds and Leslies; and over 200 photos illustrate historic Hammond organs, Leslie cabinets, and B-3 masters at work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Apr 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9781617132131

Book preview

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All Hail the King!

B-3 Basics

All hail the King of Organs: the mighty Hammond B-3. If you hear an organ in the music you listen to — be it jazz, blues, pop, rock, rap, whatever — chances are very good it’s a Hammond organ, or at least a simulation of one. There have been hundreds of organs in history, but the B-3 is by far the most popular. It’s been around 42 years and counting, it was in production for 20 years, and people still scramble to pick one up.

Dominic Milano, former editorial director of Keyboard, acquired this used B-3 in December 1971, when he was still in high school. Its guts shown from the rear (left), the organ was recently restored to playing condition for Dominic by Dave Amels, another vintage organ fanatic.

Buy one, that is. The B-3 tips the scales at 310 pounds (425 with its pedalboard and bench). And don’t forget the 150-pound Leslie 122 speaker cabinet, a crucial factor in the B-3’s popularity. To survive with one on the road, you’ll need a road crew (expensive) or at least three strong friends (free!) besides yourself to heft the thing around. Face it: To take one on the road, you pretty much have to be a real aficionado — or a masochist. By the way, have you noticed the increasing number of B-3 players on the club circuits these days?

Unless you’ve played a Hammond and danced your feet across its pedal clavier (that’s the pedalboard, or bass pedals if you prefer), you may not have much of an idea about the beast, or can’t understand why it’s so special to so many people.

The Hammond B-3 was one of dozens of electric organs manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company from the mid-1930s to the 1970s. Although Hammond organs have continued to be produced almost nonstop, even through today, those made in the initial 40 years were special. They differ from more modern models in the way they make sound. Whereas newer Hammond organs make use of solid-state circuits to create sound, the old ones incorporate a system of spinning, steel, silver-dollar-sized tone wheels with notched edges. These wheels spin at 12 different speeds, from 16 to 31 revolutions per second. The more notches a wheel has (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 192, covering eight octaves), the higher pitch it produces. Each wheel has its own little pickup for amplifying the wheel’s tone. Two separate five-octave manuals are cascaded inside the B-3 cabinet. A sixth octave of reverse-colored keys extends beyond the left end of each manual; these are used to engage hardwired presets or enable the drawbars – a set of nine push/pull sliders whose positions determine the strength of harmonics in the organ sound. If you move the drawbars while playing notes, the timbre will change. There are four sets of drawbars, two each for the upper and lower manuals. And if the organ is complete, it will have a 25-note pedalboard and matching bench.

Western Union developed a unique use for the Hammond organ in the 1940s: each musical tone generated by the organ was able to transmit separate messages simultaneously over a single wire.

As the popularity of the B-3 soared, the Hammond Organ Company introduced new ways of making the organ more accessible; here, a group of Girl Scouts takes organ lessons.

What’s so special about the B-3 and other tonewheel organs? Most important is their sound. Their output is more alive — organic, if you will — than what electronic organs can produce. The B-3 generates a warm, full sound, explains Dave Amels, one that’s very pleasant and musically useful. Really fine instruments inspire you to play better, and the B-3 is an example of that.

Ironically, as a member of the staff at Voce, organ enthusiast, player, and collector, Amels actively strives to reproduce the B-3 sound electronically. One of the most realistic-sounding B-3 simulators comes from Voce, the V3. Still, the man totally appreciates the real thing: There’s something very natural about the sound, almost like a violin or some other acoustic instrument, that makes it really pleasing.

Adds jazz and blues organist Moe Denham, an excellent performer who’s been playing the B-3 since his mom bought one in 1955, when he was 11, The B-3 is the one instrument, besides acoustic piano, that almost every electronic keyboard company is constantly trying to emulate.

Spinet cabinets await their final finishing operations in the Hammond Organ Company factory.

As on the B-3, drawbars cascade down to the dual manuals on the Hammond Suzuki XB-3, being played here by Joey DeFrancesco.

In 1949, 53 Hammond organists played to a crowd of 100,000 at the Chicagoland Music Festival at Soldier Field.

The Leslie’s a Necessity

Since organ tones tend to be rather static, the Hammond engineers developed ways of modulating the sound to make it more interesting. Vibrato and chorus effects were implemented on the B-3, but the best complement to the Hammond sound came from outside the company in the form of a cabinet with rotating speaker components designed by Don Leslie.

This fact wasn’t accepted very well by the man at the helm of the organ company, Laurens Hammond. How dare anyone outside the Hammond Organ Company improve his product! Although Hammond and Leslie had created perfectly matched musical products, for many years their companies battled. The Hammond Organ Company could have bought Leslie’s ideas, but instead decided to ignore his existence and to institute a policy that forbade their dealers to sell Leslie speakers.

Were Hammond dealers staunch in obeying the Leslie edict? Typically, yes. When I was a youngster, I used to hang around a music store that sold Hammond organs in my hometown of Quincy, Illinois, recalls Denham. Every once in a while I would bring up the Leslie name, and they’d look at me like I was saying the F-word. ‘Did you say Leslie? You’ll have to leave the store.’

Connected to a Leslie cabinet or two — or in the case of someone like rock organ god Keith Emerson, a stacked bank of more than a dozen — your Hammond will take on a brilliant new personality. The most popular Leslie speaker cabinet contains a high-frequency horn driver and a bass woofer, both of which are combined with rotating components: a dual horn assembly (one horn is open, the other acoustically plugged and present only as a counterbalance) for the highs, and a deflective drum for the lows. The rotary components can rotate at high and low speeds, with adjustable ramp-up and -down times. A full-stop braking option lets you stop the rotors completely, which is necessary if you want to tune other instruments such as a guitar to the organ.

Thanks to reflective surfaces in the performance space, as well as the Doppler effect that occurs when a noise-emitting source moves toward, past, and then away from your ears, the Leslie speaker creates a unique effect that greatly enhances the organ sound, especially when the rotation speed is switched at critical points in the performance. How did Don Leslie figure out to use rotary components with speakers? He was inspired by the experience of listening to a pipe organ. In a pipe organ, the pipes themselves are spread out across a fairly wide range. The base of a bank of pipes can measure up to 12 feet or more across. Therefore, the sources of notes you hear are spread out, and notes emanate from different spots across the stereo field.

The best complement to the Hammond B-3 comes in the form of a cabinet with rotating speaker components designed by Don Leslie. The top rotary horn and the rotary drum at the bottom, which can be seen in the back view (right), direct the organ’s sound.

Carting the B-3 and the Leslie can be prohibitively expensive, but well worth it if the budget allows; here, the late Charles Earland, a soul jazz organist whose style was influenced by early greats such as Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff, grooves on the Hammond.

Young B-3 sensation John Medeski, of the improvisational trio Medeski Martin & Wood, assesses the importance of the special speaker cabinet: The Leslie was designed to soften the organ sound and throw it around the room to imitate pipes being everywhere, he says. That’s the theory, anyway. In actuality, it’s way hipper than a pipe organ.

While he still lived at home, poor Moe Denham couldn’t enjoy the pleasure of having a Leslie with his mom’s Hammond organ. Mom had bought the B-3 with Hammond’s JR-20 speaker cabinet, which had four 10-inch speakers in it and a 20-watt amplifier. It was sufficient for the living room because that’s what the B-3 was made for. It was never made to be used professionally. I tried to get Mom to buy a Leslie speaker because I thought the sound of it was so cool. But she wasn’t all that impressed, and I don’t think she wanted to spend any more money. She’d already spent about $4,000 on this organ, and that was in 1955!

According to player, collector, and organ enthusiast Dave Amels, A lot of musicians who played organ in church found that it was good for styles other than classical, thus leading to it being featured in other forms of music, such as jazz, blues, and rock.

There’s no denying the fact that the B-3 and Leslie speaker were a magical combination. Unfortunately, since multiple Leslies could be run from a single Hammond, there’s currently a shortage of authentic old Leslies. Ironically, new Leslies are now assembled alongside solid-state organs by the new Hammond company, Hammond Suzuki USA, which is based in the Chicago area.

The Church Factor

Ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We need some historical perspective. Such as, What was the purpose of making the Hammond organ to start with? The Hammond organ was originally intended as a replacement for the pipe organ, Dave Amels offers. It failed miserably at that because its notes have such a fast attack. But that made it useful for types of music other than strictly liturgical. However, the Hammond was much cheaper than a pipe organ, so a lot of churches used it.

The Hammond found its way into many churches all over the country, Moe Denham adds, especially in the South. It was used by a lot of black gospel groups, and it found its way from there into the blues and R&B. Many of the early blues and R&B artists got their starts in the church. When they started to branch out and play in venues other than the church and sing music that was other than gospel, it seems the Hammond organ followed right along with them.

A lot of the musicians who played it in church found that it was good for styles of music other than classical, Amels agrees. That’s what led it from being used in the church to other forms of music, such as jazz. Gospel and R&B came out of the black churches that had a Hammond early on, and players found a new style of music that suited the sound of the musical instrument.

British funk/fusion/ acid jazz organist James Taylor (no, not the You’ve Got a Friend guy) has a different perspective on the B-3’s roots. His timescale is much broader, but perhaps that’s to be expected from someone whose country’s history goes back thousands of years instead of just hundreds: The organ, in general, goes clear back to Roman times. That was the first recorded history of pipe organs. The organ was the backdrop for the whole religious culture that’s gone on for the last 2,000 years. So the organ sound is synonymous with human history, struggle, and religion. The sound of the organ pulls strings that are pretty latent but deep in the human psyche.

Mrs. Frariklin D. Roosevelt seated at a Hammond organ presented to the Georgia Warm Springs Polio Foundation as a tribute to the President on his birthday.

Musical Evolution

Once the Hammond organ had escaped the boundary of the church, it’s use began to cross-pollinate numerous styles. Early advocates included Dr. Albert Schweitzer, auto magnate Henry Ford, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and composer George Gershwin. The young and beautiful Ethel Smith promoted Hammonds in performance, on records, and over the radio. These names were used as marketing tools to interest a new group of people in the organ: home players.

In the 1940s, there were players who seemed to be more pop-oriented, Dave Amels reports. In other words, instead of playing R&B and jazz, they played more popular, shall we say ‘white,’ music. There was a whole assortment of them, and they used the organ in ways that the Hammond Organ Company intended, more so than the jazz folks did. They used drawbar settings that were published in Hammond documents and used the presets. The one drawbar setting that Hammond always said you should never use was with all the drawbars pulled out. Just about every rock ‘n’ roll band has probably used it at one time or another.

The fabulous and young (still in his early 30s) Greg Kurstin grooves on Minimoog and B-3 in a duo performance with thereminist Pamelia for the Audities Foundation in Calgary, Canada, in October 2000.

Moe Denham points to one of his early influences, a player who belongs in this category: There was a guy named Lenny Dee who had a really different style. When you heard him on the radio, you knew immediately it was him, because it was very rhythmic. He broke every rule in the book. The Hammond Organ Elementary Instruction Book, which is geared toward the home or church organist, says absolutely, positively do not sit there and play rhythm on the expression pedal. Yet, that is the way to do it now in jazz, blues, and pop music, because that expression pedal is very important. It’s how you get a dynamic feeling when you play, like a pianist, by pumping it with the rhythm. Lenny Dee worked the expression pedal so much, it almost sounded like he had a rhythm section when he really didn’t.

Above and opposite: Ethel Smith, dubbed the First Lady of the Hammond Organ in the 1940s, contributed a great deal to the popularity of the electric organ.

Below and opposite: Internally, the C-3 is exactly the same as the B-3, except that it is in a closed-sided Gothic-design case, considered at the time more acceptable in church.

Other early Hammond organ stars in this vein included Milt Herth and Porter Heaps. But it was on other fronts that the strides were made that continue to influence music today. I can mention names of organists who go all the way back to the beginning of the Hammond organ in 1935, claims Denham. People such as Fats Waller and Count Basic. Waller, who was a phenomenal pianist as well, is commonly acknowledged as the first player to introduce the Hammond to jazz. Some cite his Jitterbug Waltz as the first recording ever made of the Hammond organ. Basie learned from Waller and can be heard playing in a swing style in Live and Love Tonight on Super Chief (Columbia). His sparse, jumpy playing style influenced many organists since, including Wild Bill Davis, Milt Buckner, and Jackie Davis.

The father of jazz organ was Wild Bill Davis, contends John Medeski. He was mainly a pianist, guitar player, and arranger for all these old big bands in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1948, he started playing organ for real. He didn’t treat the organ like it was a piano; he played it like it was a big band or an orchestra. Wild Bill Davis played with Duke Ellington’s band. Did you ever hear ‘April in Paris’ by Count Basie? That was Wild Bill Davis’s arrangement, the famous one. Any self-respecting organ player will have, I’m sure, played it on organ at one time or another, in a lounge or some blues joint.

In the days when the big band was everything, the organist was considered a one man big band. Pictured here is Helen and Jesse Crawford and their orchestra.

Radio star Lenny Dee was one of the first organists to defy convention and play rhythm on the expression pedal, popularizing an exciting new dynamic in organ music.

Jackie Davis, who came from the Fats Waller school of jazz music in which the Hammond organ was prominent, emulated Waller’s stride-driven playing style.

Medeski makes a few keen observations about the Hammond organ’s place in jazz during this period: "Back in the earlier days, the big band was everything. In the beginning, the Hammond was the poor man’s pipe organ, then it became the poor man’s big band. It made the big-band style of music and its vibe and feeling accessible to people in an easier-to-book format. Put together an organ trio or an organ player who backs up a singer, and you basically have a big band.

"All the stuff you associate with big bands are completely translatable to organ, with all the different stop changes and the different vibratos, which bring to mind saxophone or something like that. The organ is like a one-man big band, which is – if you think about it – what keyboards have always been about. Piano was the composer’s instrument. One person can play bass, inner parts, and melody all at the same time. The same thing’s true with organ, except you’ve got one more: You can play the bass with your feet, and then you’ve got two hands to deal with all the other parts.

If you went out to see jazz in the 1950s, you were more likely to see a band with organ than entire brass and woodwind sections. There would very likely be organ, sax, and drums. That was much more economical than a whole big band.

Few would argue who was most influential in jazz organ: Jimmy Smith elevated the organ from being a big-band instrument into one for playing linear, more bebop type of music, Medeski continues. Jimmy Smith was the line between blues and bebop.

Jimmy Smith’s work is what mostly brought the Hammond to the mass market, where it was accepted by musicians who played other types of music, explains Amels. They were inspired when they heard Jimmy Smith’s records. Of course, other musicians tried to imitate what Jimmy did. One of the things about trying to imitate a musical style, you often wind up with something brand-new.

Have you heard Billy Preston’s solo gospel organ record? Medeski asks. Oh, my God, it’s really unbelievable. Unfortunately, it’s probably on vinyl only and not available any more.

Eddie Layton worked as a traveling demonstrator for the Hammond Organ Company in the 1950s and published a comprehensive book on the drawbar system entitled The Hammond Drawbar Dictionary. In 1996, Eddie celebrated his 30th anniversary as organist at Yankee Stadium by releasing Ya Gotta Have Heart (Silva America), a collection of ballpark classics such as Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Jack McDuff, pictured here with George Benson, is a legendary jazz organist.

As Seen on The Ed Sullivan Show

Moe Denham identifies another of his favorite B-3 players from the past. This one, it turns out, made a unique contribution to the public’s awareness of the organ. Earl Grant helped bring the popularity of the Hammond organ to mainstream America in the 1950s and 1960s on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ Denham claims. "Ed Sullivan had this man on quite frequently, perhaps five or six times over the course of a couple years. They had a camera pointing down at the manuals from straight above, and I got a lot of drawbar hints from watching Earl Grant on Sunday nights.

He’s probably most famous for his recording of ‘Ebb Tide.’ He’d get the sound of the surf by using a certain drawbar combination on the lower manual and running the palm of his hand up and down the keyboard while he played the melody of ‘Ebb Tide’ with his right hand on the upper manual. He had two Leslies pumping in the background off his B-3, and it was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it. I think it was the first time America had ever seen anything like this. He may have been the first person to play Hammond on national TV on a show that all of America watched.

Also during the ’50s, Southern Californians and select syndicated-show TV viewers could enjoy the great, mysterious, turban-wearing Korla Pandit, who dreamily gazed into the camera as he masterfully played Far East – tinged music on Hammond. Sometimes Korla would accompany dancers, but usually he simply looked directly into the camera as he played. He also alternated on piano, but he never spoke. I’ve seen video tapes of Korla’s unique show, and it’s fascinating. He even made a cameo appearance as himself in Tim Burton’s 1994 movie Ed Wood.

Jimmy Smith at the helm. According to organist John Medeski, Jimmy Smith was the line between blues and bebop, and helped to bring the organ to the mass market.

One of the top organists of the 1950s and 1960s, Shirley Scott came to prominence in the Eddie Lockjaw Davis trio. She passed away in March 2002 at age 67.

The Three Rs: Reggae, Rock, and R&B

John Medeski rattles off a list of more contemporary bandleaders and groups that used Hammond organs: "Reggae master Bob Marley started in the 1960s, and he was using organ back in that day. Ray Charles used organ on a lot of his jazz/blues crossover stuff.

Rock was started by a bunch of white guys who wanted to play the blues and then turned it into something totally different. Their rhythms were different than the rhythms they were inspired by. It’s like any musical evolution. The organ got in there, straight out of R&B and gospel music. I’m trying to think of rock groups that used organ. Well, you can go back to the Doors – it wasn’t exactly B-3, but they had an organ sound. Who came before the Allman Brothers? James Brown used organ, but that wasn’t rock. All those great R&B guys used organ, and all the rock musicians were really heavily influenced by that.

Billy Preston, a child prodigy on organ and piano, is noted for his impressive organ gospel albums.

Steppenwolf and the British bands Deep Purple and Uriah Heep also come to mind as 1960s rock groups whose sound depended on a screaming B-3.

Booker T. & the MG’s was the bridge from R&B to rock, Medeski continues. Their music was hard-hitting, but definitely more funk than rock. British organist James Taylor sites similar Hammond influences in his country. What, then, are its roots there? The Hammond became popular when people such as Booker T. & the MG’s and artists on the Stax Records label came over to London and played gigs, relates Taylor. He also says the C-3 is much more prevalent than the B-3 in Great Britain.

Speaking of Brits, Dave Amels points out a revealing peculiarity in their Hammond sound: Most of the English Hammond players used second harmonic percussion a lot, he explains. Americans such as Jimmy Smith used the third harmonic percussion setting. Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum used the second harmonic, as did Brian Auger, the pioneer of jazz-fusion. Of course, the one exception would be Keith Emerson, who used the Jimmy Smith settings: the first three drawbars out and the third harmonic percussion.

Earl Grant, featured often on The Ed Sullivan Show, helped bring the Hammond B-3 into mainstream prominence in the 1950s and 1960s.

Combo Organs

Before leaving Europe, there’s one more subject to broach: combo organs. During the 1960s and 1970s, manufacturers in England and Italy fashioned electronic organs that tried, with varying degrees of success, to duplicate what the B-3 could do. The most popular were those from Farfisa and Vox; others bore names such as Crumar, Baldwin, Wurlitzer, and Gibson. Although some of these organs were truly expressive and particularly well-grooved for certain styles of music, such as new wave and techno, some players harbor intense personal aversions to them. According to Amels, If you talk to some old-timers who absolutely hate combo organs, it was probably because they couldn’t afford a B-3 and they were trying to get that sound from a combo organ, which mentally scarred them in some way.

Newer Music Styles

Newer music styles also owe thanks to the B-3. The B-3 continues to be used in new ways, says Dave Amels. Jeff Palmer kind of pushes the envelope of what a B-3 does. It shows up in rap, especially with the Beastie Boys. It’s showing up heavily processed in new forms of music that didn’t exist when the B-3 had its heyday, in the earlier 1970s. Not to say that it isn’t having a heyday again. I’m not sure a lot of young people really know the Hammond, unless they listen to classic rock, because it shows up in more of a background way nowadays. It’s not in the forefront. It’s used everywhere, but more as a background instrument, except maybe in that Beastie Boys song ‘So What’cha Want,’ a hit that had it mixed up front.

Now B-3 is even appearing in country music from Nashville, adds Medeski. The Nashville connection comes from its proximity to Muscle Shoals in Memphis, the funky heart of R&B. B-3 was definitely a part of that. Now you can hear an element of R&B – especially the older, 1950s, Stax kind of R&B — in country music. It’s a little more swampy and less urban.

Booker T. Jones, playing with the MG’s, helped bridge the gap between R&B and rock. Booker was one of many artists who helped popularize the B-3 sound in the United States and in England.

Jeff Palmer pushes the envelope of the traditional uses for the B-3.

The Hammond covers almost all genres of music, Moe Denham chimes in. It’s even slipping into country music, which has been a real slow procession. When I was living in Nashville during the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were B-3s in some of the studios, but not all of them. Most of the time, they were used in R&B sessions. But because of country music’s evolution into more of a pop genre, the sound of the Hammond — or something that sounds like a Hammond — has been subtly easing its way in. I’m curious to see how far that’s going to go, how far they’re going to get away from the guitar twang and have a rotary speaker going with a Hammond organ.

Sensational John Medeski, shown here playing Clavinet (top) and B-3, leads the improvisational trio Medeski, Martin & Wood.

Dr. Lonnie Smith has been on the soul and jazz scene since the 1960s.

From the Theater to the Soaps

Although designed primarily for the church, Hammond organs were also incorporated in theatrical productions and sporting events. Back in the 1950s, organ was far more prevalent in everybody’s ear, Medeski says. It was at the skating rinks, it was at the theater, it was in the church. They used to have organ at football games and in baseball stadiums.

Moe Denham adds, The history of the Hammond goes back long before it ever got into jazz. You’ve probably heard people joking about roller-skating music, but that was all Hammond B-3. It was used in the movie theaters. Are you old enough to remember soap operas on radio? Hammonds were very commonly used in soap operas in the 1940s and 1950s on the radio, and in the 1960s on TV. They were eventually phased out as technology advanced and more complex soundtracks could be created to try to make soap operas sound more like movies.

Blinded by the Light

Obviously, since its introduction in the mid-1930s, the Hammond organ has seriously influenced music and the music industry. Sadly, the company’s executives — following the precedent set by Laurens Hammond from the beginning — utterly ignored the people who brought the organ fame and gave it free advertising: the professional players. The Hammond organ was actively marketed for home use, Amels explains, but it wasn’t until the explosion of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll that it caught on — in spite of the Hammond marketing. Hammond always ignored the fact that there were all these rock records being made with it, which was what was really selling it at the time. Those were the guys who made the organ so popular. It’s funny that Hammond was always at odds with the people who were making them the most amount of money. They worked against Don Leslie, too!

• Clockwise from top left: British prog rocker Keith Emerson digs into his Hammond C-3 in a mid-‘70s Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert. • Former