I was messing around with YouTube the other day and saw a tribute to the 70th anniversary of the Hammond organ. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ck__wghRww In the related videos I discovered a great player I had never heard of. I thought it would be interesting to have a thread about our favorite organists. Hammond B3, pipe organ, Farfisa, Vox, anything is fair game. I'll start things off with my two favorite artists, both B3 players.
Being a Jazz head, Larry Young is the head of the class for me. He is far less known than Jimmy Smith, but he was closer to my taste for deeper, heavier jazz styles. The CD Unity is available and reasonably priced. It is one of those remastered Rudy Van Gelder albums - remastered by Rudy. The 1965 session is a very good example of why I think he was the greatest. Back in 1975 when I turned on to heavier jazz, a Larry Young album was one of the reasons why.
A disciple, more or less, is my recent discovery. She sounds more like Young than anyone else I have heard, at least sometimes, and she is an amazing technical player as well. The German Barbara Dennerlein plays the B3 with what might pass to some as a normal mode of hand usage, but her left leg plays pedal bass with the speed of a Fender Jazz Bass player. She therefore seldom uses a bass player, but has played with some very impressive talent. She has a CD with Straight Ahead and often used Andy Sheppard as her reed man. My limited German leads me to believe her name is pronounced like "daner-line."
Barbara's recordings are either mostly out of print or not imported to the USA. There are two CD's recently released on a Japanese label, but are rather expensive. She is so good I am actually thinking of ordering them at forty dollars each. There are I think three other discs availlable new. She can be seen on YouTube - a search will turn up performances starting in the eighties. Here is a nice place to start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ut7yIuCE
A search will reveal two pages of videos. Her B3 playing is the hottest you will ever hear, and she is very convincing bringing her modern sensibilities to the pipe organ.
I lied, let me do one more. Having seen a great Blind Faith gig back in the day, Steve Winwood. What a great B3 man he is. The recordings give only a hint of what he can do. While we are at it, don't forget his work in Traffic.
So who do you like?
Clark
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