Alexis Korner
Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner, known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, Korner was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free. Korner was born to an Austrian Jewish father and a Greek mother, he spent his childhood in France and North Africa and arrived in London in 1940 at the start of World War II. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by black pianist Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. Korner said, "From on all I wanted to do was play the blues."After the war, Korner played piano and guitar and in 1949 joined Chris Barber's Jazz Band where he met blues harmonica player Cyril Davies. They started playing together as a duo, started the influential London Blues and Barrelhouse Club in 1955 and made their first record together in 1957.
Korner made his first official record on Decca Records DFE 6286 in the company of Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group. His talent extended to playing mandolin on one of the tracks of this rare British EP, recorded in London on 28 July 1955. Korner brought many American blues artists virtually unknown in Britain, to perform. In 1961, Korner and Davies formed Blues Incorporated a loose-knit group of musicians with a shared love of electric blues and R&B music; the group included, at various times, Charlie Watts, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, Graham Bond, Danny Thompson and Dick Heckstall-Smith. It attracted a wider crowd of younger fans, some of whom performed with the group, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Geoff Bradford, Rod Stewart, John Mayall and Jimmy Page. Although Cyril Davies left the group in late 1962, Blues Incorporated continued to record, with Korner at the helm, until 1966. However, by that time its stellar line-up had left to start their own bands. "While his one-time acolytes the Rolling Stones and Cream made the front pages of music magazines all over the world, Korner was relegated to the role of'elder statesman'.
In 1966 Korner formed the trio Free At Last with Binky McKenzie. Flint recalled “I played with Alexis, right after leaving The Bluesbreakers, in a trio, which Alexis named Free At Last, a sort of mini and restricted version of Blues Incorporated. Playing with Alexis was loose. We would play anything from Percy Mayfield’s ‘River’s Invitation’ to Charles Mingus’s ‘Better Get It In Your Soul’ – with lots of freaky guitar and bass solos. Alexis, like John Mayall had the most eclectic taste in music knowledgeable, generous, I am indebted to both of them for my wide approach to music”. Although Free At Last was short lived Korner ensured its name lived on in part by christening another young group of aspiring musicians "Free". Korner was instrumental in the formation of the band in April 1968 and continued to mentor them until they secured a deal with Island Records. Although he himself was a blues purist, Korner criticised better-known British blues musicians during the blues boom of the late 1960s for their blind adherence to Chicago blues, as if the music came in no other form.
He liked to surround himself with jazz musicians such as John McLaughlin and Binky McKenzie and performed with a horn section drawn from a pool that included, among others, saxophone players Art Themen, Mel Collins, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Lol Coxhill, Dick Morrissey, John Surman and trombonist Mike Zwerin. In the 1960s Korner began a media career, working as a show business interviewer and on ITV's Five O'Clock Club, a children's TV show. Korner wrote about blues for the music papers, continued to maintain his own career as a blues artist in Europe. On 17 October 1967, Korner interviewed; some of these tracks, including audio of Korner himself, appear on the Hendrix double-CD BBC Sessions, including Korner playing slide guitar on " Hoochie Coochie Man". While touring Scandinavia he formed the band New Church with singer Peter Thorup, they subsequently were one of the support bands at the Rolling Stones Free Concert in Hyde Park, London, on 5 July 1969. Jimmy Page found out about a new singer, Robert Plant, jamming with Korner, who wondered why Plant had not yet been discovered.
Plant and Korner were recording an album with Plant on vocals until Page had asked him to join "the New Yardbirds", a.k.a. Led Zeppelin. Only two songs are in circulation from these recordings: "Steal Away" and "Operator". Korner gave one of his last radio interviews to BBC Midlands on the Record Collectors Show with Mike Adams and Chris Savory. In 1970 Korner and Thorup formed a big-band ensemble, CCS – short for "The Collective Consciousness Society" – which had several hit singles produced by Mickie Most, including a version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", used as the theme for BBC's Top of the Pops between 1970 and 1981. Another instrumental called "Brother" was used as the theme to the BBC Radio 1 Top 20/40 when Tom Browne/Simon Bates presented the programme in the 1970s, it was used in the 1990s on Radio Luxembourg for the Top 20 Singles chart. This was the period of Korner's greatest commercial success in the UK. In 1973 he provided a voice part for the Hot Chocolate single release Brother Louie.
In 1973, he and Peter Thorup formed another group, with Boz Burrell, Mel Collins, Ian Wallace, who were to
Keb' Mo'
Kevin Roosevelt Moore, known as Keb' Mo', is an American blues musician and four-time Grammy Award winner. He is a singer and songwriter, living in Nashville, Tennessee, he has been described as "a living link to the seminal Delta blues that travelled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America". His post-modern blues style is influenced by many eras and genres, including folk, jazz and country; the moniker "Keb Mo" was coined by his original drummer, Quentin Dennard, picked up by his record label as a "street talk" abbreviation of his given name. From early on, his parents, who were from Louisiana and Texas, instilled him with a great appreciation for the blues and gospel music. By adolescence, he was an accomplished guitarist. Keb' Mo' started his musical career playing the steel drums and upright bass in a calypso band, he moved on to play in a variety of blues and backup bands throughout the 1980s. He first started recording in the early 1970s with Jefferson Airplane violinist Papa John Creach through an R&B group.
Creach hired him. Keb' Mo's first gold record was received for a song, "Git Fiddler", which he co-wrote with Papa John on Jefferson Starship's Red Octopus. Red Octopus hit number one on the Billboard 200 in 1975. Moore was a staff writer for A&M Records, arranged demos for Almo - Irving music. Keb' Mo's debut, was released on Chocolate City Records, a subsidiary of Casablanca Records, in 1980, he was further immersed in the blues with his long stint in the Whodunit Band, headed by Bobby "Blue" Bland producer Monk Higgins. Moore jammed with Albert Collins and Big Joe Turner and emerged as an inheritor of a guarded tradition and as a genuine original. Keb' Mo' has appeared on stage in several versions of the musical Spunk, a play by Zora Neale Hurston, an African American playwright from the Harlem Renaissance, his character, Guitar Man, learned while he was an understudy to "Chick Streetman", played all the actual music in the play while performing. The character of Guitar Man is the foundation for his stage persona.
In 1994, Keb' Mo' released his self-titled album, Keb' Mo', which featured two Robert Johnson covers, "Come On In My Kitchen" and "Kind Hearted Woman Blues". In the Martin Scorsese miniseries The Blues, Keb' Mo' states that he was influenced by Johnson. Keb' was the runner-up for Best New Blues Artist at The Long Beach Blues Festival when he was spotted by Steve LaVere who owns the publishing for the entire Robert Johnson song catalogue. Keb' Mo's self-titled album was released on a vintage revival division of Sony Music. In 1996, he released Just Like You, his second album, which featured twelve songs full of Delta rhythms, he won his first Grammy Award for this album, which featured guest appearances from Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. On June 10, 1997, Moore performed on the television program Sessions at West 54th, he joined musicians Laval Belle on drums, Reggie McBride playing bass, Joellen Friedkin on keyboards to perform fourteen songs, some from each of his albums. Blues pianist Dr. John made a guest appearance.
This session was shown on television, but was not released as a DVD until late 2000. In 1998, Moore was involved in the multi-artist project "Begegnungen" by German rock musician Peter Maffay, they performed together a new version of Mo's "Am I Wrong" on the album and some more songs in the 30 concerts at the arena tour the same year, documented on the live album Begenungen Live, released in early 1999. A further guest of Maffay at the Begegnungen album and tour was Sonny Landreth and many more artists from around the world. Slow Down, his next album, was featured twelve songs, it earned him a second Grammy Award. The album begins with the song "Muddy Water", a tribute to Muddy Waters, it features a song entitled "Rainmaker", released on his first album, eighteen years prior. His fourth album, The Door, was released in 2000; the same year, Keb' Mo' released Big Wide Grin, a children's album featuring many songs from Moore's own childhood, along with some newer children's songs and some by Moore himself.
In 2001, he appeared on Sesame Street with Kermit the Frog, Grover and other muppets performing the song "Everybody Be Yo'self". The album includes an original arrangement of "America the Beautiful", which he performed years on the 2006 series finale of The West Wing, "Tomorrow", in which he appears as himself to perform the song at the inauguration of President Matt Santos. In 2003, Martin Scorsese collaborated with many blues musicians including Keb' Mo' to put together a series of films entitled The Blues. Following its release, several albums were released in accordance, some were compilations, some new collaborations, Keb' Mo' released an album in the series featuring a handful of existing recordings from Keb' Mo' to The Door. On February 10, 2004, he released Keep It Simple which earned him a third Grammy Award, again in the contemporary blues genre; that year, he released his sixth studio album, Peace... Back by Popular Demand. Moore released Suitcase, on June 13, 2006, his touring band following the release included Reggie McBride on bass, Les Falconer III on drums, Jeff Paris on keyboards, Clayton Gibb on guitar.
On October 20, 2009, Keb' Mo' released the live album, Live and Mo'. At the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival, Keb' Mo' performed an acoustic set with Stefan Grossman and an electric set with Vince Gill, Albert Lee, James Burton, Earl Klugh and Sheryl Crow, he joined the final
Robert Randolph and the Family Band
Robert Randolph and the Family Band is an American funk and soul band led by pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph. NPR has described the band as one with roll swagger. Rolling Stone went on to include Randolph upon their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time; the band has been Grammy nominated a total of three times. Frontman Robert Randolph was trained as a pedal steel guitarist in the House of God Church and makes prominent use of the instrument in the band's music; the instrument is referred to in many African-American Pentecostal churches as "sacred steel". Randolph was discovered while playing at a sacred steel convention in Florida; the group's sound is inspired by legendary funk bands such as Earth, Wind & Fire and Sly & the Family Stone. Randolph himself has explained that in his adolescent years before being discovered by the secular community, he was completely unaware of non-religious music, he went on exclaim in an interview that “I grew up and saw a lot of older guys playing lap steels and pedal-steel guitars in my church.
I had never heard of the Allman Brothers, or Buddy Guy or Muddy Waters.”Before releasing albums with The Family Band, Randolph was selected by avant-garde jazz organist John Medeski to join him and the North Mississippi Allstars on their 2001 jam project, The Word. Just prior to the release of The Word's debut album, Randolph was brought to the attention of music fans through a review by Neil Strauss in the New York Times in April 2001. On their first non-church tour of the East Coast, Randolph's new Family Band opened for the North Mississippi Allstars and rejoined the musicians after their set, with Medeski, as The Word; the first Robert Randolph and the Family Band album, Live at the Wetlands, was released in 2002 on Family Band Records, recorded live on August 23, 2001, just prior to the club's closing. The band released their studio debut, Unclassified on August 5, 2003, they attracted the attention of Eric Clapton, have subsequently toured as a supporting act with the English blues guitarist.
Clapton guested on their 2006 album Colorblind, playing on a cover of "Jesus Is Just Alright". In 2002, they were hired by ABC to make the network's new NBA theme song; the song, "We Got Hoops", only appeared in three telecasts, though it was used throughout both the NBA and WNBA seasons during promotions for both leagues. In September 2003 Randolph was listed as No. 97 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list. Robert entered the list following directly preceding Angus Young. In February 2004 Robert Randolph and the Family Band along with the band O. A. R. Released a cover version of Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain", made available for online purchase through iTunes; this version was played live with O. A. R. at their June 18, 2009 show at Charter One Pavilion in Chicago. Their third album, was released October 10, 2006; the song "Ain't Nothing Wrong With That" was used in several commercials for NBC, used in Katherine Jenkins and Mark Ballas' jive on Dancing with the Stars. In June 2008 the Discovery Channel used this same song in a popular promo entitled "It's All Good" for their summer lineup.
The song "Thrill of It" was used throughout the 2007 college football season by ABC during their College Primetime games. They worked with producer T-Bone Burnett on their fourth studio album We Walk This Road, released in 2010, they released the supposed first single from that album entitled "Get There" but this song did not appear on the album. The first official single from the album is "If I Had My Way." Randolph's concerts are known for their lively stage performances, with Randolph content to let the rest of the band play on while he dances. Dance is an integral part of the concerts. During "Shake Your Hips", women are encouraged to dance onstage. For the song "The March", Randolph leaves his instrument to instruct the crowd on how to properly perform the intricate dance move. Other noteworthy concert regulars involve the entire band trading instruments allowing each member to show off their musical proficiency; when he becomes enthralled by his music, Randolph will kick the chair away from his pedal steel guitar and dance while he plays.
A microphone is passed around the front row of the audience, so they can sing during the song "I Need More Love". Audience members are called up on stage to sing or be a guest guitarist for one song; the band made its first television appearance on Late Show with David Letterman on August 5, 2003, performing "I Need More Love". In 2004 Robert Randolph and the Family Band was the opening act on the Eric Clapton tour, they are featured prominently in the Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD. The band appears on Bonnaroo Music Festival DVDs; the length of the concerts can vary depending on what songs are played and how long jams last. Concerts go over the allotted time if the audience are having fun. Most concerts don't have an intermission; the one time the band does stop is so the band can relax, get hydrated, plan the encore. On October 9, 2004 Robert Randolph and the Family Band appeared on the PBS television show Austin City Limits. On January 24, 2007, they played in Dallas at Victory Plaza outside of the American Airlines Center as part of the 2007 NHL All Star game festivities.
The band played before the start of the 2007 NHL All-Star Game. The Family Band has opened for Dave Matthews Band for some shows on their 2002–09 tours. In 2005 Robert Randolph appeared on the Dave Matthews Band release Weekend on t
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues abbreviated as R&B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African American communities in the 1940s. The term was used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands consisted of piano, one or two guitars, drums, one or more saxophones, sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of relationships and aspirations; the term "rhythm and blues" has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, it was applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music.
In the 1960s, several British rock bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Animals were referred to and promoted as being R&B bands. Their mix of rock and roll and R&B is now known as "British rhythm and blues". By the 1970s, the term "rhythm and blues" changed again and was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "contemporary R&B", it combines elements of rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop, electronic music. Popular R&B vocalists at the end of the 20th century included Prince, R. Kelly, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey. In the 21st century, R&B has remained a popular genre becoming more pop orientated and alternatively influenced with successful artists including Usher, Bruno Mars, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake, The Weeknd, Frank Ocean and Khalid. Although Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine is credited with coining the term "rhythm and blues" as a musical term in the United States in 1948, the term was used in Billboard as early as 1943.
It replaced the term "race music", which came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world. The term "rhythm and blues" was used by Billboard in its chart listings from June 1949 until August 1969, when its "Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles" chart was renamed as "Best Selling Soul Singles". Before the "Rhythm and Blues" name was instated, various record companies had begun replacing the term "race music" with "sepia series". Writer and producer Robert Palmer defined rhythm & blues as "a catchall term referring to any music, made by and for black Americans", he has used the term "R&B" as a synonym for jump blues. However, AllMusic separates it from jump blues because of R&B's stronger gospel influences. Lawrence Cohn, author of Nothing but the Blues, writes that "rhythm and blues" was an umbrella term invented for industry convenience. According to him, the term embraced all black music except classical music and religious music, unless a gospel song sold enough to break into the charts.
Well into the 21st century, the term R&B continues in use to categorize music made by black musicians, as distinct from styles of music made by other musicians. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass and saxophone. Arrangements were rehearsed to the point of effortlessness and were sometimes accompanied by background vocalists. Simple repetitive parts mesh, creating momentum and rhythmic interplay producing mellow and hypnotic textures while calling attention to no individual sound. While singers are engaged with the lyrics intensely so, they remain cool, in control; the bands dressed in suits, uniforms, a practice associated with the modern popular music that rhythm and blues performers aspired to dominate. Lyrics seemed fatalistic, the music followed predictable patterns of chords and structure; the migration of African Americans to the urban industrial centers of Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s created a new market for jazz and related genres of music.
These genres of music were performed by full-time musicians, either working alone or in small groups. The precursors of rhythm and blues came from jazz and blues, which overlapped in the late-1920s and 1930s through the work of musicians such as the Harlem Hamfats, with their 1936 hit "Oh Red", as well as Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, T-Bone Walker. There was increasing emphasis on the electric guitar as a lead instrument, as well as the piano and saxophone. In 1948, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name "Blues and Rhythm". In that year, Louis Jordan dominated the top five listings of the R&B charts with three songs, two of the top five songs were based on the boogie-woogie rhythms that had come to prominence during the 1940s. Jordan's band, the Tympany Five, consisted of him on saxophone and vocals, along with musicians on trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano and drums. Lawrence Cohn described the music as "grittier than his boogie-era jazz-tinged blues". Robert Palmer described it as "urbane, jazz-based music with a heavy, insistent beat".
Jordan's music, along with that of Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Billy Wright, Wynonie Harris, is now referred to as jump blues. Paul Gayten, Roy Brown, others had had hits in the style now referred to as rhythm and blu
Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana audio is a Mexican and American musician who first became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American jazz. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not heard in rock music. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades, he experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists, he has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro, Mexico, he learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight under the tutelage of his father, a mariachi musician. His younger brother, Jorge Santana, would become a professional guitarist. Young Carlos was influenced by Ritchie Valens at a time when there were few Mexicans in American rock and pop music.
The family moved from Autlán de Navarro to Tijuana, the city on Mexico's border with California, San Francisco. Carlos stayed in Tijuana but joined his family in San Francisco. During his early years from the age of 10–12 he was sexually molested by an American man who brought him across the border. Living in the Mission District, graduating from James Lick Middle School, in 1965 from Mission High School. Carlos was accepted at California State University and Humboldt State University, but chose not to attend college. Santana was influenced by popular artists of the 1950s such as B. B. King, T-Bone Walker, Javier Batiz, John Lee Hooker. Soon after he began playing guitar, he joined local bands along the "Tijuana Strip" where he was able to begin adding his own unique touch to'50s Rock'n' Roll, he was introduced to a variety of new musical influences, including jazz and folk music, witnessed the growing hippie movement centered in San Francisco in the 1960s. After several years spent working as a dishwasher in a diner and busking for spare change, Santana decided to become a full-time musician.
In 1966 he gained all happening on the same day. Santana was a frequent spectator at Bill Graham's Fillmore West. During a Sunday matinee show, Paul Butterfield was slated to perform there but was unable to do so as a result of being intoxicated. Graham assembled an impromptu band of musicians he knew through his connections with Butterfield's band and with the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, but he had not yet chosen all the guitarists. Santana's manager, Stan Marcum suggested to Graham that Santana join the impromptu band and Graham agreed. During the jam session, Santana's guitar playing and solo gained the notice of both the audience and Graham. During the same year, Santana formed the Santana Blues Band, with fellow street musicians David Brown, Marcus Malone and Gregg Rolie, he was signed to Columbia where his band name, "Santana Blues Band" was shortened to, "Santana" that released a series of hit albums with an Afro-Cuban and Latin Rock feel thanks to Carlos' exquisite guitar playing, characterized by the self-sustaining melody that became his trademark.
With their original blend of Latin-infused rock, blues and African rhythms, the band gained an immediate following on the San Francisco club circuit. The band's early success, capped off by a memorable performance at Woodstock in 1969, led to him signing a recording contract with Columbia Records run by Clive Davis. Santana was signed by CBS Records and went into the studio to record their first album in January 1969, they decided changes needed to be made. This resulted in the dismissal of drummer Bob Livingston. Santana replaced him with Mike Shrieve, who had a strong background in both rock. Percussionist Marcus Malone was forced to quit the band due to involuntary manslaughter charges, the band re-enlisted Michael Carabello. Carabello brought with him percussionist Jose Chepito Areas, well known in his native Nicaragua, with his skills and professional experience, was a major contributor to the band. Bill Graham, a Latin Music aficionado, had been a fan of the band from its inception, arranged for them to appear at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival before their debut album was released.
They were one of the surprises of the festival. Graham gave the band some key advice to record the Willie Bobo song "Evil Ways", as he felt it would get them radio airplay, their first album, was released in August 1969 and became a huge hit, reaching #4 on the U. S. album charts. In 1969, the band's performance at the Woodstock festival introduced them to an international audience and garnered critical acclaim, although the band's sudden success put pressure on the group, highlighting the different musical directions in which Rolie and Santana were starting to go. Rolie, along with some of the other band members, wanted to emphasize a basic hard rock sound, a key component in establishing the band from the start. Santana, was interested in moving beyond his love of blues and rock and wanted more jazzy, ethereal elements in the music, which were influenced by his fascination with Gábor Szabó, Miles Davis, Ph
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ, invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Various models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to specify a variety of sounds; until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, strengthening the signal with an amplifier so it can drive a speaker cabinet. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured; the organ is used with, associated with, the Leslie speaker. The organ was marketed and sold by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano, it became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios, small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Organ trios were hired by jazz club owners, who found that organ trios were a much cheaper alternative to hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in rhythm and blues and reggae, as well as being an important instrument in progressive rock.
The Hammond Organ Company struggled financially during the 1970s, as they abandoned tonewheel organs and switched to manufacturing instruments using integrated circuits. These instruments were not as popular with musicians as the tonewheels had been, the company went out of business in 1985; the Hammond name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation, which proceeded to manufacture digital simulations of the most popular tonewheel organs. This culminated in the production of the "New B-3" in 2002, which provided an accurate recreation of the original B-3 organ using modern digital technology. Hammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both professional players and churches. Other companies, such as Korg and Clavia, have achieved success in providing more lightweight and portable emulations of the original tonewheel organs; the sound of a tonewheel Hammond can be emulated using modern software such as Native Instruments B4. A number of distinctive Hammond organ features are not found on other keyboards like the piano or synthesizer.
Some are similar to a pipe organ. Most Hammond organs have two 61-note keyboards called manuals; as with pipe organ keyboards, the two manuals are arrayed on two levels close to each other. Each is laid out in a similar manner to a piano keyboard, except that pressing a key on a Hammond results in the sound continuously playing until it is released, whereas with a piano, the note's volume decays. No difference in volume occurs regardless of how or the key is pressed, so overall volume is controlled by a pedal; the keys on each manual have a lightweight action, which allows players to perform rapid passages more than on a piano. In contrast to piano and pipe organ keys, Hammond keys have a flat-front profile referred to as "waterfall" style. Early Hammond console models had sharp edges, but starting with the B-2, these were rounded, as they were cheaper to manufacture; the M series of spinets had waterfall keys, but spinet models had "diving board" style keys which resembled those found on a church organ.
Modern Hammond-Suzuki models use waterfall keys. Hammond console organs come with a wooden pedalboard played for bass notes. Most console Hammond pedalboards have 25 notes, with the bottom note a low C and the top note a middle C two octaves higher. Hammond used a 25-note pedalboard because he found that on traditional 32-note pedalboards used in church pipe organs, the top seven notes were used; the Hammond Concert models E, RT, RT-2, RT-3 and D-100 had 32-note American Guild of Organists pedalboards going up to the G above middle C as the top note. The RT-2, RT-3 and D-100 contained a separate solo pedal system that had its own volume control and various other features. Spinet models have 12- or 13-note miniature pedalboards; the sound on a tonewheel Hammond organ is varied through the manipulation of drawbars. A drawbar is a metal slider that controls the volume of a particular sound component, in a similar way to a fader on an audio mixing board; as a drawbar is incrementally pulled out, it increases the volume of its sound.
When pushed all the way in, the volume is decreased to zero. The labeling of the drawbar derives from the stop system in pipe organs, in which the physical length of the pipe corresponds to the pitch produced. Most Hammonds contain nine drawbars per manual; the drawbar marked "8′" generates the fundamental of the note being played, the drawbar marked "16′" is an octave below, the drawbars marked "4′", "2′" and "1′" are one and three octaves above, respectively. The other drawbars generate various other subharmonics of the note. While each individual drawbar generates a pure sound similar to a flute or electronic oscillator, more complex sounds can be created by mixing the drawbars in varying amounts; some drawbar settings have associated with certain musicians. A popular setting is 888000000, has been identified as the "classic" Jimmy Smith sound. In addition to drawbars, many Hammond tonewheel organ models include presets, which make predefined drawbar combinations available at the press of a button.
Console organs have one octave of reverse colored keys to the
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American rock guitarist and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music". Born in Seattle, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U. S. trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965, he played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary".
He achieved fame in the U. S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U. S.. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27. Hendrix was inspired musically by American roll and electric blues, he favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, was instrumental in popularizing the undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units, such as fuzz tone, wah-wah, Uni-Vibe in mainstream rock, he was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously.
In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year; the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time. Jimi Hendrix had a diverse heritage, his paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was one-quarter Cherokee. Hendrix's paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born out of an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny, a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. After Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919.
In 1941 after moving to Seattle, Al met Lucille Jeter at a dance. Lucille's father was Preston Jeter, whose mother was born in similar circumstances as Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix. Lucille's mother, née Clarice Lawson, had African Cherokee ancestors. Al, drafted by the U. S. Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding. Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 1942, in Seattle. In 1946, Johnny's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall. Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth, he spent two months locked up without trial, while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth. During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son; when Al was away, Hendrix was cared for by family members and friends Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the U.
S. Army on September 1, 1945. Two months unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and had attempted to adopt Hendrix. After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished, they both struggled with alcohol, fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to hide in a closet in their home, his relationship with his brother Leon was precarious. In ad
