Hammond Organ

Hammond Organ

Original Hammond Organs are equipped with specially designed electro-magnetic tonewheel generators. Designed as the Hammond Organ model "A" console, it was patented by the American inventor and clockmaker Laurens Hammond from Evanstone / Illinois (1895 - 1973) in 1934.

Chief-engineer John Hanert was Hammonds most important help from the first moment on. Earlier Hammond organs are equipped with serial number plates from "The Hammond Clock Company".

The Hammond factory was located at 4200 West Diversey Avenue in Chicago /Illinois. The first Jazz-organist in history was Fats Waller (1904 - 1943), but the pioneer of the modern Jazz-organ was William Strethen Davis (1918-1995), better known as "Wild Bill Davis". Please note : he had nothing to do with the cornet player Wild Bill Davison ! Wild Bill Davis is the "daddy" of every Jazz-organist and keyboarder. One of his first recordings at the Hammond Organ was "Tambouritza Boogie" with Louis Jordan in 1945.

"Classic" Jazz organists play their own bass line. So they don`t need a bass player. The "classic" Jazz organ trio was created by Wild Bill Davis. His basic conception with organ, guitar and drums was a powerful, greatly swinging vehicle from the first moment on ! Sometimes a saxophonist was added.

Wild Bills concept is standard and most of todays Jazz organists like T.C. Pfeiler work with it. T.C. Pfeiler, today Austrias only international Jazz-organist and featured artist on Tonewheel Records, was lucky enough to have Wild Bill Davis as his first and most important teacher. In the late eighties, Davis and Pfeiler recorded a live-LP. They played at the same time on two separate Hammond B3 organs ! This fantastic album was out of print for a long time and became a collectors item. It is available now exclusively from Tonewheel Records !

Jazz-organists prefer the Hammond model B3 console. Most of them use it with the Leslie model 122 or 147 rotary speaker. The legendary Hammond B3 was equipped with two keyboards called "manuals". Each manual had sixty-one playing keys and twelve reverse colored "preset keys", located at the left end of each manual. These manuals are called "Swell"(upper) and "Great" (lower). The bass pedal keyboard had 25 notes. Both manuals plus bass pedals are controlled by a single expression or swell-pedal. The swell-pedal was operated by the right food of the organist. It was a sensitive and fast working unit and a helpful tool. With the four groups of nine harmonic drawbars, each had eight degrees, for both manuals, and two extra drawbars for the bass pedals, the organist could create millions of tone colors. "Touch Response Percussion" with second and third harmonic, installed for the first time in 1955 on models B3, C3, RT3 and M3, and the unimitable scanner-driven "Selective Vibrato" which was installed for the first time in former models B2, C2, RT2 and M2 in 1948 are exclusive Hammond effects. From todays view the model B3 console saw a unusual long producion period : from 1955 to 1974 ! The Hammond Organ Company of Chicago / Illinois sold the B3 as "The Home Model"!

Complete with bench and bass pedal keyboard it weighs approx. 425 pounds and qualified the travelling Jazz-organist for a second business : the business of furniture transport ! The model C3 console was equipped with the same technique but used a different cabinet style. It was offered as "The Church Model".

"The Concert Model" was called RT3. It had a wider C3 cabinet style and 32 bass foot pedals . A vacuum tube generated bass pedal solo system was featured. B3, C3 and RT3 consoles had no built in sound systems. Only a pre amp was installed. The best sound results came with the Hammond model P/PR 40 tone cabinet or with the Leslie 122 or 147 rotary speaker system, which are powered by tube type amplifiers.

With built in power amplifier and a speaker system the RT3 was sold as the model D100 console. The model A100 console used a narrower C3 cabinet an had also a built in power amplifier and speakers. The A100 series also featured Hammond´s new patented spring reverb system. It could be ordered in some different very distinctive cabinet styles. It was available with or without locking top and backwall. Most of these mighty Hammond consoles became a collector`s item. Laurens Hammond was a fanatic about production quality. Today you can find countless perfectly working old Hammond organs all over the world. Most of the Hammond fans are very, very enthusiastic people and they just want one thing : To keep the originals running !

Hammond also produced a line of smaller organs, called "spinets". These Hammond spinet organs, series M3, M100, L100,T100, but also the later produced big console organs series H100, X66, X77, E100, R100 and the "drawbarless" church organ model G100 are not really important for the history of Hammond Organ Jazz. Laurens Hammond died in 1973 and sadly the Hammond Organ Company stopped the production of "tonewheel organs" in 1974.

Hammond`s new production line was completely restyled and used conventional techniques. Most of the new Hammonds had a terrible sound and Hammond was out of business soon ! Over the following years Hammond was sold to different owners, but no one could bring back the glory of the old days !

With the new smaller keyboards everything was changed and the real Hammond sound was out for many years. The new wave of "Acid-Jazz" from England brought the comeback for the good old Hammond Organs in the late eighties. Quality is timeless !!!

The industry invested millions of dollars into new techniques ! Transistor, LSI/Quartz, PCM/digital, whatever came ! All these new products couldn`t replace the original, because it is impossible to reproduce the Hammond "tonewheel sound" perfectly with other techniques !!! Not today and not tomorrow !!!

Now they have high-tech digital processors, but only the original Hammond Organ with the unique tonewheel generator, the scanner vibrato and the touch response percussion can produce the real Hammond-sound : warm, bright, dark, soft, hard, full of charm and most of all--it lives !!!

Restored text, unchanged, from the Wayback Machine capture of March 24, 2004.