The Hammond Organ: Refugee

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Refugee

[purchase]

I didn’t really think I would be posting this song. Here it is, the end of the week. Surely someone would have mentioned Benmont Tench by now. But, they left it for me, so here goes.

Benmont Tench may be the best known Hammond organ player active in the music business today. I considered adding to this post work that he has done with Elvis Costello and Jackson Browne, just to name a couple, but I decided to keep it simple. Tench was a founding member of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and the group doesn’t sound the same without him. Usually, he works as part of the ensemble, and he is a master of blending in and contributing to the overall sound. But Refugee features the organ a bit more than Tench’s other work, so I thought it was a good choice. The Hammond organ can make just as big a difference in the background as it does as the featured instrument, and you can here it both ways here.

The Hammond Organ: Yesterday

Una Valli with The Peanut Butter Conspiracy: Yesterday

[Out of print]

I have been reluctant to post this song, mainly because I am usually rather rubbish at identifying the instruments used in songs. When I like a sound, I spend little thought on whether it was made by a customised 4072 Hammond, somebody doing clever things involving a glass filled with pink sludge and a rare reed handpicked by naked maidens in the jungles of unexplored Indonesia, or on a computer. So, I at least think this splendid soul version of Yesterday from 1968 by South African soul singer Una Valli qualifies. It certainly features some sort of organ-like instrument. Possibly even a Hammond.

Had Valli not been from the pop backwaters of South Africa, from which only a few of many very talented artists have escaped, she would be highly regarded among soul fans. She might even have been a star, marketed as a white woman with as much soul as Aretha (and the hype would not have been easily dismissed).

Yesterday appeared on her LP Soul Meeting!!, on which she roped in the services of fellow South African soulsters The Flames and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. It’s the latter that back Una on Yesterday, the unjustly reviled McCartney composition which has spawned thousands of risible covers. This is one of the few versions that show what a fine song Yesterday actually is.

Also check out Valli’s great version of Satisfaction, from the same album.

The Hammond Organ: King Kong

Odin: King Kong

[purchase]

When I saw the weekly theme I immediately presumed we'd get Jimmy Smith and 70's progressive rock. Well, I was half right! I sorted through my own collection of Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, but to be honest, I have a hard time telling where the organ leaves off and the synthesizers begin in most of those songs. I didn't want to embarrass myself by discovering that there was no organ whatsoever in my choice.

And then, just a few hours before the theme was announced, I came across a group and a song I'd never heard of before, and it fits the bill perfectly. Cool! So now we can learn about it together.

Odin was a European prog rock band formed in Germany in 1971. The Hammond organ player is German Jeff Beer, with Dutch guitarist Rob Terstall trading off the solos. They cut one album in 1972, and on the strength of it were invited by German radio station SWF to perform a live set. This song, a Frank Zappa cover, comes from that release. Have a listen to its glorious prog rock-ness.

The Hammond Organ: The Sky Is Crying / Tell Me Why

Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble: The Sky Is Crying

[purchase]

Los Lonely Boys: Tell Me Why

[purchase]

This fave SRV tune, recorded in the Soul To Soul sessions and released posthumously, is a repost, originally brought to the fore for our Cry Cry Cry theme way back in the summer of '09. But since it's the organists' turn to shine, I've revived it, and coupled the song with this subtle summery B-side from Los Lonely Boys' self-titled 2004 album, which has subtle organ flourishes under almost every track.

The common element? The hands of the inimitable Reese Wynans, a legendary Hammond B3 player who got his start playing in a band alongside Dickie Betts and Berry Oakley before the latter artists joined The Allman Brothers, and who deserves his props for subsequent decades of solid studio and touring work in the blues and country worlds - as a member of Double Trouble and, more recently, with the likes of Buddy Guy, John Mayall, Ted Nugent, Brooks & Dunn, Joe Ely, Trisha Yearwood, Hank, Jr., and many more.

The Hammond Organ: Triplets

Hansson & Karlsson: Triplets

[purchase]

In 1966 twenty-three year old Bo Hansson played guitar with Stockholm blues rockers The Merrymen. He quit when the band was on the verge of a big break, and after seeing organist "Brother" Jack McDuff play the legendary jazz club Gyllene Cirkeln, he decided the Hammond was the only way to go. He got himself an organ and started playing solo gigs before he'd even learned how to play it. He soon teamed up with jazz drummer Jan Carlsson (yes, it's spelled with a C; the K in the bandname was a misprint) and the duo started playing wild, largely improvised gigs regularly at Gyllene Cirkeln, as well as other clubs around Scandinavia.

Their first and best album, Monument, came out in 1967 and made quite an impression. Jimi Hendrix jammed with the duo when he visited in Stockholm in the late 60's, a jam that was recorded but has never been released. There were plans for Hansson & Karlsson to join Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, making it a two drummer band, but Hendrix died before anything came of it. But Hendrix did record a Hansson & Karlsson song, Tax Free, which he also played live occasionally. He wanted to record Triplets as well, but again that death thing got in the way.

After two more albums H&K went their seperate ways. Hansson made a few solo records (including his famed Lord of the Rings album) before leaving the music business entirely. Carlsson meanwhile, moved on to acting. In Sweden everyone knows him as "Loffe", which was the name of the womanizing character he played in the hugely popular mini-series Någonstans i Sverige. Following a one-off reunion tour in 1998 Hansson would occasionally do gigs with his protégé and fellow organist Eric Malmberg.

Bo Hansson died in 2010 at the age 67.

The Hammond Organ: Sophisticated Cissy

The Meters: Sophisticated Cissy

[purchase]

When I think of the sound of New Orleans, I think of great piano players long before I think of the organ. But one of the greatest bands the city has produced featured the organ on many of its songs, including hits like Sophisticated Cissy. That band was the Meters. In 1969, following a tour as a supporting player for his brother Aaron, Art Neville returned to New Orleans to form the Meters. Art was the organ and piano player, and the group was dedicated to instrumental funk. Sophisticated Cissy was the answer song to their big hit Cissy Strut. Presumably, the addition of the organ is what made her sophisticated.

Now maybe you know this history, or maybe you picked up on my clue, when I mentioned Art Neville and his brother Aaron. In time, the Meters would have shifts in their line-up, and they would add vocals. This laid the foundation for the Neville Brothers. But, if you want to hear New Orleans organ, those early Meters albums are the best place to look.

The Hammond Organ: Messy Bessie

Jimmy Smith: Messy Bessie

[purchase]

If you could only buy one organ-led jazz album, you'd be in quite a bind. For starters, there were two absolute masters of the genre: Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff. Smith started earlier and really made the organ a serious jazz instrument, so we'll give him the nod. But Smith recorded two stone-cold classics, Back at the Chicken Shack and Midnight Special (just two of the five albums he released for Blue Note in 1960), so which one to pick?

As it turns out, both albums were recorded at the same session, so you can't go wrong with either one. So with the flip of a digital coin, I've chosen Back at the Chicken Shack, represented here by the Smith original "Messy Bessie". It starts right off the the Hammond, which makes it perfect for this week's theme. Drummer Don Bailey, guitarist Kenny Burrell, and sax man Stanley Turrentine back him up with some of the down-home funkiness soul-jazz was known for, and everyone gets to stretch out on this 12-minute groove.

The Hammond Organ: Hope In A Hopeless World

Widespread Panic: Hope In A Hopeless World

[purchase]

Pops Staples: Hope In A Hopeless World

[purchase]

I went through a jamband phase the first time I went to college, and though my tastes tended to run towards less rock-oriented, more jazz and bluegrass-flavored jams such as those of Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, and Phish, it was hard not to notice and respect the fervent, Allman Brothers influenced sound of Widespread Panic in the smoke-filled air. Their 1997 version of this pseudo-seventies anthem is rich with funk, and the distinctive sound of the Hammond organ features prominently.

Some sort of electric organ also features in Pops Staples' original, cowritten with Philly-based songwriter Phil Roy, coproduced with daughter Mavis Staples, performed with Mavis and a rich layered set of studio musicians, and released on the Grammy-winning album Father, Father when Pops was a still-spry 78 years old - it certainly could be a Hammond, as there's a Hammond player listed in the album credits, but the pinched and clearly electronic "pop gospel" sound which kicks everything off makes me less confident about make or model.

There's also a somewhat cheesy version out there from Britpop musician Paul Young, which hit the streets almost simultaneous with the Pops Staples original - it, too, features the Hammond, but it's so overproduced I decided to skip it. Still, completists can check it out on YouTube.

Oh, and TOTAL bonus points: Here's Widespread Panic live with Hammond and with Mavis on vocals, covering the song again live and unpurchaseable, from a 2002 show in Memphis, TN:

Widespread Panic ft. Mavis Staples: Hope In A Hopeless World [live]

The Hammond Organ: I Shot the Sheriff

Bob Marley and the Wailers: I Shot the Sherriff

[purchase]

Eric Clapton: I Shot the Sherriff

[purchase]

Eric Clapton established himself as a, perhaps the, guitar god with his work in Cream, Derek and the Dominos, and Blind Faith. So when he went solo, expectations were high. That’s why his version of I Shot the Sherriff was greeted with such derision and contempt by long-time fans. But was the song really such a departure? Consider: Clapton made his name with covers of classic blues songs, and part of his mission was always to encourage his fans to seek out the original versions and artists. With Sherriff, Clapton was asking his fans to do the same thing with Bob Marley and reggae. I would argue that reggae is a musical spiritual cousin to the blues. Both take a people’s grievances and provide a forum where they become a shared experience. Blues is more personal, while reggae is more political, but the communal experience is essential to both.

As for Clapton’s fans, there is no guitar solo in Sherriff. In fact, the only solo in either version is a brief organ solo at the end of the Marley. But, having said that, Clapton’s Sherriff sounds pretty good to me now. And, to the extent that it helped the world discover Bob Marley and reggae, I am grateful.

Songs From Poems -> The Hammond Organ: Tavern

Kris Delmhorst: Tavern

[purchase]

Kris Delmhorst's 2006 album Strange Conversation is an especially literary one, comprised entirely of songs based around or adapted from poems. The set includes a full range of performances, from full-on electrified folkpop to sultry singer-songwriter narratives, from dustbowl americana confessionals to soft, almost jazz-folk mood pieces, all of which hew close to the poetic moods established by the like of cummings, Byron, Browning, Whitman, Rumi, George Eliot, and other names generally less well known outside of the world of English Lit, making the album one of the true gems of any well-read audiophile's collection.

Like the album itself, this song - which varies not a whit from the original poem of the same name by American poet and feminist Edna St. Vincent Millay - is both ambitious and beautiful, made all the more so by the bluesy bass, brush drums, and organ which accompany Delmhort's whispered alto and deliberate guitarwork. It is also one of the few uses of the Hammond Organ I know which appear in the world of folk music. Expect plenty of Jazz, Blues, and Rock, especially from the 60's and 70's, and perhaps a few surprises to boot, as we feature songs which use the unique instrument in the week-to-come.

Songs from Poems: Sonnet 129

John William Davis: Sonnet 129

[purchase] John's website is down and further research shows no CDs are available on CDBaby or Amazon.com - if you want more information, drop me an e-mail at ozwoman321@aol.com and I can put you directly in touch with him!

I posted one of John William Davis' songs in my first few weeks as a Star Maker Machine contributor, waaaaay back in October 2008... and haven't shared anything of his since - shame on me!

Sonnet 129 is a musical rewrite of a Shakespeare sonnet, which actually should be Sonnet 130, to John's chagrin - regardless, it is a lovely interpretation of Willy the Shake's tongue-in-cheek ode to his lady, not waxing poetic like his literary contemporaries but honestly addressing her flaws while still professing his love...

SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Songs From Poems: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Iron Maiden: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

[purchase]

Enough with these namby-pamby singer-songwriters, Star Makers. Let's rock!

Back when we did Discoveries week, I shared a photo of my mid-'80s college dorm room. Featured prominently on the wall was a poster for Iron Maiden's Powerslave album. I was quite the metalhead at the time, and Iron Maiden were in the upper echelons of my personal metal pantheon.

Iron Maiden's musical interpretation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic was originally released on Powerslave in 1984, but I prefer this live version from the following year's Live After Death, one of the best live albums in the history of heavy metal.

More than twenty-five years later, I don't find myself listening to most of the metal I grew up on. But Iron Maiden, I can still listen to without--pardon the pun--irony. Their prog-rock arrangements always set them apart from their 80's hair-metal contemporaries, and for some reason Steve Harris' galloping bass lines never fail to get my blood pumping.

So carve out thirteen minutes of your life, put on your headband and tight trousers, and rock out! But remember my dear Star Makers, we're not as young as we used to be. Please practice safe headbanging.

Songs From Poems: No Storms Come

The Innocence Mission: No Storms Come

[Purchase]

When I was reading up on Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to prepare to write this post, I came across this line:

He is regarded by different readers as the greatest Victorian poet of religion, of nature, or of melancholy. [source]

This line struck me because the song I post is by The Innocence Mission, a band I could describe the same way. Both the band and the poet are devout Catholics, and they write often about the beauty and strength of the natural world, and do so in the most hauntingly beautiful and melancholic way.

The poem the song was taken from is called "Heaven-Haven: A Nun Takes the Veil". The poem (and song) itself says nothing religious, but talks about a longing for a place where things are always beautiful and never hard, and in that regard it is like Heaven. In Hopkins life, he seemed to struggle with his conflicting views between whether he could be a good Jesuit priest as well as a poet, and also was battling the conflict between his religious beliefs and (according to a number of sources) his sexuality. He died at a fairly young age of typhoid fever, only to have his poetry that was largely unpublished before his death, later praised as being ahead of its time.

Songs From Poems: Wild Nights

Brady Earnhart: Wild Nights

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Wild Nights is a short poem by Emily Dickinson. There are three stanzas of four lines each, and no line has more than five syllables. But the poem has produced a great deal of spilled ink by those who have tried to interpret it. On the face of it, Wild Nights seems to be a burst of passion, but this does not jibe with Dickinson’s biography. So some critics attempt to explain that the poem is actually an expression of religious passion, while others theorize that Dickinson had a secret lover and debate his possible identity. I think it’s much simpler than that. Let me explain.

Emily Dickinson was not a very social person, and she became a recluse in later life. Far from having a lover, she did not even form close friendships. She grew up in the years before the Civil War, when various illnesses could claim a person’s life with startling suddenness. Dickinson lost an instructor at the academy she was attending as a teenager, and this seems to have affected her deeply. Dickinson seems to have resolved at that time, consciously or not, that she would not risk becoming to close to anyone, lest Death come for them. Some of the quotes I saw in researching this post suggest that Dickinson all but kept a tally of those she cared about who died as she grew older. Each death seemed to confirm for her the wisdom of not forming close bonds. So Dickinson’s relationships were mostly in the form of correspondence, and she was a prolific letter writer. What she knew of physical passion she read about in the works of Shakespeare and other authors. So, it seems to me that the poem Wild Nights is about the yearning for companionship. She mentions “wild nights”, but it’s not at all clear that she can imagine what they would be like. If anything, the wildness seems to be an external force, and the yearned-for companionship provides a haven from it.

I mentioned that the poem is a series of short bursts of words. One might expect a song made from Wild Nights to be loud and fast. But Brady Earnhart takes it slow, and his arrangement creates a cushion of sound. What comes through beautifully is that yearning emotion I spoke of above. You can hear another song from Earnhart’s latest album So Few Things here.

Songs From Poems: love is more thicker than forget

The Story: love is more thicker than forget

[purchase] / [read the poem]

The ever-lowercase e.e. cummings isn't the obvious choice for lyrical source material, even when his poems scan, as in the 4x4 series from whence this transformed verse comes. The language borders on cryptic abstraction, with voiced emotion and fragmented narrative taking the place of the more traditional verse structure which he learned from, and it tends to break funny between lines.

But Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball, in a coda from their debut duo pairing The Story, found their tendency towards playfully beautiful soaring and dischordant harmonies perfect for the piece, and for e.e. cummings' style overall, managing with just piano and two voices to create an incredibly successful environment for what is often a gorgeous yet difficult-to-fully-access poetic method. They do it so well, in fact, that as in the original poem, the pauses between lines speak as loud as the words themselves: the sparseness sings, and the self-referential imagery of love's extremity rises and fades with the cross and flow of these two voices into sky and sea and everything between.

Songs from Poems: Jerusalem

Mark Stewart & The Mafia: Jerusalem

[purchase]

Geoviki´s post on Jerusalem as interpreted by Billy Bragg made me remember another fine take on Blake: a dubby postpunk gem by former Pop Group singer Mark Stewart. Anthemic indeed.

Songs From Poems: Blake's Jerusalem

Glastonbury Tor

Billy Bragg: Blake's Jerusalem

[purchase]

The poem we know as Jerusalem is William Blake's 1808 preface to his longer epic, Milton: A Poem, and is based on a legend that Jesus Christ visited Glastonbury, England, during his lifetime. This visit is reflected in the four questions that begin the poem, and Blake's conclusion is that if true, it would have resulted in a temporary heaven on earth. It concludes with the exhortation to recreate this state once more in England. In other words, it's a poetic alternate-universe fanfic of the Bible.

The poem languished until 1916, when it was set to music, a move meant to encourage the British fighting spirit at a time when World War 1 wasn't going well (see also Darius' description this week of Yeats' Slouching Towards Bethlehem from the same time and place). Since then it has become enormously popular song in England, often used publicly as one of several unofficial national anthems. I have to say, it's turned into an enormous earworm for me ever since I decided to post it.

Billy Bragg includes this version on his overtly political 1990 CD, The Internationale. Bragg is an English socialist punk-folkie. As was Blake, by all accounts. Hearing this song in Bragg's pronounced East London accent is quite fitting, I think, especially the line about the "dark Satanic mills." Clearly, Blake wasn't much of a supporter of the Industrial Revolution.

Jerusalem by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire;
Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.

Songs From Poems: The Lady of Shalott

Loreena McKennitt: The Lady of Shalott

[purchase]

Alfred Lord Tennyson published his original version of The Lady of Shalott in 1832, but Loreena McKennitt takes her lyrics from Tennyson’s revised version from 1843. Tennyson is famous for his Idylls of the King, which was a series of poems inspired by Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Although The Lady of Shalott is a tale with Arthurian elements, it is not part of The Idylls of the King. In fact, the poem was inspired by an Italian telling of the story of Elaine of Astolat, and this version has several differences from Malory’s telling. Note too that, although T H White would later combine the characters, this is not the Elaine who was the mother of Galahad.

Tennyson presents a lady who is under a curse: she must view the world only through a mirror, and then weave images of what she sees. This curse was apparently Tennyson’s invention; it can be found neither in the Italian version nor in Malory. It is the element that makes the poem so fascinating. There have been many scholarly discussions over the years about what this signifies. For me, and I think for Loreena McKennitt as well, it is best left a mystery. I do enjoy the irony of one notion though. The lady in her weaving reminds me of the Fates in Greek myth. That would mean that the Lady of Shalott can control every destiny except her own.

Songs from poems: But for you who fear my name

The Welcome Wagon: But For You Who Fear My Name

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I didn't think I would be able to post anything this week, but when our just and true leaders lifted the restriction on songs from this century and said that Bible verses could be considered poems I found myself back in the game.

I bought Welcome Wagon's album because it was produced by Sufjan Stevens. His influence is obvious in every note of every song. (In fact no more than five minutes ago as I played this song before uploading it, my son said, "Is this Sufjan?").

All of the lyrics to this song are from two sections of the book of Malachi in the Old Testament (Chapter 4:2 and Chapter 3:17).

Songs From Poems: Mad Girls Love Song

Fisher: Mad Girls Love Song

[Purchase]

It's difficult to look at a picture, like the one above, of Sylvia Plath and imagine the darkness that must have been haunting her. Plath has become almost synonymous with her suicide by gas oven than by her impressive poetry and her semi-autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar". Most of her work seems to have those shadows lurking though, the ones saying she was worried about her own mental health and that perhaps things weren't what they seemed in the pretty, intelligent co-ed and mother of two.

The poem "Mad Girls Love Song" was first published in the women's fashion magazine Mademoiselle back in 1953, having been written by Plath in college a few years previous. Considering its title, it was begging to be made into an actual song, and a number of versions have been made by different artists over the years. This version of the song, as recorded by the singer Fisher, was never released because they were unable to reach her estate for authorization. Instead, they changed a number of the lyrics (they're already slightly off in this version) and released it under the title "Sleepy Head" on the album linked for purchase above.

You can read the original poem text here.