On Jun 12, 9:37*am, jim1 wrote:
HK wrote:
Eisboch wrote:

"HK" wrote in message
news:4OCdncApHoRm16_XnZ2dnUVZ_qmdnZ2d@earthlink. com...
Eisboch wrote:

"HK" wrote in message
...

Yeah?

Top this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs0nB...List&p=7860F24...

She was good, no doubt. * Too bad it isn't a B3.

Here's a B3. * In fact, in some of the sections of the video, Monaco
is playing the exact B3 I have in the music shop. * *I have pictures
and a CD of him playing it that came with the organ when I bought it..

He has an interesting background. *As a young kid, around the age of
11, he was learning to play an accordion but contracted some form of
a neurological disease. *He totally lost control of the muscles that
control finger movements. * He had to relearn, by shear will power,
the ability to control movement of his hands and fingers. * Even
today if you watch closely the way he forms chords on the organ
keyboard and attacks the keys is a bit different from what you would
normally expect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVU_BLow5M

Eisboch

Great organist, to be sure, but even though he is playing a tribute
to Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Smith he ain't.

His name isn't Jimmy Smith, agreed. *But his style, interpretation and
technique is certainly spot on, an opinion shared by most contemporary
jazz musicians. * In that "Tribute" he didn't really get carried away
because he was doing the song exactly as Smith did. * I've seen and
heard others, including some classic blues that knock your socks
off. * *I just have a particular fascination with the sound of a
tweaked Hammond B3/Leslie combination. * *Another unbelievable B3
artist was Billy Preston. *He could make his very modified B3 sing.

Gives me goosebumps.

Eisboch

Well, I was "exposed" to that sort of organ playing (but not that level)
at a very young age. *My dad was an advanced amateur organist, and we
always had a Hammond, Wurlitzer or Gulbransen in the living room. The
last organ was another Hammond, with a Leslie speaker that my dad
"stashed" in a corner of the adjacent dining room, much to the annoyance
of my mother. He did his own repairs, too, with boxes of tubes, harmonic
drawbars, et cetera, in the basement. Great hobby for him, especially in
the dead of winter, when the boat biz in New Haven was as moribund as
creative thought coming from the GOP. * :)

Funny thing...he couldn't read a note of music. He'd buy those "Fake
Books" from Goldie's Music Store in downtown New Haven, and each would
have literally thousands of scores in them. My dad bought the books for
the song titles. He'd play "by ear," and once he heard a song, it was
"his" forever. He knew most of the songs in the books...the titles just
jolted the melodies in his mind.

I think I told you once he got opportunities to sit in during shows of
the local theater organ society, held at the Whalley Theater. I wonder
if the Whalley still exists, and whether it still has its Mighty
Wurlitzer? Do you remember the Whalley? It was the big first-run theater
in New Haven. Large to me then, but by today's standards, not so large,
I bet.

We had another great theater in New Haven, the Loew's Poli. It was
downtown. Very fancy. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney performed there.
The Poli family had a large mansion on Forest Road in New Haven, and a
huge multi-house enclave out at Woodmont. The house they lived in in the
summer was a convent or religious retreat the last time I saw it.

There you go with your dad again.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I wonder if his dad got a "fireboat welcome" in NYC when he went there
to play his organ with the NY Philharmonic......