Robert Walter - Super Heavy Organ (2007)

Tracklist

01. Adelita
02. Kickin' Up Dust
03. Spell
04. El Cuervo
05. Criminals Have a Name For It
06. 34 Small
07. Don't Hate, Congratulate
08. Poor Tom
09. (smells like) Dad's Drunk Again
10. Big Dummy
11. Hardware
12. Cabrillo



The Hammond Organ. Ask anyone who has played one on the club scene and they ’ll tell you horror stories about jacking the B3 up fire escapes or removing doorframes; not to mention the instrument’s sheer weight, alone. No question, the Hammond is a super heavy organ.

Then there’s what’s under the hood. There are two layers of keys, four sets of drawbars, and eighteen changeable presets, creating a sound that arguably smokes any modern instrument. You need a virtuoso sitting behind the Hammond or, somehow, it doesn’t erupt in those fat, bubbly tones, or in those long glissandos that rip the paint off the wall.

“I just love the instrument,” Robert Walter enthuses. He knows the mantle he wears when he plays the Hammond and the Leslie. He knows the lineage, which, in no particular order, includes Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, and newcomers like Joey DeFrancesco. Walter wasn’t born behind an organ; in fact, he began gigging with a piano and a Fender Rhodes. The story goes that he wanted something more powerful, wider in bandwidth—something…heavier.

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