Mark Vail is a cheerleading fan of the B-3 and its mandatory Leslie speakers. He walks us through more than you might ever wish to know about the instrument. In conversational style, here is its history; how to buy one, and even how to care for and feed it.
The legends share their tips on playing techniques in Chapter Seven. These include jazz players like Jimmy McGriff, Tom Coster, the late Richard “Groove” Holmes and Joey DeFrancesco. Plus non-jazzers Rod Argent, Keith Emerson, Paul Shaffer, Booker T. Jones and one Rosemary Bailey.
“25 Hammond Licks You Must Know” are also included.
Keyboard relatives of the B-3 are detailed in another chapter, followed by a “Hammondography” describing the author’s favorite B-3 recordings. These include some by jazz players.
Like some instructional videos on the B-3? Or Barbara Dennerlein’s B-3 sampling CD? Descriptions of and sources for these are also included.
This is one very interesting book. Especially if you’re ready to venture really deep into the B-3’s innards.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro