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And quite a few good sounds came from Booker T and the MG's, though I haven't a clue what the instrument was that they used.



Believe it or not, Booker T used a small Spinet home model Hammond organ with built in 12" speaker and NO Leslie rotating speaker cabinet for his early and famous recordings, relying on the chorus generator in the organ for any animated sounds. Apparently they simply mic'd the speaker under the keyboard in the Spinet and got "THE SOUND". Green Onions was actually a tour de force in knowing what the tonewheel system could do, rather like a small puzzle in a way to figure out how to play that one correctly. Booker took great advantage of the foldback wiring in the Spinet on that one.

Of course, in later years, Booker would show up with a full B3 and a Leslie cabinet for live shows.

Ray Charles also made some reference recordings and appearances in the 50s with a small Hammond Spinet model tonewheel organ, too. As usual for Ray, he managed to find every funky sounding thing the little organ could do and used each to the max. Ray got a lot of mileage from carefully chosen voicings as well. If you can find a re-release of those recordings, well worth the listen for any keyboardist. One of the first things I noticed way back when I found them was that Ray never floored the thing. He found the funk best at about the 2/3 full travel point on the Expression Pedal and often used less as well. As a result, the little organ never strains, even though accompanied by a bigband. Beautiful stuff.


--Mac

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