White Keys and Black Keys

The Hammond organ is without doubt the most celebrated keyboard in the history of rock, predating the arrival of the synthesizer. In a hypothetical runner-up contest, the winner would probably be the Mellotron, or one of the two most iconic electric piano brands: Rhodes and Wurlitzer. In due course, our White Keys and Black Keys series will also tackle these instruments (on the first one, there's already a substantial eighty-song feature).

Less an object of reverential awe, but every bit as omnipresent in pop, rock and other recordings, is a whole host of other electric — or rather electronic — organs: instruments born with the intent of imitating the pipe organ typical of cathedrals and grand theatres, but increasingly appreciated over time by musicians for the specific qualities of their sound, even and especially when that sound turned out to be far removed from that of a real church organ.

Lowrey, Farfisa, Vox, Bontempi: these are some of the best-known manufacturers, responsible for an invasion of keyboards differing in price range, versatility, internal architecture and sonic qualities. While the bulkier, more expensive models were excellent substitutes for the pipe organ (in some cases adding further functions on top), the cheaper models were entirely unsuited to any kind of professional use. Most of these instruments were, and still are, united by one element — the very thing that makes them collectively known as "electronic organs": the frequencies behind the sound are not generated by the vibration of mechanical parts, but produced directly by regular variations of electrical current within suitable circuit components, only afterwards amplified and sent to a speaker. The first to reach the market were organs based on thermionic valves (bulky, expensive and unreliable) and various kinds of oscillating circuits. The advent of semiconductor electronics later paved the way for the more manageable "transistor organs", by far the most successful class in pop-related fields.

The valve-powered battleship

Among the fully electronic organs, the top price bracket has been occupied since 1955 by Lowrey instruments, produced by the eponymous Chicago-based company. Signal generation relies on oscillations produced by an electronic device developed in the 1940s, the Eccles-Jordan circuit, valve-based but remarkably stable for its time (ideal, then, for obtaining musical frequencies that hold their pitch). Lowrey organs were initially intended for home entertainment, but their use also took hold in churches and theatres. From the mid-1960s onward they found a place in pop and rock too, thanks to their tonal range, which was broader and closer to that of a genuine pipe organ than that of electromechanical instruments like the Hammond. From 1964, the architecture replaced valves with transistors, extending the average lifespan of the electronic components and making Lowrey organs even more competitive (including on price) compared to the more widespread Hammonds.

The Lowrey organ first found widespread use on easy listening recordings. As with the Hammond and, a few years later, the Moog synthesizer, reworking hit songs through the new instrument proved an easy gimmick for catching listeners' attention. In this field, Lowrey keyboards also competed with Baldwin's valve organs, which offered a more distinctly electronic tonal range. A useful comparison is between Dick Hyman's recordings for Lowrey (a pioneer of electronic keyboards who would also play a leading role in the "Moog craze" of the late Sixties) and those Eddie Osborn made for Baldwin.

Experimentation with the instrument also appears in classical or loosely classical contexts. Avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen used it alongside the Hammond for his cantata "Momente" (1962-1969): in the video recording shown here, the two organs are easily told apart by the presence, to the left of the keyboard, of an octave with inverted colours (Hammond) or its absence (Lowrey). Also between the Sixties and Seventies, the organ was put to use in film scores and library music, though it's hard to map out just how widespread it was in these fields, since the instruments used on such recordings are only rarely credited by name.

Eddie Osborn — Moon River (1962)

Angelo Francesco Lavagnino — Tristezza nel cuore (1962)

Dick Hyman — Big Ben Bossa (1963)

Karlheinz Stockhausen — Momente, Europa Version [live @ Cologne, conducted by Pierre Schaeffer] (1966)

Giampiero Boneschi — Lovely Lowrey (1973)

From the mid-Sixties onward, the instrument gained modest traction in pop/rock as well. Its adoption as a core element of a band's sound, however, was limited by its poor portability, which made studio use far more common than live use. Among the many organs used to conjure up the circus atmosphere of "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite", the Lowrey organ played by George Martin plays the leading role. He's also behind the roaring wind sound on "Born To Be Wild", which was replaced live by that of a more easily transportable Hammond. More recently, a Lowrey appears as the "star" of the video for Owl City's "Fireflies" (a song in which, in fact, it isn't used at all!).

Some bands considered the Lowrey such an essential part of their sound that they even brought it on stage. Garth Hudson, organist of The Band, is probably the instrument's best-known devotee, and Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine used it until his departure from the band in 1966. It's a fuzz-drenched Lowrey, in fact, that's responsible for the alien sound opening "Facelift", the first track on "Third".

A Lowrey organ connected to an EMS VCS-3 synthesizer was used by Pete Townshend of The Who for the famous minimalist intro of "Baba O'Riley"… But that's another story too, one to be told another time (for now, the image above will have to do!).

The Beatles – Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite (1967)

Steppenwolf – Born to be Wild (1968)

Soft Machine – Facelift (1970)

The Band – The Shape I’m In (1978)

Owl City – Fireflies (2009)

Although the company's fortunes in the pop world are tied mainly to the Sixties and Seventies, instrument production continued into recent years. In the early Eighties, the Micro Genie series was launched, consisting of portable keyboards with a built-in speaker, some of them battery-powered. Later on, MIDI-compatible models were introduced. In 1988 the company was bought by Japan's Kawai, and only in 2018 came the announcement that production would cease the following January.

The Transistor Invasion

Easy to handle and cheap, but poor in harmonic content and dynamics, transistor instruments used solid-state components (semiconductors) instead of the valves and oscillating circuits of the previous generation. They quickly found wide favour among consumers less fussy about sound quality. Combo organs in particular, designed specifically for the needs of small combo bands, carved out a significant role in jazz, rock and pop contexts.

The sector's early leader was Britain's Vox, which in 1962 launched its flagship model, the four-octave Vox Continental organ. For $995 (roughly €7,000 today) you could take home a striking object with red livery and a piercing sound, instantly recognisable thanks to its black keyboard with white accidentals.

In 1964 it was the turn of Farfisa, from Osimo (near Ancona), who put the Combo Compact on the market for the equivalent of €3,000 today, quickly followed by other, even cheaper models. Farfisa instruments are characterised by a thinner sound (which nonetheless soon won its own admirers), and often by the black-grey-white tripartite colouring of the keyboard.

Combo organs quickly became an essentially Italian product, with a supply chain concentrated in the area around Recanati. Dozens of companies were active (among the main ones Crumar, Elka, LOGAN), and some would build up credibility in the synthesizer industry in the following decades too. Another curious fact: from 1965 even Vox moved part of its production to the Marche region, to the EKO plants in Montelupone.

The sound of combo organs is decidedly flat: among the most recurring terms in descriptions are dull, lifeless, tinny (metallic, "like tin"), shrill. The sound output makes no distinction between the attack and the sustain of a note (largely eliminating any percussive possibilities), and the volume isn't calibrated to the force of the touch. Rather than assigning, as other electric organs do, a dedicated oscillator to each key on the keyboard, they exploit circuit elements known as frequency dividers to generate a multitude of frequencies starting from those of a small number of oscillators (twelve – one for each note of the chromatic scale). This trick, which would later also be used by the first polyphonic synthesizers, made it possible to significantly reduce the complexity, cost and size of the instruments. Like Hammond instruments, combo organs are generally equipped with a system of sliders to set harmonic equalization, but their effectiveness in shaping timbre is rather limited.

Despite their obvious expressive limitations, pop and rock acts showed a fondness for the sound of these new instruments from the very early years. Already in the beat and psychedelic era, on both sides of the Atlantic, the combo organ established itself as a livelier, less bombastic alternative to the always somewhat thunderous Hammond sound. A Vox Continental stands out in the arrangements of hits like "I'm A Believer" and the Animals' version of "House Of The Rising Sun", while the Farfisa plays its part in hits by Percy Sledge and Them. Also famous is Ray Manzarek's use, in the Doors, of the Vox Continental paired with an unusual Rhodes Piano Bass on many of the band's most iconic songs.

The Animals – House Of The Rising Sun (1964)

Them – Mystic Eyes/Gloria (1965)

Percy Sledge – When A Man Loves A Woman (1966)

The Doors – Light My Fire (1967)

The Monkees – I’m a Believer (1967)

In the long tail of the psychedelic era, several bands discovered unexpected atmospheric potential in the sound of combo organs, making it a central element of their experiments and layered arrangements. Iron Butterfly pushed the Vox to its peak of emphasis and demonic intensity, while Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream explored the more spacey territories that the ethereal Farfisa sound opens up.

In 1970 the two-manual Professional Duo model came onto the market, counting among its most devoted admirers former Tangerine Dream member Klaus Schulze, seen here in a TV appearance highly representative of the avant-garde nature of his music.

Iron Butterfly – In A Gadda Da Vida (1968)

Pink Floyd – Astronomy Domine [live @ ORTF2] (1968)

Klaus Schulze [live on French TV] (1973)

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells [live @ BBC] (1973)

Tangerine Dream – Atem [live @ ORF] (1973)

Combo organs found admirers even in more experimental circles less focused on rock. In 1971, Keith Jarrett used, live with Miles Davis, one of the many imitators of the two leading brands, the Fender Contempo. Some also tell how, the year before, during the sessions for "A Tribute To Jack Johnson", Davis had forced Herbie Hancock, who happened to be passing by, to play a Farfisa he found in the studio, even though the pianist had never before laid hands on such an instrument (nor had any jam session with the trumpeter been planned!).

Minimalist composers were particularly drawn to these instruments for their "abstract" sound: both Steve Reich and Philip Glass composed for Farfisa throughout the Seventies, and the transcendental suspension of Terry Riley's music pairs beautifully with the bland timbre of the transistor organ. The footage featured here captures him performing on a Yamaha YC-45D (where the "C" stands for "combo"), a "deluxe" instrument with a more varied timbre and a noticeable attack sound. Finally, a Farfisa organ is one of the (very few) protagonists of the surprising hit single by avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, "O Superman".

Steve Reich – Four Organs (1970)

Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett [live @ Berlin Philharmonie] (1971)

Philip Glass – Music In 12 Parts [live, dall’intervista-documentario “Music With Roots In The Aether”] (1976)Terry Riley – Shri Camel [live @ Holland Festival] (1977)

Laurie Anderson – O Superman (1982)

As the Seventies wore on, use of these organs in strictly pop contexts faded (with notable exceptions, such as their pairing with piano in Elton John's "Crocodile Rock"), but the arrival of new wave brought about a swift comeback. Economic factors certainly played their part: a proper organ costs an arm and a leg, and bands starting out playing wherever they could get a gig had every reason to favor instruments that were not only cheaper but also easier to lug around. On the other hand, the dry, skeletal, no-frills sound of combo organs suited perfectly the back-to-basics approach many artists wanted for their music. The Vox, alongside mod fashion, became a trademark of 2 Tone ska, while the Farfisa was often picked up by more art-leaning bands (Talking Heads, Blondie).

Elton John – Crocodile Rock (1972)

The Specials – A Message to You (1979)

Madness – One Step Beyond (1979)

Blondie – Heart of Glass (1979)

Gaznevada – Tij-u-wan (1980)

The combo organ can also be a cold, alienating sound, and ultimately a bit ridiculous. Right at the turn between the Seventies and Eighties, a number of bands made caricature-like jaggedness (veering into what today might be called cringe) their distinguishing trait, and it's no surprise they found in transistor organs the ideal keyboard backbone for their sound. For some time now, the term Zolo has been popping up online to refer to this limbo between shambling prog, eccentric new wave and petulant pop, and scrolling through a list of candidates for this non-genre's hall of fame, you run into a whole string of combo sound devotees.

Still within the Rock in Opposition sphere, Aksak Maboul, Samla Mammas Manna and Etron Fou Leloublan turned to the Farfisa, which also plays a major role in the postmodern art-pop of former-10cc members Godley & Creme. Crossing over into new wave, the Farfisa resurfaces again with B-52's and Family Fodder; early Xtc, on the other hand, relied on another Italian organ, the Crumar Group 49 (which appears with its casing off in their early videos). They Might Be Giants leaned on the toy-like timbre of the Farfisa for their earliest live performances, and even the wildly warped punk/prog of Cardiacs made extensive use of the Vox Continental to build its clownish, schizoid mood

Aksak Maboul – (Mit 1) Saure Gurke (Aus 1 Urwald Gelockt) (1977)

Family Fodder – Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling) (1979)

Xtc – This Is Pop? (1978)

The B-52’s – Rock Lobster (1980)

Cardiacs – RES (1984)

For the indie universe, raised first on CD reissues and later on mp3s and streaming, the buzz of the combo organ is doubly nostalgic: on one hand, it's a coded signal pointing back to the pioneering age of electronic minimalism, to the Sixties, to kraut and post-punk; on the other, it's a madeleine that subliminally evokes childhood memories, from a time when the low cost of transistor instruments had scattered them everywhere, from classrooms to small theatres to village entertainment nights. Farfisa and Vox are thus totemic objects both for tireless electronic diggers, who see themselves as continuing the experiments of the pioneers, and for less ambitious but cozier bedroom creations. Playing with bleeps, glitches, samplers, and often settling for software emulations of the vintage instruments, indietronica and folktronica artists have forged an aesthetic of brightness, melancholy and small things, in which the smoothed-out hum of the Farfisa feels perfectly at home. Somewhere between these two poles sit other users, such as indie rockers seeking emotional bridges with their audience, or vintage devotees like Stereolab (the latter forever in search of the best combination of vintage instruments to craft a bewitching pot pourri of space age pop and Seventies nostalgia).

Spiritualized [live @ MTV] (1992)

Stereolab – Farfisa (1995)

Death Cab For Cutie – President Of What? (1998)

Lali Puna – Lowdown (2001)

Keith Fullerton Whitman – Stereo Music For Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe, Drum Kit (2005)

At times, the revival of the combo sound veers into more explicitly pop territory, and in some cases even into mainstream hits still remembered today. In cases like these, it's often the retro atmosphere immediately conjured by the timbres that justifies the choice: whether we're talking about one-hit wonders or bands able to build a rich, versatile sound around their organ, the sixties revival taste is plain to hear both in the riff of "Jerk It Out" and in the kaleidoscopic Madchester sound of Inspiral Carpets. Sheer backward-looking nostalgia is also the defining trait of Britain's The Coral, who oddly enough chose to dredge up from oblivion yet another rival to the more famous manufacturers: the Philicorda, marketed by Philips as early as 1961, a year before the Vox Continental. If many Nineties teenagers experienced the Farfisa sound (perhaps without even realising it), it's thanks to "Common People" by Pulp, whose accompanying video is set in a 60s-70s-style dance hall – probably the most fitting place to run into an organ of that kind, really. The groove of "Common People" would go on to spawn its own imitators, and even today anyone covering it makes sure to slip a touch of combo organ into the mix.

Inspiral Carpets – This Is How it Feels (1990)

Pulp – Common People (1995)

The Coral – Dreaming of You (2002)

Ceasars Palace – Jerk It Out (2003)

Baustelle – Amanda Lear (2017)

The renewed interest in the sound of transistor organs has sadly not been enough to save the manufacturing base in the Marche region from the closures and conversions made necessary by decades of market contraction. Of the companies mentioned in the text, Vox had already stopped producing in Italy back in the Seventies (later selling the brand to Japan's Korg in 1992), Farfisa shut down its music division in 1998, and Crumar closed its doors in 1987 – though since 2008 the brand has been back on the electronic and digital instruments market, thanks to a relaunch by Italian entrepreneurs.

Coda: the notorious chord organs

You may never have called them by that name, but if you've ever set foot in some little theatre, a school basement, or a dusty corner full of relics from decades past, chances are you've come across one. And perhaps tested its (rather poor) musical quality with your own hands.

Chord organs owe their name to the fact that, alongside the ordinary keyboard, they also feature a dedicated set of buttons for selecting simple chords: this meant that even inexperienced musicians could play a basic accompaniment by pressing just one key at a time (usually with the left hand). Introduced in 1950 by Hammond with a valve-based architecture, in the following decades the design spread into a wide range of variants, both in terms of interface and sound generation. Many manufacturers made their own models, all sharing certain common traits: throughout their heyday, chord organs remained cheap instruments intended for non-professional use, fitted with a limited keyboard and little to no tonal versatility. Besides Hammond's S series, the pioneer of the category, chord organs were also produced by Wurlitzer, Farfisa, GTR and Magnus. Sales success lasted roughly until the arrival of affordable digital keyboards at the end of the Eighties.

The most widespread instruments in this category (Bontempi organs in Italy, Magnus ones in the English-speaking world) are not technically electronic organs, since their sound is produced by reeds set vibrating by air blown from a small motor. Italian readers will most likely be more familiar with instruments of this kind.

Although they are essentially toy instruments, chord organs have occasionally been used by pop musicians too, usually to give recordings a playful, off-kilter, or deliberately amateurish feel. On "Memory Of A Free Festival", on his second LP, David Bowie uses a Rosedale Electric organ. It's only natural that, some time later, the lo-fi world would come to reappraise this kind of instrument, starting with outsider Daniel Johnston (now regarded as the genre's patron saint), who treats the noisy keyboard and the irrepressible delay of a particularly cheap model's sound output as features to be embraced rather than hidden. Periodically, then, the sound resurfaces on records by American alternative bands, independent songwriters, and folktronica artists. In more recent times, chord organs have also been used fairly often by Californian post-rockers Tarentel

David Bowie — Memory Of A Free Festival (1970)

Daniel Johnston — Chord Organ Blues (1983)

Elliott Smith — Coming Up Roses (1995)

Yann Tiersen — La lettre d’explication (2001)

Tarentel — Paper White (2005)

Two final curiosities about these beloved and hated instruments. The first is for Beatles fans: “Blue Jay Way” was written by George Harrison in 1967 on a Hammond S while he was staying in Los Angeles; however, for the recording used on “Magical Mystery Tour”, made at Abbey Road Studios, he would instead use a more luxurious Hammond B3.

The use of a Hammond S by the Residents is, as is almost everything concerning rock's most enigmatic band, a trickier matter. There's no direct confirmation, but the go-to site for the Residents' fan community, Meet The Residents Wiki, lists the use between 1972 and 1987 of an instrument with modified tuning designed to maximize its spookiness. The organ is said to have been given to a collaborator of the band, complete with a certificate of ownership, and then passed on until it reached an enthusiast who, in 2012, wishing to resell it, posted a video on YouTube showcasing its unusual sonic quirks. Verifying the reliability of the ownership history and certificates described is difficult, but the footage is interesting in its own right, showing a chord organ with genuinely out-of-the-ordinary harmonic characteristics.

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