The North Suburban Home Organ Society

Welcome to our new 2008-2009 Concert Season.

     Our most recent meeting and concert were held on August 24 and featured some of our playing members performing. We started off with our treasurer Ed Surette who played a number of familiar tunes in his easy listening style. Ed has a Hammond in his home and judging by his ever evolving style is spending a lot of time playing and working out arrangements as he just keeps getting better and better as time goes on.
     Next up was member Norm Daly who is quite proficient on the piano. Because there is a piano in our hall, Norm used that instrument instead of our Hammond and played a number of great standards. Norm is an excellent improvisor and includes a lot of grace notes, arpeggios and other ornamentation in his playing. Also, unlike most of us, he is not daunted in the least by those infamous "sharps" keys like E, B and F#. [In fact, he prefers them!] One of our members then asked him to imitate Joanne Castle of Lawrence Welk fame, and he did indeed do a credible imitation, even bouncing around on the bench and including many extra flourishes as she did. Norm is indeed a good entertainer.
     Norm was then followed by Peggy Pratt who mentioned that she had some sheet music in her car even though she had not scheduled herself for this afternoon, and she treated us to a nice fifteen minute program. Because of Peggy's extensive sheet music collection, she has access to a number of melodies which are not often heard and thus we hear melodies when she plays that we do not otherwise get to listen to during most of our formal concerts.
     After that was NSHOS pres. Eric Larson who started off with the song Wheels and a number of others including a version of the song Dream based somewhat on Alan Goodnow's great arrangement of that song.
     The Wurlitzer electrostatic organ which we used for the Ken Griffin event was still in the hall and Eric used that instrument for an imitation of Ken Griffin's version of You Are My Sunshine which is always a great sing-along melody and also Now Is the Hour. After about 15 minutes of solo playing, Eric was joined by Norm Daly on the piano for a number of duets. The Hammond and the piano go very well together, and the piano in this hall is well maintained and kept in tune. "Working with Norm is always a great opportunity to keep in practice playing in sharps keys," Eric said as they played a number of well-known tunes including Beer Barrel Polka in B natural and Five Foot Two in E Natural. There is something to be said for certain fingerings in A, E, B and F# where the use of both white and black keys makes for very comfortable arpeggios and other tricky keyboard maneuvers which in some cases, because of the way human hands are designed, actually work out to have much easier fingering than playing the corresponding patterns in the key of C.

                                                           Tim Holloran
had been scheduled to start us off on our new concert season this September, but the unfortunate passing of his father last month has made it impossible for him to be with us for our September meeting. We send our sympathy to Tim during this difficult time. Tim will be playing for us in January. We will shortly be announcing an artist to be with us for the start of our new concert season.

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EDDIE LAYTON Extravaganza

     Just about everybody who loves the Hammond Organ and its music is familiar with Eddie Layton. Eddie was for many years a national representative of the Hammond Organ Company, traveling all over the USA and even occasionally to foreign countries to demonstrate the Hammond Company's products. His mastery of the unique Hammond drawbar tonal system was phenomenal. Under his ministrations, Hammond organs became all kinds of other instruments. There were not many sounds that we hear in normal life, from a Hawaiian guitar to bongo drums that Eddie could not credibly duplicate on a traditional Hammond.
     Aside from imitating many conventional and exotic musical instruments, he would also occasionally add the sounds of different birds and animals to his playing, developing these effects from skillful manipulation of the Hammond's drawbars and playing keys. As a composer he wrote a number of really nice melodies, and his knowledge of advanced harmony made for some very attention-getting arrangements. Truly when it came to playing the Hammond Organ, Eddie layton definitely "thought outside the box," giving his fertile imagination free reign.
     When the Hammond company developed the X66 instrument, it was Eddie Layton whom they sent to various Hammond dealerships to promote this new instrument, and also commissioned a demonstration recording by him to sell or give to various Hammond clubs and dealerships to show what could be done on an X66.
     Eddie also frequently worked with other musicians, and his abilities as an arranger are commensurate with his talents as a solo performer. Although the exact date is not set yet, we are planning an Eddie Layton Program for 2009. We're already studying his music and arrangements and practicing for this event which will feature NSHOS Pres Eric Larson, Vice President Jim Gregory, and member Kurt Armsden, all of whom are very familiar with Eddie's work and playing styles. We will announce the date for this event at our next meeting.

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NSHOS Fall Concert Season is of to a

Great Start!

September Artist to be announced soon, Stay Tuned!

October features a new artist, Gary Phillips. Gary is a pipe organ technician who has had lots of experience playing on theater pipe organs. Gary is also a great console personality as well as an excellent musician whose creative and exciting arrangements will keep you wanting to hear more and more. Likewise this is Gary's first time performing for us, although he has briefly sat at our X66 on a few occasions, enough to demonstrate beyond any doubt that he is a very capable musician.
November will showcase NSHOS vice president Jim Gregory, his second performance within a year and his first as our new VP. Those of you who have already heard Jim know that you're going to be in for a great afternoon of music. Those of you who have not heard him play yet are in for a real treat. Jim's clever, jazzy improvisations are one of the highlights of his performances, and likewise his excellent understanding of and familiarity with the Hammond X66 make his programs really neat.

For a while now, we have had a few inoperative stop tabs on our X and also some missing notes on the upper manual when using the solo or complex-wave derived voices. On May 2, I decided to get ambitious and see what I could do to fix these. I managed to repair the stop tabs, and also via a liberal dose of contact-cleaning spray I got all of our missing notes back. More recently, on June 21, I discovered one preset key higher than normal and also found the percussion section inoperative. Fortunately, I was able to correct both problems. The X is a great instrument, but it is also a very complex instrument, and had not really had any major service for a long time, so I am now endeavoring to check out the instrument prior to every concert and attend to whatever technical problems it may have. As a Hammond club, we are very grateful to the late Lenny Winter for donating this X to the club which allows the NSHOS to offer a really first class performance instrument to all of our guest artists.
     On Saturday, July 19th, I got to play electronic musical instrument technician once again, this time attending to the needs of the Wurlitzer 4600 which we used for the Ken Griffin Celebration. Considering its age, the instrument was essentially in excellent shape. One problem that it had, however, was a loud and intermittent crackling and buzzing. I suspected faulty vacuum tubes or a bad capacitor, but fortunately the problem proved to be just dirty contacts in the console speaker selection switch, a problem which a generous shot of contact cleaning spray took care of.
     A second problem was the continuous sounding of the C# below Middle C. Fortunately, this was nothing more than a strand of an ancient spider web that was bridging a contact in the pedal switch assembly. Electrostatic instruments rely on their keys and pedals switching high voltage direct current to various electrodes in the tone generating assembly. Because these are very high resistance inputs, there is virtually no current flow. Thus, anything that can conduct current at all has the potential to trigger a note, in this case a strand of spider web. Although spider web itself is as far as I know non-conductive, when it gets dusty it will conduct well enough to trigger a note. Household dust, high humidity and even cat hairs also can trigger notes in these electrostatic instruments. At any rate, the simple removal of the spider web and a shot of contact spray got us back in business, and the instrument performed flawlessly for our Ken Griffin program. At a later time, however, we will need to replace some capacitors in this instrument and also give it a new set of vacuum tubes. Fortunately, the heart of the instrument, the hermetically sealed electrostatic tone generating unit is in excellent shape and also runs exceedingly quietly.    — ECL

If you are a professional keyboard musician or a skilled amateur, be sure to contact us. We are always looking for new artists to feature for our programs.

We are very pleased to see that we are getting new visitors to our programs and that many of those who visit have joined our group. We welcome all to our monthly programs. If you would like to join the North Suburban Home Organ Society, or receive more information about this group, just click here. NSHOS.

Below are a few pictures from our most recent and some previous meetings.