The King of Instruments

OK I actually think the organ is known as "the king of instruments" and I do think that a Hammond B3 is cool but the rest of the genre is to put it mildly, "dorky". When I was a kid we had a Lowery Holiday with a built in drum machine and a little Leslie speaker. It weren't no Hammond.



Anyway as a teenager the family Lowery did eventually mutate into a Hammond, which led me to a Rhodes, which led me to a Mini Moog, which lead to electronic burn out and a Tenor Saxophone. My heroes were in successive order: Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Joe Zawinul, Jan Hammer, Chick Corea and George Duke. After the embarrassing "Prog Rock" phase



I traded the Hammond in and got a Rhodes. If I was smart I would of stopped the mutation at Joe Zawinul and the "Bitches Brew"/first couple of Weather Report albums. Man, that stuff was amazing. Sadly Zawinul passed away last September.



But like everybody else including Joe and Chick and Herbie I didn't. The Rhodes sprouted first a cry baby wah wah and then a chorus and then a big muff pie. I missed the short echoplex era which would have been cool. Then I scrounged up cash and bought a used Mini Moog.



Basically with all this stuff I had in a fairly elaborate and expensive way recreated the sound of the Lowery Holiday. Time for a break of multiple decades after a brief flirtation with a woodwind and the company of many harmonicas.

So time passes... lots of time passes. A child eventually arrives. Said child wants to play the piano. I suggest a piano teacher. She suggests me. Uh oh.