Paddy Cassidy/7th Sense Media
From left: Al Falaschi, Vince Jesse and Mike Cammilleri at Cafe Coda.
The organ went from sacred to suave when it left the church for the first time in the 1950s. That’s when Laurens Hammond’s B3 model, eventual queen of jazz organs, was first put on the market. The sound of the organ changed, and technical innovations transformed the way organists (and pianists) approached the instrument. Suddenly, the organ was considered a solo instrument.
You could say that Hammond did for the organ what Fender did for the bass or Les Paul did for the guitar. Electronic wizardry not only led to a new tool, it opened the door to entire new genres of music. Hammond’s updates paved the way for the too-cool-for school jazz instrumental records that Dad put on the family stereo on poker night. Those kinds of records, by the organ masters such as Lou Bennett and Jimmy Smith, are among the hardest to find these days.
Until now.
Local organist Mike Cammilleri’s recent release, Bar Open, takes you back in time to the lounges and jazz dives of the heyday of jazz organ in the 1960s.
All gin fizzes and unfiltered cigarettes, the five-song EP is as much a celebration of the jazz organ as it is a demonstration of it. Cammilleri, the son of an organ player, really got the bug for it in the late 1990s when he first heard Shack-man, by jazz revivalists Medeski Martin & Wood. Cammilleri says his first listen caused him to ask, “WTF is that sound?”
On Bar Open Cammilleri re-creates those sounds with able sidemen. Al Falaschi (Phat Phunktion, Steely Dane) astonished plenty of local musicians by putting down the sax, his main instrument, and picking up drum sticks for this project. His drumming here is fluid, colorful, and punches big, meaty beats when the organ isn’t looking but when the listener is craving. Falaschi also co-produced the album, which was mostly recorded at The Sausage Factory (Cammilleri’s basement).
Vince Jesse (Phat Phunktion) plays electric guitar with lead breaks that swoon and sway, especially on a cover of Stevie Wonder’s classic “Master Blaster.”
Throughout, Cammilleri makes his organ sound simultaneously baleful and bodacious. Because jazz organ is somewhat of a backwater genre, Cammilleri and Falaschi chose to give the unaccustomed listener a leg up by taking well-known pop hits of the late ’70s and ’80s and giving them the damn treatment. Among the other covers on the EP are a swinging version of Jane Child’s “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love,” a furiously funky take on Michael Jackson’s “Working Day and Night,” and a voodoo-filled cover of, of all things, “Sailing” by Christopher Cross.
The Mike Cammilleri Organ Trio will play The North Street Cabaret on July 20.