As a pure fiend for organ trio records, even before I started delving deeply into jazz a few years ago, the sound of the Hammond organ held a certain sway over me. I am not really sure what it is that makes me swoon but I love it.
When I started collecting jazz records in the recent past I immediately started picking up whatever I could find by originators and innovators Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Larry Young, and a host of other organists who took the instrument and turned it into one of the most popular in jazz. Needless to say, my collection of these types of records has swelled beyond my original expectations and the sub-genre of jazz known as "groove jazz" is my newest musical weakness.
How fantastic it was for me when I recently discovered one of my favorite psychobilly artists Reverend Horton Heat has just put out one of these kinds of records. Maybe I should have seen it coming as all psychobilly bands are devotees of '50's rockabilly. Rockabilly is only a short space of time previous to the ascent of the popularity of groove jazz, which started itself in that decade but didn't gain its real peak of popularity until the mid-1960's up to about 1972 or so.
I am guessing Reverend Heat wore out all of his rockabilly records, decided to check out a couple of groove jazz discs at his batchelor pad and fell in love with what he heard. It's not really that farfetched, is it? I mean, it happened to me!
So, Reverend Organdrum is, in fact, a new project featuring guitar slinger and psychobilly star Reverend Horton Heat (real name: Jim Heath), possibly the most popular psychobilly artist of all time outside of genre founders The Cramps. How he has made his way musically to this new sound is quite interesting.
Heath grew up in Corpus Christi, TX, where he played in a bunch of rock and roll cover bands but his heart was with all of the classic Sun Records rockabilly releases he began collecting. Eventually, Heath moved to Dallas and invented the Reverend Horton Heat character and began playing the city's many blues clubs.
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