Rudi Bohn, Golden Sound of Hammond

(Albums the World Forgot #5, 2010)


Rudi Bohn, Golden Sound of Hammond (Europa, year unknown)

There was once a time (the 1970s, to be precise) when the Hammond organ was the sexiest instrument in the world. Well, in Germany at least. You couldn’t look at an album cover without seeing beautiful women standing next to Hammond organs, pointing to Hammond organs, or even draped sensuously across Hammond organs. The cover of Stef Meeder’s In Good Shape features a nude woman reading a magazine, while Meeder, perched at his organ, looks on affectionately in the background; Klaus Wunderlich’s Hammond Pops 8 does away with the organ entirely, featuring only the titillating image of a half-naked woman staring longingly into the camera.

But why was the music of the Hammond organ deemed so sensual, so alluring? Rudi Bohn’s classic album Golden Sound of Hammond may provide a few hints. Golden Sound… sees Bohn reworking popular tunes like Mull of Kintyre, Please Mr. Postman and Das Lied der Schlümpfe, merging them together into a nonstop Hammond organ thrill-ride. At first, the music seems cheery and upbeat, bringing to mind a pleasant day at the carnival filled with laughter and clowns. However, as the record progresses and the incessant waves of reverb and tremolo begin to pile on top of each other, the endless sound of the organ begins to take on an eerie quality. Joyful tunes like Love Is in the Air suddenly turn sinister, laughing in our faces. The funfair has been abandoned, the clowns passed out in pools of their own vomit.

And therein lies the sex appeal: like the beautiful siren who lures sailors to their death, the Hammond organ promises pure pleasure to the listener, only to wash them up onto the dark recesses of the human psyche. Golden Sound of Hammond, like so many Hammond organ releases, exists on a knife-edge between pleasure and pain, and it was this darkly alluring quality that sucked in countless Germans over the years.

Inevitably, such an intense craze could only last so long: by the early 1980s Hammond organists were forced to look for other work, and half-naked women had to find other objects to point at. Hammond organ records can still be found if you search hard enough, but while they may be tempting, one should be wary of the dark power contained within. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.