120th birthday of Laurens Hammond

Laurens Hammond with his wife Roxana, Step Daughter Lisa Nicholson 

and children at his house in France called Champremault at Meung-sur-Loire, 1970.

Inventor and businessman Laurens Hammond was born on 11th. January 1895. The most famous of his 90 patents is certainly the Hammond organ. The instrument was introduced in 1934 and had to pass a test until it could be called an organ, because it lacks of organ pipes. Intended as a cheap instrument for church music in the smaller congregations it made career in jazz, easy listening, pop and rock music.

The German radio station WDR prepared a 15 minutes feature on occasion of the anniversary and interviewed Barbara for this. The WDR "ZeitZeichen" will be broadcasted on January 11 and will be downloadable as podcast.

http://www.wdr5.de/sendungen/zeitzeichen/hammond104.htmlBy the way: The Hammond museum "Orgelsurium" (a play of words in German with "organ" and "mingle-mangle") which is located near Zurich/Switzerland has a huge collection of Hammond organs and regularly organizes concerts. Barbara plays there in May.