Electronic musical instrument was designed to be a lower-cost alternative to a pipe organ for church music, musicians soon discovered that the Hammond was an excellent instrument for blues and jazz; indeed, an entire genre of music developed built around this instrument, known as the organ trio (typically Hammond organ, drums, and a third instrument, either saxophone or guitar). The first commercially manufactured synthesizer was the Novachord, built by the Hammond Organ Company from 1938 to 1942, which offered 72-note polyphony using 12 oscillators driving monostable-based divide-down circuits, basic envelope control and resonant low-pass filters. The instrument featured 163 vacuum tubes and weighed
Gene Krupa to changing fashion, but he never adjusted to the bebop style of jazz. In 1954, Krupa returned to Hollywood to appear in the films "The Glenn Miller Story" and "The Benny Goodman Story". In 1959, the movie biography "The Gene Krupa Story" was released; Sal Mineo portrayed Krupa, and the film included a cameo by Red Nichols. During the 1950s, Krupa often played at the Metropole near Times Square in Manhattan. He continued to perform in famous clubs in the 1960s, including the Showboat Lounge in northwest Washington, D.C. Increasingly troubled by back pain, he retired in the late 1960s