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 Allen (musician) end of the decade, and into the early 1960s, he worked with Gerry Mulligan, Manny Albam, Woody Herman, Thelonious Monk, and Bob Brookmeyer. Later associations include work with Urbie Green, Mundell Lowe, Rod Levitt, and Rusty Dedrick. Gene Allen (musician) Eugene Sufana Allen (born December 5, 1928, East Chicago, Indiana - February 14, 2008) was an American jazz reedist, who primarily played baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. Allen began playing clarinet and piano as a child, and was playing with Louis Prima at age 15 in 1944. He stayed in Prima's band until 1947, then worked with Claude Thornhill in