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 and opened a music school. His students included Peter Criss of Kiss and Jerry Nolan of The New York Dolls. Doug Clifford of Creedence Clearwater Revival cited Krupa as an inspiration. Krupa occasionally played in public in the early 1970s until shortly before his death. One such appearance occurred in 1972 at a jazz concert series sponsored by the New School in New York. Krupa appeared onstage with trumpeter Harry James and the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. The presumption was that the 500 or so audience members were drawn by Mulligan's contemporary appeal, but when Krupa took a 16-bar break during