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
At the Jazz Band Ball in 1938. Muggsy Spanier and His Ragtime Band and Bud Freeman and His Famous Chicagoans recorded the song in 1940. Spanier released his version as RCA Bluebird B-10518-A and V-Disc 249B. In 1959, The Dukes of Dixieland released an album entitled "At the Jazz Band Ball" featuring an instrumental version of the song as the opening track. Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong recorded the song in 1960 for their album "Bing & Satchmo". Pete Fountain, Bob Crosby, George Barnes and his Octet, Phil Napoleon's Emperor's of Jazz, Nappy Lamare, Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen, Gene Krupa and his Chicago Jazz,