Saturday, November 28, 2009

Keyboard solo in Del Shannon's RUNAWAY


I found the classic 1961 Del Shannon song, Runaway, on YouTube and was blown away by the beautiful and very unusual keyboard solo sound. There is an explanation of what the keyboardist used:

"Max Crook was his organ player, playing a "Musitron" which was built from parts from a Clavioline, Viking 85 reel to reel machine, Fisher K-10 Reverb Spacexpander, a Gibson guitar amp, and several other parts and pieces."

There's also a 1986 version on YouTube of Del Shannon singing with Paul Schaeffer and the Tonight Show Band (David Letterman show). It appears that Paul Schaeffer used an Oberheim Matrix-12 for the solo work. Paul's solo is well played as you would expect, and it does sound similar. But it certainly does not have the same WOW factor to it. It never ceases to amaze me how often I find that really primitive gear, combined with creativity, just totally kicked ass.
-Roger

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