Barbara Dennerlein for jazz-rock/fusion

this will become a long post, but bear with me for I want to make my case thoroughly .

I have been a Barbara Dennerlein fan for a long time; Friede and I saw her live 3 times (last time Nov 27th 2019 in Cologne). she is an incredible musician, but I did not consider her to be a fitting addition to the archives; I thought she was firmly located in jazz territory. but this opinion of mine has changed during the last 2 years in which we acquired more of her albums.

in the late 80s and all throughout the 90s she released a string of albums like "Straight Ahead" (1989), "Hot Stuff" (1990; that one particularly), "That's Me" (1992), "Take Off" (1995), "Junkanoo" (1997) or "Outhipped" (1999), maybe even "Orgelspiele" (1984) that can be considered to be jazz-rock/fusion, albeit definitely with her own stamp on it.

she definitely is a highly innovative artist for several reasons:

1) she utilizes the foot pedals of her Hammond organ. while she is not the only one to do that no-one surpasses her in that regard. she even does occasional foot pedal solos.

2) she integrated MIDI-technology into her Hammond B-3 and thus can make her Hammond sound like (for example) a piano, a vibraphone, a trumpet or, with the pedals, an acoustic bass.

3) she plays her music on pipe organs too. again she is not the only one to do it. but she has taken this to a completely new level. about 50% of her concerts are on pipe organ meanwhile, and she has written compositions especially for them. she has meanwhile played on about 300 pipe organs all over the world. she also made three recordings on which she only plays pipe organs, and it is absolutely incredible what she can get out of them.

she also made a recording with a symphony orchestra. to quote her: "to me, jazz is a synonym for freedom. freedom from prejudice and discrimination, freedom from constraints and convention."

many reviewers of her music point out how innovative she is too; here a few examples (I will highlight passages that I consider to be of special importance):

"That's The Way The Organ Should be Played. Barbara Dennerlein has indeed developed her own signature sound and approach to the Hammond B3 organ, whereas most organ ensembles include a bassist to lay down the bassline, or use their left hand to play the bassline on the keyboard, Dennerlein uses the foot pedals to play the bassline and she also incorporates the use of Midi technology to further enhance the listener's experience. ... Dennerlein's experimentation and creativity with her own compositions, however, goes beyond her innovations with the bassline, for she is considered to be an artist who blurs the lines between jazz and the blues and the various sub-genres of jazz music (remark by me: of which jazz-rock/fusion is one). In fact over the years, she has become just as comfortable playing a pipe organ in more classically oriented concerts. On the Hammond B3 she can play a strident up-tempo piece or she can find a deep funky groove, and at other times she treats her fans to a mellower jazz tune."
(Riveting Riffs, Canada)

"Vital Organs. For German organist Barbara Dennerlein, Jazz lives on pipes as well as Hammond B-3. Search YouTube for Barbara Dennerlein and you're sure to be dazzled by the footage of her footwork, not to mention her hands. She's not an athlete, but a startlingly original musician with a mission: to bring the organ into the 21st century. To that end, Dennerlein performs on both the jazzy Hammond B-3, and its classical predecessor, the churchier, bigger and more complex pipe organ... Dennerlein's worldly, joyous jazz takes you to church whether you're in a club or in a holy place. She's the hottest German jazz export since Klaus Doldinger's band, Passport. ... Dennerlein weaves funk and swing, groove and church, acoustic and electric into her own compositions and the standards she transforms… Barbara Dennerlein is all about the open mind. ... she's not in the tradition of Jimmy Smiths, Johnny "Hammond" Smith, or Jimmy McGriff. Her groove runs deeper and less predictably, largely because of her signature footwork." (Clevescene, USA)

"Impressions of the 51st Monterey Jazz Festival... Swinging into the Monterey Jazz Festival's final evening, German organist Barbara Dennerlein wastes no time in digging a deep soul-jazz groove. "Easygoing," an original tune with a cool "Killer Joe" walking vibe, finds Dennerlein stretching out almost instantly with a supercharged solo that sounds like it requires three hands. And then, as if to make sure all cylinders are firing at full capacity, she immediately leaps into a second solo, using nothing but the bass pedals at her feet. Having thus established her total mastery of organ-jazz conventions, Dennerlein then proceeds to shatter the mold. Without ever sacrificing the almighty groove, she calmly guides her trio into dense thickets, modernist harmonies and odd meters. Dennerlein possesses awesome technique and a prodigious feel for the dynamic range of her instrument, varying the feel throughout each tune from a whisper to a scream. An accomplished pipe organist as well, Dennerlein frequently makes the B3 mimic its larger cousin, at one point summoning a remarkable 5 second blast like a Bach fugue, a radio soap opera and a sci-fi movie score rolled into one. These are the best moments of the set, with Dennerlein and guitarist Brian Pardo crackling with the concentrated power and focus of a laser beam, rapturous and unrelenting..." (Jazzobserver, USA)

"Pedal Power - the virtuosity of organist Barbara Dennerlein. ...a new and distinctive voice on the Hammond has been turning that world upside down... Barbara Dennerlein has been rewriting the rulebook. She combines incredible co-ordination of hands and feet with complete rhythmic freedom. On her brief London appearance, she demonstrated this with originals..., shifting between different metres and chorus lengths...she proved she could be just as inventive and free within the standard repertoire. Opening with a bluesy tribute to Jimmy Smith she showed just how far she has moved forward from his style of playing.

The secret is in her feet. Not only has she linked her pedals to a midi system that makes them sound like an electric bass, but she is a virtuoso on them, heeling and toeing her way through her solos like a rally driver. It's as if there is a ghostly extra member of the band, as she sits stock still on her bench, hands by her side, letting her feet fly over the pedals, with all the double-time phrases and turnabouts of a genuine bass guitarist, even down to the nasal, clicking snap of the invisible strings against an invisible fretboard. Accompanying the rest of the band, and her own keyboard solos, she is a miracle of co-ordination, her left foot pounding out a funky bassline, her right food opening the volume control, her left hand adding chords, and her right stabbing away at riffs that straddle the beat...Dennerlein's incredible energy." (The Times, London/UK)

"Jazz organ like you've never heard it. Barbara Dennerlein ... has pulled off perhaps the most formidable feat in jazz - one that has stumped many American players more than twice her age: She's established herself as an original on an instrument where originality is as rare as a California rainstorm. Arguably, Dennerlein is the first artist since Larry Young to free the Hammond organ from the shadows of Jimmy Smith and cast it in an entirely new light. Nearly every B-3 specialist to emerge over the past three decades has, to a degree, presented only one or another variation on Smith's approach. The same funky feels, the same percussion chuffs, the same riffs and repeated notes, and apparently the same tenor sax player, have been trotted out by Brothers, Grooves, and Wild Bills time and again. Though not mere carbon copies of Smith, the top players in this league create an impression of sameness that the top pianists, drummers, and even bass players manage to avoid. Not so with Dennerlein.

Despite to an occasional nod to her instrument's ribs-and-grits tradition, she prefers to explore more modern and varied terrain... The title cut from 'Hot Stuff ' alternately strolls and sprints through more vividly contrasting episodes than many jazz organists traverse in a lifetime... Her solos avoid patent Smithian effects: Instead, she thinks like a horn player, preferring coherent long lines to stuttering single-key repetitions or gimmicky sustained high notes. Then there's those feet. Simply put, Dennerlein has astonishing bass pedal chops. Not only does she step nimbly through rapid tempos, she even takes pedal solos - ... a foot bass extemporization that would do Stanley Clarke proud. And listen to Dennerlein's left hand: Unlike thoses organists whose proclamations of pedal-pushing virtuousity are less than candid, Dennerlein does not cheat by sneaking bass lines onto the organ's lower manual. At the speediest clip, she can simultaniously solo, comp, and walk that bass with remarkable precision.

Early this year, Dennerlein played a short series of gigs at New York's Sweet Basil's... - she attracted a large crowd of musicians and organ devotees, most of whom came in curious and left as converts. In the insular world of jazz organ, it's been a long wait for true believers in search of something new. Apparently, the wait is over." (KEYBOARD)

and here one of here pipe organ albums, recorded live at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche in Berlin in 2007 (the album was released in 2008). absolutely amazing what she gets out of it, including a version of the Rolling Stones hit "Satisfaction"

since Barbara Dennerlein has to be seen to be believed I will include a video clip of her. the band (consisting of Mitch Watkins on guitar, Rick Keller on sax, Tony Reedus on drums and of course Barbara on her beefed-up Hammond B-3) is really on fire here. Barbara's blistering solo starts at 5:30:

listen to my examples carefully and don't judge hastily. this is perhaps not the run-of-the-mill jazz-rock/fusion, but this makes it in my opinion even more exciting. in my opinion an artist like her should not be missing in the archives