Kevin Coelho: Turn It Up

Chasing a club vibe ... A record meant to have that dancing spirit, that groove-to-the-music, turn-it-up vibe. (Quote: Kevin Coelho)
Hans Koert

Kevin Coelho, a young adult, who surprised with his debut album Funkengrüven, entitled his latest album Turn Ut Up …... because the record was meant to have that dancing spirit from those early days, that Club vibe .... that groove-to—the-music, turn-it-up vibe. (Quote Kevin Coelho)  

The Hammond organ was extreme popular during the 1950s and 1960s due to Hammond players like Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff  Jimmy McGriff and Shirley Scott, but its history started in the 1930s, when Thomas Fats Waller discovered the instrument and first used it to record his famous radio transcriptions, the Lang-worth Recordings.  Maybe you've heard  Fats' “jamsession” story on Christmas Eve 1939, remembered by Franz Jackson in his autobiography ( Autobiography Of Black Jazz) when Fats played his portable Hammond organ in his hotel room …  literally rocking when it slowly began filling up with  piano players, like Duke Ellington, who was in the house too and Earl Hines who played next door at the Terrace ….  Fats recorded a few months earlier his famous Lang-Worth Recordings;  spiritual radio transcriptions, which would start to popularize the early Hammond sound ….

Kevin Coelho ( photo courtesy: Jeff Spirer)

When Kevin Coelho was born, August 1995,  Fats Waller was already history - a long-gone icon of the keys and Jimmy Smith had his second career revival playing and recording with a new generation of US Jazz musicians, the so-called Young Lions, like Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton. 

Kevin Coelho ( promo picture)

• Sixteen years young, Kevin Coelho debuted with his album Funkengrüven. The Keep (it) Swinging review from November 2012 learns how it all started. Kevin Coelho started to play the piano when he was six years old and when he was eleven years, he started to play the organ. Some of his teachers were well known jazz organ players like Tony Monaco, who remembers his first meeting with Kevin: A few years ago I got the lucky call from Kevin who was then just turning fourteen years old, wanting to study and take intense lessons with me. The day finally came and he arrived when I had a gig with my Powerhouse trio with Reggie Jackson and Derek DiCenzo.  Kevin sat there with a big smile and I felt so happy to see him feeling good. I was totally floored when he started playing. His vocabulary on the B3 was already very mature and his knowledge of the music I grew up listening to was well studied already. I knew that this young man had talent, confidence, and determination as we began our journey together as teacher and student.(source: Kevin Coelho: Funkengrüven) 

The line up of Kevi Coelho’s trio is equal to the trio of his debut album: Derek Dicenzo at the guitar and Reggie Jackson at the drums, although it’s rather weird that the names of these two members of the trio are hidden somewhere in the liner notes ……  

Kevin Coelho: Turn It Up ( CCP 7018)

Like Funkengruven, its second album Turn It Up contains ten tracks, eight in fact, all, but two, compositions by others, but its arrangements learn that Kevin Coelho developed  during this phase preparing his latest album ….. I’ve grown and grown up .. he explains. Making the first album, I was highly influenced by Tony Monaco, my teacher and aspirator.  But with this new album, I’m  more of my own man. I was freer with the instrument, freer to explore different aspects of it.   

The opening track Root Down honors Hammond legend Jimmy Smith, who recorded this tune as Root Down  And Get It in February 1972. It’s one of my favorites, including his own composition Zig Zag.  My most favorite is the great ballad Georgia On My Mind as played by Kevin Coelho on this album.

Enjoy Root Down as played at the San Jose Jazz Festival 2012 Summer Fest.



The album contains two bonus tracks with two of his songs edited for radio … They seem to be more funky and groovy then the regular versions.  Great stuff.

Hans Koert

editor
keepswinging@live.nl
Follow the  Keep (it) Swinging blog at Facebook ( Keep it swinging) or Twitter (#keepitswinging) and/or ask its free newsletter

NEW: 2eHansJazz:  Some records that search for new adoptive parents

If you love that funky grooving sound of the 1960s Hammond B3 Organ, you should have an ear to Kevin Coelho's  music ..... Recently his second album was releaseed, entitled Turn It Up  - a record  that was meant to have that dancing spirit, that groove-to-the-music, turn-it-up vibe.

 Retrospect
Keep (it) Swinging blog  - Keep (it) Swinging newsletter (and more)  Oscar Aleman Choro Music Flexible Records Hit of the Week-Durium 

Jazz contribution (up tp 2012) - Jazz contributions ( 2012-2014) - My concert log (1964-2013) - My concert log ( 2013-2014) - 2eHansJazz (jazzplaten zoeken een nieuw tehuis)  

Kevin Coelho - Funkengruven

 The Joy of Driving a B3  Kevin Coelho and his Hammond B3  in a mix of originals and funky covers. 
Hans Koert

Like in Holland teenagers all around the world take lessons to get their driving license and dream about driving a car …………..  Keven Coelho, a sixteen year old Californian teenager must have had that same ambition, when he selected  an appealing name for his debut album …..: Funkengruven – The Joy of Driving a B3 - The front of Kevin Coelho’s debut album shows a boy driving a car somewhere in the Great Plains with a double organ keyboard as the dashboard ……. Isn't that great?

Kevin Coelho ( photo courtesy: Kevin Coelho)

Kevin Coelho started to play the piano when he was 6 years old and when he was eleven years, he started to play the organ. Some of his teachers were well known jazz organ players like Tony Monaco, who remembers his first meeting with Kevin: A few years ago I got the lucky call from Kevin who was then just turning fourteen years old, wanting to study and take intense lessons with me. The day finally came and he arrived when I had a gig with my Powerhouse trio with Reggie Jackson and Derek DiCenzo.  Kevin sat there with a big smile and I felt so happy to see him feeling good. I was totally floored when he started playing. His vocabulary on the B3 was already very mature and his knowledge of the music I grew up listening to was well studied already. I knew that this young man had talent, confidence, and determination as we began our journey together as teacher and student.

Kevin performed at the Eastman School of Music Summer Jazz Program, and at the Luna Pier Bootleggers and Blues Festival and the San José Jazz Festival with his group The Groove Messengers.
Kevin Coelho’s trio features guitarist Derek DiCenzo and drummer Reggie Jackson, both musicians from Tony Monaco’s regular trio.

 His debut album contains ten tracks, compositions he arranged in a funky style for his Hammond- B3 organ – Compositions by Randy Masters, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis and B3 giant Dr. Lonnie Smith …. the man with the turban.  Kevin recorded two own compositions, the title song Funkengruven and a tribute to his B3-Hammond organ idol Jimmy McGriff, entitled McJimmy.

The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard instrument for jazz, blues, rock, church and gospel music. .....
Although many different models of Hammond organs were produced, the Hammond B-3 organ is most well known. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s the distinctive sound of the B-3 organ (often played through a Leslie speaker) was widely used in blues, progressive rock bands and blues-rock groups. The last electromechanical Hammond organ came off the assembly line in the mid-1970s. (Source: Wikipedia)

Enjoy a film fragment by Kevin Coelho playing one of the tracks of his album, the well known composition by Herbie Hancock Cantaloupe Island.



Personally I like its sixth track the best, McGriff, probably because of its simple funky rhythm and his groovy sound, so typically for the 1960s Hammond groups, but also Donna Lee, a Miles Davis composition, which gets a funky arrangement in Kevin’s hands.

 If you love that groovy sound of the B3-Hammond tradition, don’t forget to listen to this young guy at …. Funkengruven!

Hans Koert
keepswinging@live.nl
Follow the Keep (it) Swinging blog at Facebook or ask for its free newsletter.

The groovy Hammond B3 organ trios of the 1960s and 1970s reminds me to great legends like Jimmy Smith or Jimmy McGriff ..... This almost pre-historical instrument hasn't been forgotten since then - a lot of contemporary musicians still love to bring their heavy, almost unmanageable instrument, to the smallest venues in the country to play their groovy lines ..... Kevin Coelho, 16 years young, is the sort of teenage phenom that the Hammond B3 organ hasn't seen in decades- critics say -  Enjoy his debut album: Funkengruven - The Joy of Driving a B3 .......
 

  

Retrospect
Keep Swinging (old) Oscar Aleman Choro Music Flexible Records Hit of the Week-Durium Friends of the Keep Swinging blog Keep Swinging Contributions