Wurlitzer Sideman - Don't go "Pfff!". That's it's job!

In 1959, if you wanted to rock your living room, a Wurlitzer organ was pretty much The Shit. Three hundred pounds. The size of a freezer. It was the progenitor of the modern synthesizer, and if you had one of these, your dad was either a surgeon or a Wurlitzer rep, and you could throw away your TV set. However, despite the various warbles and honks your organ could produce, it couldn't do drums...yet. So, Wurlitzer developed the Wurlitzer Sideman - arguably the world's first drum machine.

All I remember from the seventies was this same technology already incorporated into the chassis of an organ. Apparently, it wouldn't fit at first. The Sideman was 26x26x12 inches: the size of an end table. Since it was the size of furniture, it was built like furniture, too.

So, what did you get for your $365 ($2700 in today's money)? Well, you got pretty much the only game in town. There were other companies trying to make a drum machine, but they were based on tape loops or photoelectric cells and were unreliable. The Sideman worked on a rotating wheel that triggered various contacts as it turned, making the percussion sounds. Tempo was adjusted by changing the speed of the wheel. Here's a YouTube video where you can see how it worked and how it sounded. Here's another.

The sound of the Sideman is completely cool. You know these drum sounds already. They're part of the standard repertoire of almost any drum machine or rhythm software you can buy. They won't fool anyone into thinking they're real drums, but they've been grandfathered into our musical subconscious as part of our common history. The cymbals go "PFFF". The tom toms go "DUPPA DUPPA DUP". The bass drum goes "DOOK".

Here's a very detailed article on the history of the Sideman.

Like any useful technology, when it first appeared, the Sideman was enormous, clunky, and insanely expensive, making it fun to laugh at. However, the fact that you can still hear the Sideman in your iTunes library 40 years later means that it has the last laugh.

Wurlitzer Electric Piano - Oh, THAT Sound!

Steve Allen looks pretty funny in this ad, but he always sat that way. He had a kind of funny posture. Sort of hunched inward, like he was about to collapse in on himself. For those who don't know, he was the first host of The Tonight Show. That's right. Someone was alive before Johnny Carson.

Well, he was also a composer. that explains why we see him here, promoting Wurlitzer electric pianos. At first, the cheesyness of the photo had me all ready to make fun of it: "Buy a Wurlitzer piano today and we'll send you a free man!" Look how pleased Mr. and Mrs. Nonmusician are with their new man!

Then I realized it was Steve Allen. Then I realized this is the same Wurlitzer piano that my synthesizer mimics, to my perpetual delight. If you listen to any kind of popular music at all, you're familiar with the sound of a Wurlitzer. It looks corny in this ad, but the sound is 100% badass.

At the time, Wurlitzer liked to call them "electronic" pianos, because that was a relatively new technology and it sounded exciting. Now everyone calls them "electric" pianos. Why? It's because the sound you are hearing is created by a little hammer whacking a metal tine, like on a fork (but they're called "reeds" officially). That sound is then amplified by a pickup and speaker system. This makes it really an acoustic electric instrument, like an electric guitar. Today, an electronic piano would mean that the sound is stored on a chip and just sent out through the "audio out" jack. No moving parts, except for the keyboard.

Wurlitzer was a direct competitor to the Fender Rhodes piano. I prefer the sound of a Wurlitzer. Played softly, the sound is warm, like a Rhodes. But when you hit it hard, the sound overdrives and you get a wonderful distorted "bark" or farty sound that I don't associate with a Rhodes. A Wurlitzer can sound like it wants to kill you, and that's something that I value in a musical instrument.