Klaus Wunderlich
Klaus Wunderlich was born to a policeman in the Saxony town of Chemnitz in 1930. As a teenager he worked for the local opera rehearsing singers but soon chose popular music over classical. By 1951 he was ready to tour West Germany, which led to a standing gig at the Tiny Cabaret Simple in Mannheim. Here he was playing winsomely in a beer hall, and the owner and patrons liked him enough to buy an expensive organ. Then Telefunken found and signed him.
Wunderlich experimented with the Hammond, as all the great pop organists have done, to discover and add to its range of extraordinary sounds. It was not long before he was using organ and early synthesizer to reproduce strings, horns, and so forth. To overcome the early synthesizer's one-note-at-a-time limitation, he became an expert at multi-tracking, effects, and other production wizardry.
The magic was not all technical, however. Wunderlich, like a benign Black Forest gnome, played music that pandered to popular taste but also pushed the boundaries for keyboardists. He wrote some great tunes and arranged many others in a zany way not seen since Lenny Dee, whose career was peaking as Wunderlich picked up the baton. Wunderlich shared Ethel Smith's affinity for Latin and Brasilian rhythms, Lenny Dee's zany pop sense, and Jean-Jacques Perrey's lighthearted invention and technical facility.
A long series of albums for Telefunken included some Moog albums and demos for the Wersi super-organ, which was something like a Hammond stuffed with Moog capabilities. The Hammond Pops and other Wunderlich albums are notorious, mainly because the music and jackets are rife with cheese and cheesecake. There is a lot of "mush" to sift through, to be sure, but fine gems twinkle there too, as if out of a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm.
© Tony Wilds /TiVo
Similar artists
-
Sound 2000
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 26 nov. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
Südamericana
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 7 okt. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hammond Pops 5
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 24 feb. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hammond Spezialitäten zum Tanzen
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 20 mei 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ihr Partygast Nr. 1
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 20 mei 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Golden Sound of Hammond
Pop - Released by Planet Blue Records USA on 1 jan. 1971
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Swing Again
Klaus Wunderlich & Hubert Deuringer, Klaus Wunderlich, Hubert Deuringer
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 10 sep. 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Evergreens 3
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 3 jun. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Evergreens 2
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 7 jun. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wersitime 2
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 1 aug. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Around the World with Klaus Wunderlich
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 6 jun. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Multi Orchestral Organ Sound
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 3 jun. 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
In The Mood
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 12 nov. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Special
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 7 feb. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Uraltedelschnulzensynthesizergags
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 12 nov. 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Hammond Spezialitäten zum Tanzen
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 20 mei 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Signature 2
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 31 jan. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
Dream Melodies 2
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 7 jun. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hammond Pops 3
Wereldmuziek - Released by Streetheat Music on 21 feb. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo