An Interview with Organist Herbert Noord
Herbert Noord in 2019 at The Hammond Society, courtesy of the artist
Organist Herbert Noord (b. July 26, 1943 in Amsterdam) is not a household name among followers of European jazz, but his contributions to modern creative music in Holland are well worth taking note of. He’s probably best known for appearing on the equally rare and excellent Soulbrass, Inc. record Live at the Bohemia Jazzclub (released by Stichting Jazz Werkgroep in 1969), with Hans Dulfer (tenor sax), Henk van Es (baritone sax), Arjen Gorter (bass), Rob Kattenburg (drums), and Steve Boston (congas). He also occupied the organ chair in the one-off ‘free fusion’ album Five Times Six (Cat Jazz, 1974) and has recorded with American saxophonist Harvey Kaiser and his countrymen Rinus Groeneveld and Fred Leeflang. Though retired from professional gigging, he has been convening informal sessions at the so-called “Hammond Cheese Warehouse” (a loft in a cheese warehouse) and posting the sonic results to YouTube (spoiler: they are heavy sessions). He also wrote an autobiography called Hammonditis, (2013) which at this point is only printed in Dutch. This interview was conducted over a series of emails in late 2019 and early 2020 – what started as an informal conversation grew into a much more far-reaching dialogue, and has been edited into this final form.
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Could you tell me about your experiences growing up, and how you got interested in music? What was your family environment like? Did they support your musical interests?
I was born in 1943 during WWII in the German-occupied city of Amsterdam. For my parents it was a horrible time but luckily I wasn't aware of it. Before the war my mother was singing in the choir of the famous Concertgebouw Orchestra she also played the piano. Although she had a classical training she was also interested in jazz. She was a fan of Coleman Hawkins and went to several concerts when he was playing in clubs in Amsterdam in 1937 and 1938.
Did you study the keyboard professionally? Who were you listening to in order to get the organ sound that you arrived at?
Hard to say but at the age of five my mother sent me to lessons with Mrs. Bloeme, a classical piano teacher in Amsterdam. This nice but strict teacher taught me to play the piano but the interest in music was not stimulated here, taking lessons was more a part of my education. My mother had sung under Willem Mengelberg and was a talented pianist as well. One time she played “St. Louis Blues” in a stride-piano way, with jump basses, and that sparked my interest. When I said I liked this music, she searched for a teacher who could teach me about it. That was Mr. Pauel, also located in Amsterdam. As it were, I climbed up to my musical Olympus via listening to 45 rpm singles from Winifred Atwell, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson and I became familiar with the boogie-woogie. I developed my left hand using that technique, which was very useful when I started to play the organ almost a decade later.
That I started to play the Hammond organ when I was in my twenties had to do with the incredible high prices they asked in Holland for that organ. For instance the cheapest Hammond in 1964, the L100 model, had a price tag of almost 6.000,-- guilders which was the equivalent of $1600, something not affordable to a poor student. My first organ was a Philicorda that I got from my parents when I was twenty two. I was listening to the music that was made roughly between 1940 and 1975 in the United States under the name Modern Jazz. A really “favorite” musician I don't have. There are a large number of which I can always listen to their music with pleasure. In addition, a requirement is very important to me – it has to swing. Ellington said it back in 1931: "It doesn't mean a thing. If it ain't got that swing."
There are musicians I admire because of their musical views or their virtuosity. Roland Kirk, Grant Green for all his no-frills guitar playing, Stanley Turrentine, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Willis Jackson for their tone and mastery of the tenor saxophone, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones for their drive and of course Larry Young, Jimmy McGriff, Groove Holmes and Jimmy Smith for their organ playing. Bass player Arjen Gorter (he worked with Willem Breuker from the beginning) drew my attention, while playing with him around 1969-1970, to Larry Young's record Unity. I was immediately sold. I collected just about everything I could get from him, especially his trio recordings with Elvin Jones and Grant Green are my favorites. Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Les McCann and Thelonious Monk have also left their musical traces with me. What is very much beyond the scope of these giants is the fact that I was also influenced by Dutch musicians who I heard on the radio.
Could you describe your experiences of live jazz in Holland and some of the musicians you started playing with (either casually or professionally)?
My experiences with live-jazz in Holland vary between great and disastrous. How I actually think about the situation is of course a different story. Unfortunately, my idea is that we live in a culturally hostile country where art with a large C (= Cultural = Classic, Concertgebouw, opera and the like) is meant for the elite and the rest simply have to shut up. Only if you were of the right political color (Left) could you count on any official support. In addition, a large part of the people were indoctrinated during WWII with the Nazi adage that jazz was 'entartete Musik' and, on top of that, jazz was made by non-Aryan people in most cases and you immediately understand that the impact for this music was almost nothing. In the media, hardly any attention was paid in a positive sense. That a few die-hards nevertheless took the trouble to spread the message was simply against the prevailing mores. Spending government money on it was, of course, completely 'nicht im Frage'.
I myself have always regarded this music as a special gift for the true 'disciples' and other 'believers'. I also dare to doubt whether a generous dose of money would have contributed to a better jazz climate in Holland. If there is no soil available, you can fertilize what you want, but you will not get more than weeds. And as far as the great newspapers are concerned, they only deliver readers who have no idea what jazz really is, namely the only musical culture that the US itself has developed and, I hurry to say, almost has destroyed. The music that we both have a warm heart for has been developed by musicians who have never – I know 99.9% sure – received one penny subsidy. On the other hand, there is a horde of subsidized Dutch musicians who have never come up with an original note. In short, is a subsidy needed to develop something new? If there is no public for it, why should it be maintained? After more than fifty years of experience, I dare to state that there are actually almost no jazz lovers in the Netherlands at all. A bit exaggerated perhaps, but that is how it feels. What do I base that on? For example on the fact that when the famous North Sea Jazz Festival started in 1976, when there was really only jazz to be heard, there arrived in three days around eight thousand visitors, many of whom were also invited by Paul Acket, who was the founder. Nowadays, where you can only still hear something of jazz on a few small stages [the remainder is pop music], more than 90,000 visitors attend the festival.
It seems to us in the States that that the "Dutch Jazz scene" is sort of monocultural, and our view is often limited to the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) and groups like that. Would you say that it has been more of a struggle to present music that is in line with modern jazz, R&B, and soul-jazz traditions?
The bands that focused on R&B and soul-jazz in the Netherlands of the sixties and seventies certainly could not compete with the American originals and were therefore usually short-lived. In the Netherlands, interest in jazz was unfortunately not particularly great. My estimate is that in the sixties and seventies there were at most about 10,000 enthusiasts on a population of 14 million. They were spread all over the country. I base this on, among other things, the number of visitors to the first North Sea Jazz Festivals, and also there was only one magazine devoted to jazz, which was published monthly and barely had a circulation of 2,000 copies. In addition, it was very difficult to hear this music. Radio programs that broadcast jazz often could not be heard until late at night when most people were already in bed. There was rarely anything on jazz on TV. In short, there was no culture in our country in which a healthy interest in jazz could gain ground. If you were involved in jazz as a musician or enthusiast, you knew that it would be a real struggle to get the job done. In the Netherlands, as far as I know, no one has become rich from playing jazz. That groups such as the Willem Breuker Kollektief and ICP could exist was by lobbying the correct political parties and governing bodies. After a lot of nagging, those groups were given some nickels. When some groups and musicians became more well-known, the financial allowance was extended to slightly above the poverty line. But building a full life with pure jazz remained a utopia. All jazz musicians had a job next to playing, from car salesman to music teacher.
Could you say anything about the interaction between various musical 'scenes' ?
There weren't that many jazz musicians at that time – I'm talking the sixties and seventies. When we started the BIM in 1971 there were about 47 members. By constantly lobbying, this association got their own home, the famous BIMHuis, and the opportunity to support musicians financially. In the early eighties this system started to function reasonably well and musicians could finally be rewarded a bit for their music. Due to changes in the board, the subsidizing of everyone who thought that they made improvised music or jazz came to an end, and from the 1990s onward groups could only have a chance of subsidy if they played contemporary music. As a result the swing disappeared from Dutch jazz.
There were different jazz scenes in Holland but they were more spread over the country than just in Amsterdam. You had the so called 'Hilversum scene,’ which was mostly people who did radio-gigs and played jazz in their spare time. If necessary, they could perform jazz for the radio or TV. These studio musicians had a good income and looked a bit down on the 'amateurs' from the rest of the country. Then there was a scene in The Hague, which was mostly old style and non-progressive modern jazz. They mingled very well with the 'Hilversum scene' but not with the scene in Amsterdam. The Amsterdam scene was in general the most progressive in making improvised music. This had partly to do with the fact that the municipality of Amsterdam was willing to subsidize a shelter [the BIMHuis] for the new kids on the block (and they did in 1974), but like I said, they set the condition that the music should be primarily progressive with a clear Dutch contribution. In short, no blues or dixieland. Musicians such as Willem Breuker, Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg and Theo Loevendie had no problem with this requirement.
At any rate, I started my professional jazz career around 1961 playing the piano in the Bohemia Quintet with Harry Sparnaay on tenor sax and Wouter Herrebrugh on trumpet. When I started to play the Philicorda, the attention of Hans Dulfer was attracted and we did several sessions. Hans was also the one who introduced me to Willem Breuker (they were already collaborating); Breuker had just started working on his first orchestra piece “Litany for the 14th of June, 1966.” Together with Hans and Willem I played one gig and then Willem invited me into his orchestra. Breuker had even written a special score for me in 'space and time' in which I had to hit the organ-keys with both hands. Anyhow, after a couple of rehearsals Willem suddenly stopped the music, pointed at me and said: "get out with you, there is no swinging here!” The Amsterdam jazz/improvised music scene in the sixties was a bunch of musical outlaws, but we had a lot of fun.
[Above stills from Herbert Noord’s archive; Soulbrass Inc. on Dutch Television, 1969. Left to right: Herbert Noord, Arjen Gorter, Hans Dulfer, Henk van Es, Steve Boston.]
A couple of years later I was able to buy a Hammond L100 and started a quartet with Hans who introduced me to baritone player Henk van Es. We did a lot of gigs and in 1969 made a record, Live at The Bohemia Jazzclub, also known under the moniker of Soulbrass Inc.. In the meantime Hans had started the Wednesday Jazz Nights in the Amsterdam Paradiso for which I made the posters with Ike Quebec on the front [resulting in two LPs on Hans’ Heavy Soul Music label: Jazz in Paradiso and J.R. Monterose is Alive in Amsterdam]. Henk van Es was a real artist, not only a musician and composer but also a gifted painter; I used one of his paintings as the image for a CD I later produced. I printed every sleeve of Soulbrass Inc. by hand and all sleeves are different. In total we sold about 340 copies. Henk died in 1995 and Steve Boston died in 2017, while Rob Kattenburg is now a famous antiques dealer in Holland.
Not too many people know about Henk, and as far as I know Soulbrass is his only commercially available recording.
One funny story about Henk van Es. He and I did a concert and during the break he said to me: "I bought a Corvette Stingray.” Stunned, I looked at Henk because even in my wildest dreams I had not estimated Henk to be a buyer of a Corvette Stingray. "You mean that American sports car?” "Yes, that one.” I said, “but it is very expensive and you are not rich.” “Correct. But I met a divorced woman with a lot of money. A golden hen so to speak. And she will buy that car for me.” “Nice. Have you already visited Hans?” (Hans Dulfer was a seller at GM's importer in the Netherlands). "Yes, but he didn't believe me and didn't want to order the car. Then I went to headquarters and ordered the car there. I had to make a deposit of $10,000, but luckily I had saved that. My new girlfriend will pay the rest.” (A Corvette Stingray did cost about $60,000 in 1978, which was a very large amount in Dutch guilders at the time). It would take six months before the car was delivered. At one point, I saw an ad in the newspaper offering a new Corvette Stingray at a significant discount. I called Hans to ask if he knew what was going on. Hans then said that when the car arrived in the Netherlands, Henk was asked to pay the remaining amount. Unfortunately, Henk was unable to do so because the rich divorced woman turned out to have no money. So then GM Netherlands decided to sell the car at a discount, minus Henk's money. Henk didn't get a car or his money back. But as comfort he was left with a lying woman. That's one way to get the blues and I can tell you Henk played the blues as if he was born in the Mississippi delta.
How did you meet Hans Dulfer?
How I met Hans is a little bit vague in my memory. My guess is that it must have been around 1965. I played my Philicorda during the Sunday afternoon jam session at the Bohemia with Harry when Hans entered. (By the way Harry and Hans both played on the Theo Loevendie record Chess, but not together, Harry replaced Hans in the song ‘Chess'). Hans was sitting in for a blues in F, his favorite key. A couple of years later I had my first real Hammond, the L100. Hans became aware of this – he has always been a Hammond tenor lover – and phoned to ask if I would do a gig with him. He focused my attention on musicians such as Willis Jackson, Red Prysock, Arnett Cobb, Bill Doggett and George Braith. In short, an evening of the Hans Dulfer/Herbert Noord quartet was about 26 blues in F and “Honeysuckle Rose” and that was it. We gigged during the seventies and eighties, I even played with his daughter Candy when she was fifteen as Hans brought her in on a gig. Hans and I also performed under the name of Swinging Organ Sounds (S.O.S. – but our souls were not saved), with Henk van den Hurk on guitar and Robert Meinema on drums. Halfway into the eighties our musical paths split, but from time to time we got together and played the blues.
I have played with many jazz musicians, American and Dutch, but the longest 'alliance' is with tenor player Rinus Groeneveld and drummer Pierre van der Linden. We have been playing together for more than 30 years. Pierre is unbelievable. He's very famous in the pop scene and was in Focus, but he prefers to make music with Rinus and me. Rinus is a different story – a Roland Kirk fan and a Dexter Gordon acolyte, he toured with saxophonist Big Jay McNeely with whom he also recorded. Rinus and I have been playing together since 1980, first in a large line-up, the Upper Ten of guitarist Joop Scholten, and later in the group Advanced Warning. Our last session was in February of this year. I have also performed a lot with saxophonists Fred Leeflang and Olaf Hoeks. Particularly memorable were the domestic and foreign tours I did with Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Tommy 'Madman' Jones and guitarist Paul Weeden Sr., who made six records with Don Patterson. Furthermore, I have worked a lot with the English blues and jazz guitarist John C. Marshall who played in the Ray Charles band.
Could you talk a bit more about Bohemia and the interaction between 'non-professional' and 'professional' musicians in Amsterdam?
I was just 22 years old when I started with four friends the Sunday afternoon Bohemia Jazz Club in 1965. Wouter Herrebrugh and I had already started with a precursor in 1962, also under the name 'Bohemia Jazz Club’. We were real aficionados. Three of us were musicians: Harry Sparnaay (tenor sax), Wouter, and myself. The non-playing friend was Hein van Warmerdam, who later became the secretary of the Dutch Jazz Foundation (SJIN). We started that club because there was almost no jazz to hear in Amsterdam. Most Dutch jazz musicians didn't have the chance to play their favorite music so we offered them an opportunity. In Holland you could be a professional musician but not a professional jazz musician because you couldn't earn enough money to have a living, let alone a decent living. In 1978, barely 6% of Dutch jazz musicians could earn a living with jazz. And there was just a slice of cheese on that jazz sandwich. No butter. The 'fine fleur' of the Dutch jazz and improvised music scene gave 'acte de presence’. We stopped organizing in the beginning of the seventies; it was always a struggle with money, the authorities, getting publicity and more of that kind. But we had a lot of fun and good music.
How did the Stichting Jazz Werkgroep come together?
Concerning the Stichting Jazz Werkgroep, that foundation was established by composer-pianist Loek Dikker, my friend Hein, and myself. The main objective of the foundation was to promote Dutch jazz by producing records with Dutch jazz musicians. After the album Live at the Bohemia Jazzclub, Loek Dikker's album Love Cry and Super Nimbus was released. This was followed by Minor Moods from Past and Present by the Rein de Graaff/Dick Vennik quartet and then the money ran out. The foundation exists to this day; all of my jazz-related acts, performances, books, records run through the foundation mainly for tax reasons. Being a 'record tycoon' was not really reserved for me. Years later I heard from my friend Joop Visser, who produced a couple of my records, that even Blue Note sometimes didn't sell more then 500 copies of a release, or even less, worldwide. With a few exceptions jazz was never a million seller. A nice anecdote: Joop produced a lot of Hans' records. Hans never wanted to be paid in money but in LPs. At that time Joop imported Blue Note for the Netherlands and after every recording Hans went home with a large pile of Blue Note LPs.
Could you talk about your records Five Times Six and Live at De Kroeg?
Five Times Six was the first recording I did for the Cat Jazz Label.The idea was to make an organ/tenor LP a little bit in the tradition but also a little bit out of the tradition, or that was what the label manager had in mind. Allan Laurillard was the tenor saxophonist on duty. He is Canadian and played in rock and blues groups. At the time of the session we had a quartet with guitar player Wil van Slogteren and drummer Kees van Zelst. The group was sometimes expanded with bass player Tony van Hal(l) and Steve Boston on congas, who was also on Soulbrass. The session took place in the famous recording studio of Luc Ludolph. After we had done the sound check the tape was running and the first song recorded. We came to the control room to hear the result and the first thing Luc Ludolph said: “What kind of amateurs are you? I had the Theodorakis orchestra here yesterday, which arrived from Paris at 1 am at Schiphol and arrived in the studio at a quarter to two. The orchestra sat down and two hours later everything was on the tape and they went back to the airport at four o'clock. They were pros." He looked at us in a way that you understood 'no prisoners are taken' in this studio. A little bit intimidated, we went back and recorded the other songs.Then we discovered a small problem: an LP has two sides and we had just recorded enough material for one side. The label manager wasn't pleased with this discovery.
I said 'we should just start and play'. And so we did. The B-side is a total improvisation. I didn't even mention the key we should play in. For the promotion of the LP we were supposed to do a tour. The start of the tour would take place at the famous Bimhuis. That day I was first called by Allan who said he would not be there.Then Wil and Kees called with the same message. I then called Steve and asked if he still wanted to come, but he didn't feel like it anymore. When I called the Bimhuis with the announcement that they could expect a solo performance panic broke out and they put together an ad hoc band. It wasn't a funny or even memorable evening. With exception of Steve and Wil I never had contact with one of them anymore until recently. Allan mailed me that there was a British record company BBE Music who will bring out one song from the album on a compilation next year. I don't know how many LPs were sold; I didn't receive any fees but instead I got 60 copies. They were stowed away in a closet; then a water pipe broke and soaked the LPs. The covers stuck together, it was a mess. The LPs ended up in the garbage bin. Fortunately I still have a few undamaged copies.
For Live At De Kroeg, the idea was to make a live recording of a tour I did with an American sax player, Harvey Kaiser, the famous drummer John Engels, Wil on guitar and me at the Hammond. It was also for the Cat Jazz label. The first attempt was at a jazz club in Eindhoven. The recordings were not usable because the volume of the audience occasionally drowned out the music. In addition, a bad acoustics were added, so that was the end of the exercise. A second attempt did not come because the money had run out. At least that was what the label manager said. Still, I managed to make a recording with the help of an Akai cassette recorder and two good microphones. I made these recordings in a then-famous Amsterdam jazz club, ’De Kroeg'. I managed to convince Cat Jazz to release these recordings on LP and luckily they did. With Harvey I toured New York State in 1983 (because I didn't have a 'green card', it was a bit illegal). We still are in contact but what I learned from that experience was that being a jazz musician in the States is a difficult thing.
Other than the compilation reissue of Five Times Six, are there any thoughts as to reissuing/revisiting more of your archives for eventual wider availability?
No, unfortunately those plans are not there. I only send tracks that I find fun and interesting enough to friends and acquaintances. Maybe I will put something on YouTube or Spotify. The hassle of rights and the like would make it too complicated to publish at random.
And you are a writer too, correct? Could you tell me a bit about that?
The writing I did was for magazines in the liquor business trade and I wrote columns in those magazines. I was also for a decade the chief editor of a magazine for the liquor trade. The first book I worked on was for the beverage trade. Then I wrote a book on bass clarinet with Harry Sparnaay, the famous bass clarinetist, called The Bass Clarinet: A Personal History. That book was published in English and was released by a Spanish publisher. In 2013 I published my first book, Hammonditis. That book is about my experiences in music and in particular as a Hammond organ player. In 2015, in collaboration with Max Bolleman, I released I'm The Beat, a book about Max Bolleman's work behind the mixer and in the studio. In 2018, the English translation was released under the title Sounds, which received good reviews in Jazz Journal, Jazzpodium and Down Beat. In 2019 I published Afrekenen, a book about jazz and other stories. In addition, until 2016 I wrote many columns for Draai Om Je Oren, an online jazz magazine. I also had a wine trade and exported distilled spirits abroad. I have now stopped the wine trade, but my daughter still exports Dutch drink specialties to Japan.
I don't do public performances anymore but sometimes I give a concert for a really interested audience (rare these days in Holland but I think that’s also true in the States). Around the corner from where I live we have installed Hammond organs and drums in a loft in an old cheese warehouse; my friends and I play there almost every week. Let's try to keep this great music form alive against all opposition.
