While most folks can recall with vivid certainty the circumstances of their first kiss or what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot, my musical obsession has led to some interesting recollections. I remember the first occasion, as a youngster, where I heard the voluptuous tones of a Hammond B3 organ was in the solitude of a funeral home. In straining to see where this wonderful, swirling music was coming from (hidden off an aisle by a curtain), I was reprimanded by my mother. “Get that grin off of your face,” she said with a quick slap on the knee. “Where’s that unusual music coming from?” I asked. “From the angels, I suppose” my father answered paternally, to diffuse our conversation quickly. Turns out, the old man was right.

See if you don’t agree when you get clipped by the first few bars of Joey DeFrancesco’s “Ashley Blue” here, with its quick shuffling bass pedal movement and taut melody line that displays the Hammond’s full range of mammoth cluster chording and biting attack. Beneath Joey’s fingers, the runs melt together with a greasy funk that’s only eclipsed when he pulls the stops to max treble, with the Leslie speaker horn slammin’ at full velocity. Yeah, now that’s heaven.

This 13-track comp collects some of the best Hammond mashers in the biz, with an assortment of old school grooves (led by Jimmy Smith’s “There Will Never Be Another You” while “Brother” Jack McDuff coaxes a few anguished gospel lines out of “Misty”), sublime cool (with the gentle touch of Art Neville’s “Micky Fick”), and cutting-edge fusion (set up by Galactic’s “My Little Humidor” and then sent home by John Medeski’s “Swamp Road”). Although a bit long on the jazz applications (it would have been nice for some rock or semi-classical examples), there is an amazing variety of players here (including Mick Weaver, Michael Omartian, and Mike Finnegan) who eventually pick apart and bring to light just some of the expressive vocabulary by one of most comprehensive musical instruments ever built.

Those who still lay claim to the synthesizer’s endless capabilities should get a lesson with a listen, and hear what the Moog couldn’t do. Hey, God plays one. ‘Nuff said