Diff: A Hammond History

  

 Penny recalls one unsuccessful presentation made on bended knees. Venerable old Kramer of Allentown was so bowed by arthritis in his chair, that Penny had to get on his knees to look him in the face. Kramer, like many other merchants during those first months saw no commercial or musical future for "the gadget." "We are in the music business," he said. But the majority of merchants went wild over the organ and Johnny Jenkins of Kansas City and Perry Chrisler of Aeolian Co.. St. Louis gave him a hero's welcome. Many confided at that time that the organ was the product that saved them during those bleak selling years. 

  

 !!An unknown Ethel Smith 

  

 EthelSmith's unrecorded first association with the Hammond Organ occurred in "39" when she walked into Philpitt's Music store in Miami to try the organ while Penny was there during one of his cross country tours. Unknown then, Penny recalls loaning Collins Driggs, then a Hammond staff organist, five dollars to take her out to dinner. A few years later. Miss Smith was a celebrity in her own right after becoming firmly ensconced on George Washington Hill's American Tobacco radio shows. Since then, Ethel Smith's voluminous publications for the Hammond Organ have been a major force in Hammond exposure and sales.