Walton Jami
Description : Finnish single manual electric organ with autokomp rhythm
and bass.
Keys : ?
Production period : ?
Used by : Celestine
Weight : ?
Description : Before I bought this organ I had never heard about the organ manufacturer Walton. On the other hand…when you start looking around for organs it seems like there are hundreds of companies that all decided around the late sixties/early seventies that building homeorgans seemed to be an easy buck.
I stumbled across this organ in a fleamarket in Helsinki and thought for a blink of an eye that it was an Optigan. One manual, dark wood, legs….It couldn´t be a Optigan could it ?…well…it wasn´t….Later on I wasn´t too disappointed. The biggest problem was that it had legs which made it impossible for me to get back home to the hotel let alone to Sweden. So my only solution was to mumble around the fleamarket until I found some tools and quite swiftly removed it´s legs. Amputation street style. So if you are in Helsinki and find legs to an old homeorgan…now atleast you know where the rest of it is….
The Walton Jami is a single manual organ with all the usual trimmings. Very electric sounding ( almost in a krautrock way actually ) versions of clarinet, accordion and flute. For those really emotional moments you might even wanna go for the vibrato button…A very sketchy autokomp section ( think kraftwerk on a stiff day ) with chordbass. But the coolest feature of this organ is strictly aestetic. You change the sounds and rhythm by pressing touch buttons. A copperplate with red diodes and wooden sides….oh yes….
This organ has actually been used a fair amount….a lot due to the fact that people seem to like the way it looks and that it actually sounds pretty good. Since the removal of the legs I could almost call it tourable…So far it has been used by Celestine, Anders Nordberg and maybe the biggest feat it has been through was that it was used as the only keyboard for Andreas & jags last gig and was played by Mats Lundgren from Pineforest.
Julian in Blanc