The Jazz Organ Scene

Great Britain

Mick Weaver Mick Weaver is a veteran keyboard player who has been busy on the British and international music scenes since the late 1960s, both as a bandleader and session musician. Born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1944, he was drawn to blues, jazz, and soul as an aspiring musician, and developed a prodigious skill on the Hammond B-3 organ, which became his instrument of choice; as the recorded evidence now shows, he was capable of generating a larger-than-life sound from its keyboard, which put him in demand as a backing musician and allowed Weaver to form his own band in 1967, called Wynder K. Frog (a pseudonym that Weaver himself also adopted on their recordings). He cut a debut album, Sunshine Super Frog (1967), for Island Records using the Wynder K. Frog alias, which featured Weaver backed by a group of uncredited New York session musicians; as a live act, an early incarnation of the group also opened one of the very earliest gigs played by Traffic. The most popular version of the band coalesced around Weaver when he inherited the services of guitarist Neil Hubbard, late of Bluesology, and John Mayall alumnus Chris Mercer.   The group found an enthusiastic following with its mix of jazz and blues, and went on to record a pair of LPs. Audiences and critics enjoyed them, and had they come along earlier and lasted longer, they might have found the same kind of extensive session work as, say, the Mike Cotton Sound and Sounds Incorporated. But it wasn't to be: Wynder K. Frog joined with Herbie Goins' band the Night Timers in 1969 before breaking up later that same year. Weaver remained busy, playing on albums by Shawn Phillips and Fat Mattress, as well as participating on the recording of the original studio album Jesus Christ Superstar, and landed on his feet with a lateral shift to the lineup of the newly split-up Traffic, following Dave Mason's final exit from the latter group. Steve Winwood parted company with Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood to join Blind Faith, and Weaver ended up replacing Winwood on keyboards in what became Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog, later rechristened Wooden Frog. That group fell apart soon after when Winwood called Capaldi and Wood in on a solo project, the album John Barleycorn Must Die, that soon became a re-formed Traffic (ironically, a year or so later, ex-Wynder K. Frog percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, would also join Traffic). But by that time, Weaver's reputation as a keyboard player (and, especially, an organist) was made, and he spent the next few decades playing on a prodigious number of sessions, for U.K.-centered artists such as Juicy Lucy, Ralph McTell, Miller Anderson, and Keef Hartley, but also international-level talent as diverse as blues legend Buddy Guy, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, soul belters Joe Cocker (who, at one point, had also had half of Wynder K. Frog working for him), Steve Marriott, Eric Burdon, and guitarist Gary Moore. In more recent years, he has had an ongoing gig as part of Taj Mahal's band, and has also been showcased as a musician on collections devoted to the sound of the Hammond organ.   from Bruce Eder on allmusic.com

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