In Schnip’s Picks, Pitchfork managing editor Matthew Schnipper identifies under-heralded music and sings its praises.
Every variation of the Rhodes Piano mimics the look and feel of a traditional piano. Both are comprised of black and white keys that make sounds up and down the scale as you play them with your fingers. But the Rhodes has more of a honeyed sound, mellower than the organic piano to which it owes its DNA. The piano may have a stateliness the Rhodes can’t replicate, partially from its lack of visual imposition, but being a paler version allows it to be nimble, unshackled from the weight of centuries of compositional progress. Still, the Rhodes benefits from the fact that if you can play the piano, you can play an electric version. For anyone sitting down in front of this small machine in its early years, there was an interesting combination of open future with only a hint of the past, a sense of history not quite its own.
When Harold Rhodes was drafted during World War II, he had to close down his School of Popular Piano chain. He’d invented a teaching methodology that proved effective, and he began using it to teach his fellow Air Force servicemen how to play in their downtime. This gained the attention of his superiors, who suggested a unique usage for his skills. Many GIs were hospitalized, their fingers stiffened through frostbite or other maladies, and Rhodes began to teach them piano as a way to rehabilitate their muscles and relearn control of their movements. This was effective only with those well enough to sit up on the bench of the instrument; many patients were bedridden and prone. So, using spare parts (reportedly pipes and the hydraulic systems from downed fighter plane wings), Rhodes built a flat keyboard they could play in bed. Word of mouth spurred their popularity amongst patients, and his pianos were used in 11 different hospitals. After the war, and out of the army, Rhodes decided to create a marketable line of the instruments, geared towards beginners, which he launched for sale to the general public in 1946.
“The instrument weighs no more than a portable typewriter,” the New York Times wrote upon the Rhodes Piano’s introduction. “It can be carried easily under one arm. In place of piano strings it has special alloy rods which do not get out of tune, even when subjected to extreme hot or cold.” Though Rhodes was ambitious, it’s difficult to imagine he could have predicted the wild life his creation would lead throughout the next half-century. Especially because his initial launch was not much of a success. “The manufacturer we chose didn’t produce a mechanically sound product,” he said. “It died a complete and total death.” In the years after his product launched unsuccessfully, Rhodes continued to tinker with his invention. In an early ’60s partnership with Leo Fender, inventor and owner behind the famous guitar company, Rhodes had his first success of sorts, with the Piano Bass.
The first person to truly take the Rhodes on a public ride, via the Piano Bass, was Ray Manzarek of the Doors. He smacked it a lot, found it could mimic horror movie sounds, or synthesize bad weather, as he does on “Riders on the Storm.” It’s a serious workout of what the instrument is capable of, and is likely what the Rhodes is best known for, despite unfortunately being a terrible song. Second to Manzarek in terms of Rhodes notoriety is likely Stevie Wonder, who in the ’70s puttered around the instrument on many songs. “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” is my favorite, lead by a mid-pace stride across the keys. His playing is bubbly, and you can imagine some of Harold Rhodes’ original GIs cheering up while pounding out such pleasant tones.
Though less popular, my favorite vintage Rhodes playing is the solo introduction to a record by saxophonist Marion Brown, 1974’s Sweet Earth Flying. Jazz pianist Paul Bley plays the Rhodes on “Sweet Earth Flying Part 1,” and it’s as much an indoctrination as a song. Bley plays long notes that would be impossible to play on a traditional piano. On a guitar, they’d be droning. Here, they’re heavenly. Just pushing one key for an extended period of time feels like enough. But Bley’s piece is only three and a half minutes. I’ve been looking for more music that sounds like this for a long time.
Liz Durette, a Rhodes player from Baltimore, is the musician who today most embodies the bold possibility of the instrument. She plays solo, and her recent album Four Improvisations is lovely, devoid of anything other than pure worship of what the instrument can do. Her playing is lively, not a natural candidate for the meditative music I usually prefer from the Rhodes; when I first heard it, I found it to be too busy. But the tone of the instrument made me listen again. I wanted to hear the warmth I loved removed from any other funky stuff. I started to hear the music for what it is: a deep and passionate exploration of the limits of one set of sounds.
Durette performs with a pedal and nothing else; she’s said she prefers the recording to be clean, with as much room or background sound removed as possible. Listen with headphones and it’s calming. Listen on your stereo and it’s bombastic. “3” is my favorite song (all of her improvisations are numbered and untitled). It begins with an anxious trilling of two notes, before a damp tone rumbles in beneath. Durette careens across the keyboard anxiously, settling in on the lower register. It’s a tense piece, and her playing eventually slows into something that sounds like it’s from a bog. And then it pivots, nearly six minutes in, to a beautiful, clear place. It stays there, as do you. The Rhodes notes begin to sound like bells, the music of a very simple celebration. You went into the darkness and have emerged in the light. The Rhodes may have long ago shed its roots as a therapeutic service, but its sound—so pure of tone, without any great effort—conjures at least a hint of healing. Durette has restored the instrument’s original purpose, though now for the listener, not just the player.
By design, a piano sounds, and simply is, aggressive, the striking of the strings by little hammers a small act of violence. It can be dampened by the pedals, yes, played with grace, notes strung together like leaves on a vine, but that’s subverting its very nature as 88 individual gavels, all ready to exact something sharp and precise. If the piano is a steamship, then the Rhodes is a sailboat on a cloudless day, tooling effortlessly around the lake. I don’t want to steer, but I’d love to catch a ride.