Hello, this is Marc from My Keys to Music.
Thanks for joining me on this video today.
We are talking about yet
another Discovery video here,
featuring the Nord Stage 3. The
name of the song is called Runaway.
The name of the artist
is called Del Shannon.
This came out in 1961 and the song
was actually co-written by Del and his
keyboard player Max crook.
Max was born in 1936.
He recently passed away here in 2020.
He lived to 83 years old and he made
some interesting music along the way.
He's most famous for this particular
song Runaway and the keyboard solo.
See Max crook, his father, we were
kids, right? And, and the drummer said,
I know a great organist. My guitar
player quit. And I said, Oh, I dunno,
I need a guitar player. And
he's said, this guy's amazing.
He has this little box and he had it
camouflaged so no one would know what it
was. And he put it through this amp.
And when I, I auditioned them, you know,
I started singing and he put the
strings behind me and I said, wow,
this guy is hired immediately.
And because he could make them bassoons
and basses and all kinds of great
sounds. So the one night I wrote Runaway,
I called Max the next day. And I said,
Max, I need a, an instrumental
when I point to you play something.
And he played that solo. It just came out.
Basically I was his keyboard
player and we played together the
High-Low club in battle Creek,
which is now a bank parking lot.
We came up, uh, with the,
with the idea for the song up on
the stage at the High/Low club. And,
uh, that bridge actually came to me
and probably less than five minutes.
Just something to fit in there.
And I had the Musicitron already.
It was an electronic device,
so I just played it on that. And it all
seemed to fit together. Runaway was,
was done on stage in Battle Creek at
that High=Low club one night when Max hit
an A Minor and a G and I said,
wow, great change. I was,
so I said, look, follow me. Everybody
follow me. Everybody is only max,
a bass player and me, So I went... And,
uh, Max followed me all through the song.
I'd call a G F and I just followed
this whole structure of song.
And the next day I wrote the words
to it. It's called a Musitron.
And it's something that I, uh,
made out of parts and pieces
of another instrument,
probably three other instruments,
actually, and some other electronic parts.
Um, and we put it together.
And so that it would have various sounds
that would have echo with every verb.
You could bend notes with it. Uh,
the pitch on that thing
is from about 14 cycles,
a second up higher than you can
hear. So there's tremendous range,
even though it was two and a half octaves.
Here's what Max looks like in a recording.
He recorded another song and he's
playing his instrument that he made,
which is called the Musitron.
That's what he called it.
But here's a little bit about what,
what it looks like and what it
sounds like in another song.
And then we'll finish this video with an
actual performance here using the Nord
Stage 3. So we can hear the song and
be reminded of the keyboard solo.
Thanks for watching!
Everywhere
I go. Max, he don't travel
with me, but everywhere I go,
they always say,
That's a greatest rock and roll soul
in history is old Max Crook playing his
[Synthesizer]."
