REVIEWS

 

For several years off and on Korla has been Northern California's most talked about television personality. Once, following his temporary departure from a San Francisco Station, TV Guide ran a popularity poll and Korla won it six months after he was off the air.

 

- Dwight Newton, Columnist, San Francisco, CA (1960)


Any attempt for the writer or critic to apply the commonplace language of musical comment to the work of Korla Pandit must inevitably end in hapless frustration. For the music of Korla Pandit is as defiant of ordinary processes of analysis as is the nature of Korla Pandit himself. That this is no ordinary man and this is no ordinary music is blazingly evident that first electric moment his music surges over the listener. The stultifying self-consciousness that manacles the performance of lesser artists is completely lacking here. In its stead is an unchained torrent of pure emotion…sometimes gay, bright laughing; sometimes wistful, piquant, tender; sometimes wild, sensual, almost abandoned….but always expressing unmistakably the innermost feelings of the man…Korla Pandit.

 

- Michael Robbins, Sausalito, CA (1961)


…Should make a big hit with the femmes…A relaxing program built around Pandit at the organ…Pandit himself is an extremely handsome, sensitive looking chap..listenable organ music…intriguing…imaginative…high quality…

 

- Milton Luban, The Hollywood Reporter (9/2/1954)


Korla Pandit…was as exotic visually as he was musically. And his showmanship was undeniable. As a result, he was probably exotica's single most influential player…millions of people heard Pandit daily through the mid fifties…it is difficult to calculate the influence of Korla Pandit on the young musicians who saw that show…the mystique is still intact, as is his charisma…Korla Pandit is magic. For nearly five decades, Korla Pandit has given us music that has fueled our imaginations.

 

- Skip Heller, Musicologist (4/1996)


Korla Pandit was a musician of dazzling inventiveness and dexterity. Long before synthesizers stalked the land, Korla figured out how to coax all manner of previously unheard percussion, brass and string sounds out of the Hammond B-3 organ; on record and in concert, he often sounded like several musicians performing simultaneously. He was also one of L.A.'s first TV stars; his 1950s show on KTLA, which featured a turbaned Korla staring penetratingly into the camera while playing hypnotic originals like "Tales of the Underwater Worshippers," was a huge favorite with area housewives…Like Kelbo's, Tiny Naylor's and the Brown Derby, Korla Pandit was a vestige of an older, cooler L.A. that has drifted into the sunset. May his music - and his message of universal love - live on forever.

 

- Dan Epstein, L.A. WEEKLY

 

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