Korla Pandit

One of exotica's most exotic figures, Korla Pandit was a celebrity of sorts in the 1950s via a Southern California television show (also syndicated to other parts of the country) that featured his organ playing. Wearing a turban and never speaking, Pandit simply performed on a Hammond B-3 organ while staring into the camera, embellishing his riffs with touches of the Far East and (to a much lesser degree) Latin music. It doesn't sound very "exotic" now, but the mere presence of a man of Indian origin on the then-new medium of television was very novel in the '50s. Not that Pa...