It's the musician, not the instrument

[Charlie Metcalf]

Last night I was listening to the two CD set, George Wright "Live" at the Rialto. This is one of my favorite recordings. He was playing a style 216 Wurlitzer. There is actually one place on the recording where one can plainly hear a rat trap catch its prey inside one of the pipe chambers.

In our era there are so many organs that have been added onto until some are much bigger than anything Farny Wurlitzer ever built. Yet what George Wright did with this two manual and ten rank instrument made it clear that his amazing talent made up for much more than a few thousand extra pipes ever could have.

What's the point? I own no pipe organ and likely never will. My focus needs to be on being the best musician I can be because talent counts more than equipment.

[FromBad2Wersi]

I find that a good instrument can inspire you to play more often and play better. I own several organs but I regularly play only 2 of them.

It takes a very long time for me to become familiar enough with all of an organ's capabilities. But once I reach that point, I am able to wring much more out of it than I ever thought I could when I first acquired the instrument.

Since my last name is also Wright, I can safely assume that I am not related to George Wright. Musical talent obviously ran in his branch of the family rather than mine.

[Jan Girardot]

Hello, Charlie and "Mr. Wright":

Who are your all-time favorite theatre organists? My top five favorites are:
• Geo. Wright
• Sidney Torch
• Buddy Nolan
• Buddy Cole
• Tom Hazelton

. . . Jan
The OrganGrinder

[andyg]

George Wright
Buddy Cole
Hector Olivera
Jackie Brown (UK)
George Blackmore (UK)

And yes, it's often a case of "It's not what you've got, it's what you do with it." The test of a real organist.

Andy

[FromBad2Wersi]

I'm pretty new at this. Since 1963, I played mostly steel guitar and some standard guitar. When I severed some tendons in my right hand and fingers in an accident last spring, I lost some finger and joint movement and I am no longer able to use the finger picks and play in the proper position. So my hand therapist suggested I try playing keyboards as part of the therapy for my right hand. I started with a Yamaha DGX and I immediately was drawn to the organ sounds, and not just the Hammond sounds. I liked the key action better than a piano. I soon decided I need a real organ, but this presented a "coolness factor" problem.

While growing up, I had a step father who owned piano and organ dealerships in Sacramento and Fresno. He sold Baldwins, Wurlitzers , Kimballs and Lowreys. He added Kawai to the mix in the 1970's. I was a rock and roll guitar guy and I always rolled my eyes when it came to electronic organs. This was in no small part due to the pure unadulterated shmaltz the organ salesmen would play in the store while giving organ demos. No matter how far I may progress as an organist, I swear I will NEVER learn to play 'Somewhere My Love' or 'I'm Looking Over A 4-Leaf Clover' !!! Little old ladies were buying organs from my step dad's store while the people who really wanted to play the organ were down the street buying a Hammond. So, if I was going to buy an organ, I had to have a Hammond to still be 'cool'.

On Craigslist, the B-3 and A-100 types and the decent combo organs were rather high priced while many other GOOD organs (not the kind Aunt Tillie bought at 'the mall') were free or nearly so. So I bought a working $100 M-3 with no bench. It was and still is great but it's not very versatile. Then I had a chance to pick up a clean Kawai SR-7 at an estate sale practically for free. Wow! 3 keyboards including an analog synth with full midi. So I bought it. It's quite large, but I have no regrets. Then one day on YouTube, I saw this 16 year old kid from Germany called Florian Hutter playing Tico Tico on a Wersi Gala. My jaw dropped in amazement. I was an instant fan! Now that was truly 'cool'! No offense to Ethel Smith who also did a great version...plus she was such a hottie! I digress...

I decided I had check out Wersi even though I'll probably never be able to play Tico Tico as well as the German kid. There was this little Wersi DX-10 Omega for sale locally on C.L. I paid $250 which may have been too much, but I really wanted a Wersi and they don't come up that often. Then, wouldn't you know, a few days later, a pearl white Wersi Spectra DX 700 CD w/speakers showed up on line and it was located only 16 miles from my house, so I snapped it up. The Wersi introduced me to some great theatre organ tones and I really became fascinated with the genre. So at the present time, I'm not aware of all the great theatre organists like some of you lifelong fans are. I am aware of George Wright of course. Even most non-organists have heard of him. So my favorite theatre organists are ALL the organists who appreciate and or play the theatre style and keep the theatre sound alive.

I sold a vintage Guild guitar for $3000 on eBay in order to finance my new organ hobby. I have now just about run out of room (sound familiar?) and I've spent a little over $2600 so far. And through patience, obsessive internet searching, and good luck at estate sales, I've got a pretty 'cool' collection so far. Still need a Wurlitzer 4500 or 4520 and lots more room.

[Charlie Metcalf]

Ones I heard live:
Gaylord Carter
Tom Hazelton
Mark Herman

Ones I didn't get to hear:
George Wright
Ann Leaf

[TheAdmiral]

I have now just about run out of room (sound familiar?)

Sounds very familiar!
I've not heard a Wersi but will check that out. I have a dismantled Wicks pipe organ that's been in my garage for 20 years and keep saying 'one day I'll put it together'. Now I wonder.

George Wright is my favorite by far.
I've heard Hector Olivera in person on a Wurlitzer.
No one has mentioned Jesse Crawford.
I heard in person Bob Ralston of the Lawrence Show fame play a Robert Morton and did a very nice job. Much, much more than he did on TV. He was less confined (less sterile) and more free to do as he wanted and it was good.

I think one of the most amazing things is that the performer of pipe organs must learn the characteristics of each organ as no two are the same. Every concert is a different organ in a different city!

[andyg]

Then I had a chance to pick up a clean Kawai SR-7 at an estate sale practically for free. Wow! 3 keyboards including an analog synth with full midi. So I bought it. It's quite large, but I have no regrets.

That SR7 is all digital, of course, including the dual synths on the 3rd manual. But if you mean it sounds analog, I'll take that as a compliment as much of the design and voicing is mine. The SR series were my 'babies' and your SR7 started life as a sketch on a napkin over a lazy breakfast in Ancona, Italy, way back in 1983.

Andy

[UFO]

To hear a range of organists playing the same organ is interesting. In the past few years I have heard the 2/11 at Marrickville Town Hall (www.tosa.net.au) played by:

Rob Richards
Nathan Avakian
Tony Fenelon
John Atwell
Mark Herman
David Gray
Martin Ellis
and some others I can't recall at the moment.

Every one of these fine musicians has made this instrument work in ways that the others have not explored or revealed according to the program they have played. Others of us that play the organ for non shows avidly watch and listen to what they do and only wish we could achieve as much.

So yes the player makes the instrument, but the instrument must be of a quality to enable the required performance.

As our society does not own the premises we have to rely on the goodwill of the local council that does to hopefully be able to arrange access for practice prior to the show. Although at times our only available time is the few hours prior to the show while we setup the venue around them. To watch an artist sit there and explore the instrument whilst setting their combination pistons is amazing.

[indianajo]

UFO, I'm glad to hear Tony Fenelon is still touring around. I received his "interval at the Regent" album as part of the Dr. E. Fuchs organ mono LP collection. I hope Tony has gotten over his (or a benefactor's) fascination with the ringing telephone bell stop. I have never heard a Theater Organ live, and didn't know the genre existed until I received this collection of records. Houston had no organ equipped theater, and Boone Cty WV had no indoor theater at all. Dr Fuch's theater organ LP's are so more artistic than the stuff usually played on the L******* W*** show,arranged to appeal to the LOL's. George Wright and Bill Dalton are my two favorite theater artists of this collection.

[paulj0557]

Last night I was listening to the two CD set, George Wright "Live" at the Rialto. This is one of my favorite recordings. He was playing a style 216 Wurlitzer. There is actually one place on the recording where one can plainly hear a rat trap catch its prey inside one of the pipe chambers.

In our era there are so many organs that have been added onto until some are much bigger than anything Farny Wurlitzer ever built. Yet what George Wright did with this two manual and ten rank instrument made it clear that his amazing talent made up for much more than a few thousand extra pipes ever could have.

What's the point? I own no pipe organ and likely never will. My focus needs to be on being the best musician I can be because talent counts more than equipment.

Yes, didn't John Lennon say -'Give me a tuba'r an' I'll get something out of it'
When I stumbled into the organ after playing guitar many years I treated it much like how the guitarist treats the amplifier. With advanced techniques come advanced sounds. Well, we all know the greatest technicians in the electric guitar field are not the classical players, it's players like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page,Billy Gibbons, Roy Buchanan...and all of the new guys. But not to disregard classical players, had they had electric guitars their already perfected techniques would have been a shoe in for electric guitar mastery. Of course this is a pipe organ thread so maybe I'm way off base here, but it is very true that it is the musician and not the instrument. Using a guitar and an amp as an example, a newbie sitting down and strumming had the idea one day to push the amp a little harder to agree with the response he was trying to convey from his guitar, w/ only strings through a pick-up as an input. He overcame limitations at the guitar by learning techniques to make the notes react to the combinations which occurred beyond the guitar and into the amp...and at the speed of electricity he played the amp too! Just because a sound is created beyond the fingers does not mean the player cannot control what happens with it. Sound is a science and the better instruments allow the player to interact more. Even a pipe organ can be controlled by how it's played, but there is something else that needs to be understood. I've always thought of it as ' the power of 3'. As a guitar player I once broke two strings on my acoustic guitar. With the remaining strings ( EAGB) I tuned them to F# C# C# F#, with the two F#'s one octave apart and the two C#'s tuned in unison (identical, where the old A' string was wound and the old G' was just a straight wire string) and tuned 3 1/2 steps above the lowest F#. These four strings were essentially a perfect 5th consisting of 3 notes- F# C# and F# an octave above...so maybe just 2 notes depending on how you look at it. As far as how it sounds, it is bigger sounding than you might think. Here is where the power of 3 comes in. I started to play this tuning until I could get some new strings, but I realized that by changing just one note by pressing a fret it became bigger still, but with movement. Then if I sang it became exponentially bigger and more complex. When plying back tape recordings I realized that in working with these basic, or fundamental sounds it created overtones beyond what I was doing and more than just harmonic accents. What might appear to be minimalistic on the surface might actually have far more power when the basic elements are combined and even more power than that when they are put in motion and changes are made through the measures. A good arranger can take basic elements and use them to make something bigger. Music theory is a great thing and if you have the capacity to apply it like George Wright you don't need more pipes. Personally I think the character of the build gets lost in a lot of pipes.

Charlie, can you possibly upload a couple of the tracks of the George Wright Rialto recordings? I'd love to hear it. It would also be great to hear a Rialto II played by a master. I need another 20 years, but if I play double time...