back52887
07-04-2004, 11:42 PM
My dad was not a Jessie Crawford,or Ethel Smith, or Don Baker. He was a lounge organist in the L.A. basin and later many small towns in the western U.S. in the 40s and 50s; nevertheless he had many friends and admirers of his talents throughout his life, and he deserves a note, if only a small one on a chat board.
Leland Gibson Lay (sr.) was born in 1918 in Kirksville, Mo. He had his first lessons in music in an accordion band in Blackwell Ok. where his widower father set up an osteopathic practice in the late 20s. When his father took him up north to Wichita Ks., he heard his first theatre pipe organ and the craving that experience started never left him. Moving to Miami in the 30s, he began to play intermissions at theatres there while he went to jr. high and high school. He saw his first Hammonds at a local music store, and remarked to me especially on the BA (player organ) that was just showing up then. That would make it 1938. He went back to Kirksville to go the college there and live with his grandmother. He played at the Kennedy theatre, and gave my soon-to-be mother tickets to hear him. His grandmother died, leaving him her large Victorian house, which he decided to make into a music academy. For it he bought a Hammond BC, with a CRX-20 speaker. The academy failed, so he set out with the Hammond for California.
He got to the Long Beach area in time for the boom caused by an influx of shipbuilding, Naval and Marine training, and general post depression prosperity. He played in the Circus Room and The Rendezvous, and several other spots whose names I don’t recall hearing, and also had a program of organ music on KFOX. He arrived on the scene just in time to hear and buy Don Leslie’s first commercial Vibratone speaker model, the 30A. This was late ’40 –’41. He would set the CRX in the lobby or outside on the street and have the Leslie inside. As success became evident, he sent for my mother and they were married in Wiltshire. He began to branch out to outlying suburbs, going as far a Victorville and San Diego.
In 1943, the draft caught up with even married men whose wives were expecting (me in this case), and he found himself in the Army Air corps. His talents were recognized and he got into special services running base movie theatres, publishing newspapers, and playing for chaplains and officers clubs on the Model G. Hammonds that now absorbed all the musical instrument production of that company. He ended up on the Island of Tinian in the South Pacific in time to see the Enola Gay take off for Hiroshima to end the war.
The return to California reunited my family, and I met “daddy overseas” for the first time. At age two I don’t remember the event very well. He played throughout the L.A. Basin until 1948 when we moved to Las Vegas. I remember us eating in the Ramona Room of the Last Frontier hotel and hearing Don Baker entertain during floorshow breaks.
From ’49 to ’52, we were all over the west. In Shelby, Mont., the BC and 30A burned in a nightclub fire at the Tanna Club outside of town. The Korean War had sidelined instrument production again at Hammond, so dad rented a Consonatta, which he didn’t like because he couldn’t get a Leslie, to play at Cascade Montana. He eventually found a used BV with a 31H, that he kept until he got off the circuit in 1957. But my mother was getting tired of the moves, and of me being in an average of 4 schools a year. She set her foot down and she and I stayed in Boulder City, Nevada where she taught fourth grade and father went for gigs in other states, we got together on holidays and in the summer, until he went to Casper Wyoming. There he started demonstrating and selling for the Wurlitzer dealer, and traded the BV etc. for a blond Wurlitzer 4602 with two matching 46Ws. We joined him later in Denver where we bought our first house and he sold Thomas Organs for Hal Davis at Music City. The Wurlitzer came home, and I started learning to play.
Dad was offered a partnership in the Music store in Casper, which was being bought out by another salesman who had worked with him, so we moved back, and stayed through my first year of JC (1962). In the meantime the partnership broke up and my father started in own store with the Conn and Thomas franchises. He took the oil reberb unit out of the CRX (which had survived the fire)and traded it to the local radio station for advertising time. I left home by then and He sold out and opened a store in Salt Lake, also with Conn and Thomas. I came back for more schooling in1965 and worked at the Salt Lake store till I went in the army in 1967 . I came back again to get a teaching degree, got married and moved to Nevada. My mother passed on in 1973, and father sold the store and moved back to the Midwest. He lived in Wichita till 1989, when he came to a rest home here is Carson City. His last Gig was playing lunch music at that center two days before he was reunited with my mother.
I am confident he and Jessie Crawford, and many others are working with Handel on the music for the Oratorio “The Second Coming”.
Anyone who remembers him or collateral details, drop a blurb here, or to me at ^leenrand@aol.com^
Leland Gibson Lay (sr.) was born in 1918 in Kirksville, Mo. He had his first lessons in music in an accordion band in Blackwell Ok. where his widower father set up an osteopathic practice in the late 20s. When his father took him up north to Wichita Ks., he heard his first theatre pipe organ and the craving that experience started never left him. Moving to Miami in the 30s, he began to play intermissions at theatres there while he went to jr. high and high school. He saw his first Hammonds at a local music store, and remarked to me especially on the BA (player organ) that was just showing up then. That would make it 1938. He went back to Kirksville to go the college there and live with his grandmother. He played at the Kennedy theatre, and gave my soon-to-be mother tickets to hear him. His grandmother died, leaving him her large Victorian house, which he decided to make into a music academy. For it he bought a Hammond BC, with a CRX-20 speaker. The academy failed, so he set out with the Hammond for California.
He got to the Long Beach area in time for the boom caused by an influx of shipbuilding, Naval and Marine training, and general post depression prosperity. He played in the Circus Room and The Rendezvous, and several other spots whose names I don’t recall hearing, and also had a program of organ music on KFOX. He arrived on the scene just in time to hear and buy Don Leslie’s first commercial Vibratone speaker model, the 30A. This was late ’40 –’41. He would set the CRX in the lobby or outside on the street and have the Leslie inside. As success became evident, he sent for my mother and they were married in Wiltshire. He began to branch out to outlying suburbs, going as far a Victorville and San Diego.
In 1943, the draft caught up with even married men whose wives were expecting (me in this case), and he found himself in the Army Air corps. His talents were recognized and he got into special services running base movie theatres, publishing newspapers, and playing for chaplains and officers clubs on the Model G. Hammonds that now absorbed all the musical instrument production of that company. He ended up on the Island of Tinian in the South Pacific in time to see the Enola Gay take off for Hiroshima to end the war.
The return to California reunited my family, and I met “daddy overseas” for the first time. At age two I don’t remember the event very well. He played throughout the L.A. Basin until 1948 when we moved to Las Vegas. I remember us eating in the Ramona Room of the Last Frontier hotel and hearing Don Baker entertain during floorshow breaks.
From ’49 to ’52, we were all over the west. In Shelby, Mont., the BC and 30A burned in a nightclub fire at the Tanna Club outside of town. The Korean War had sidelined instrument production again at Hammond, so dad rented a Consonatta, which he didn’t like because he couldn’t get a Leslie, to play at Cascade Montana. He eventually found a used BV with a 31H, that he kept until he got off the circuit in 1957. But my mother was getting tired of the moves, and of me being in an average of 4 schools a year. She set her foot down and she and I stayed in Boulder City, Nevada where she taught fourth grade and father went for gigs in other states, we got together on holidays and in the summer, until he went to Casper Wyoming. There he started demonstrating and selling for the Wurlitzer dealer, and traded the BV etc. for a blond Wurlitzer 4602 with two matching 46Ws. We joined him later in Denver where we bought our first house and he sold Thomas Organs for Hal Davis at Music City. The Wurlitzer came home, and I started learning to play.
Dad was offered a partnership in the Music store in Casper, which was being bought out by another salesman who had worked with him, so we moved back, and stayed through my first year of JC (1962). In the meantime the partnership broke up and my father started in own store with the Conn and Thomas franchises. He took the oil reberb unit out of the CRX (which had survived the fire)and traded it to the local radio station for advertising time. I left home by then and He sold out and opened a store in Salt Lake, also with Conn and Thomas. I came back for more schooling in1965 and worked at the Salt Lake store till I went in the army in 1967 . I came back again to get a teaching degree, got married and moved to Nevada. My mother passed on in 1973, and father sold the store and moved back to the Midwest. He lived in Wichita till 1989, when he came to a rest home here is Carson City. His last Gig was playing lunch music at that center two days before he was reunited with my mother.
I am confident he and Jessie Crawford, and many others are working with Handel on the music for the Oratorio “The Second Coming”.
Anyone who remembers him or collateral details, drop a blurb here, or to me at ^leenrand@aol.com^