Restored 87-year-old Wurlitzer organ ready for public debut ...

[KB7DQH]

...at Cleveland's Masonic Auditorium...

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/10/restored_87-year-old_wurlitzer.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Wurlitzer theater organ, first played in a California silent-movie house 87 years ago, has been restored and installed at the Masonic Auditorium in Cleveland, where it will be publicly debuted next month.

Five years ago, the organ was a basket case -- tens of thousands of parts packed in boxes and crates and stored in a garage in Michigan.

The owner, one of a number of collectors who kept the organ over the decades, agreed to donate it to the Western Reserve Theatre Organ Society, a local non-profit group that preserves and restores the classic instruments.

Theater organs were designed to take the place of pit orchestras. They accompanied silent-movie action using strains of emotive chords and an array of crazy sounds -- a cymbal crash for a pratfall, bird chirps for a kiss and "ooga" horns and sirens for a Keystone cop chase.

Thousands of them -- mostly Wurlitzers -- were installed in movie houses across the country between 1915 and 1930, but when the "talkies" were born, the organs died.

Only a few hundred remain today.

In September, 2006, the local Organ Society, renting four big cargo vans, hauled the dismantled Michigan Wurlitzer -- bellows, baffles, pipes, pedals, stops, tremolos, blowers and more -- to the Masonic Auditorium, which agreed to give the instrument a new home.

After 13,000 hours of volunteer labor and $130,000 in expenses, the old Wurlitzer, still a technical wonder with its 2,400 pipes, is ready to be heard from again.

The four-keyboard console -- looking like a cockpit in a spaceship -- sits on a carpeted riser along a wing of an opulent theater stage. High above it are two "chamber rooms" filled with clusters of pipes -- wooden, brass, zinc, lead and tin -- reaching in lengths from 16 feet to a half inch.

Electrical wires and air vents, like veins and arteries, run helter-skelter throughout the chambers.

"We're at the point now where everything works, except for a couple of little things," Doug Powers of Beachwood, president of the Organ Society, said last week. "There are little gremlins and adjustments that take a long time. We don't have some of the bass tuned yet."
Wurlitzer makes public debut

What: Inaugural concert of a restored 87-year-old Wurlitzer theater organ.

When: 7:30 p.m., Nov. 5.

Where: Masonic Auditorium, 3615 Euclid Ave., corner of E. 36th Street and Euclid.

Tickets: Can be purchased at the door or in advance by going online to www.wrtos.org/concerts

It took three years for the volunteers to reassemble the organ. On Nov. 9, 2009, Powers, before flipping a switch for the first time on a 20-horsepower motor that drives three big fans, counted aloud, . . . 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The powerful motor roared, filling ducts and pipes with air and the instrument wheezed back to life.

"It was thrilling," said Powers. "But, at that point, I knew we still had a lot of work ahead of us."

For the last two years volunteers have been working in the chambers adjusting springs and weights that regulate air pressure and tinkering with pipe after pipe to find the instrument's true voice, a voice that vibrates the floor with its low notes.

"It's taken this long to get it concert-ready," said volunteer Tom Rathburn of Olmsted Falls who, unlike Powers, can't play an organ. But you don't have to be a musician to be a member of the Organ Society.

"I'm a gadget lover," Rathburn explained. "And this is the ultimate gadget."

Rathburn said that when Powers first pulled the blower switch there were cheers and tears. Volunteer Frank Sillag of Lyndhurst, a retired electrical engineer, said, "I wired the blower and was happy it didn't burn up."

Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall
Enlarge Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer Doug Powers has spent a lot of time in this room, the "main chamber," which houses 1,000 organ pipes for the 1924 Wurlitzer. (Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer) Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall gallery (11 photos)

    Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall
    Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall
    Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall
    Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall
    Antique Wurlitzer theater organ is reborn at Masonic Hall

The rush of air is the blood and breath of the Wurlitzer, steadily flowing through its guts of orchestral pipes and special-effects gizmos to simulate instruments ranging from accordion to xylophone.

Keys, pedals, stops and switches all work in harmony to summon chimes, glockenspiel, drums, trumpet, oboe, bagpipe, banjo and more. Even a rooster crow or a cuckoo clock. And during a rainy scene on the big screen you hear Wurlitzer thunder.

A 1928 pamphlet titled Theatre Organist's Secrets gives instructions on imitating sounds like a dog bark, cat meow, pig grunt, laughter, snore, train and "aeroplane."

For a snore, the book tells organists to play a quick, chromatic up-and-down run on three or four low notes produced from a pipe called Vox Humana. Then "play the following measure on the piccolo (pipe), thus imitating the whistle or wheeze usually supposed to follow a snore," the book says.

The Wurlitzer's sounds are heard through metal grates in the chamber rooms. A foot pedal on the console opens and closes 6-foot high wooden louvers -- like vertical Venetian blinds -- to let out a little or a lot of sound through the grates, controlling the volume.

"The Wurlitzer is considered the original synthesizer because of the different orchestral sounds, percussion, special effects and the combination of sounds," said Powers. "They were known as unit orchestras."

The restored Wurlitzer now gives Northeast Ohio six theater organs available for public concerts, possibly the highest concentration in the country.

There are Wurlitzers at the Akron Civic Auditorium, Grays Armory in Cleveland and the Lorain Palace Theatre. The Palace Theatre in Cleveland has a Kimball and the Canton Palace Theatre has a Kilgen.

Meanwhile, the new Cleveland Wurlitzer has to be ready by Nov. 5 for its public debut, which includes a solo concert and accompaniment to a classic black-and-white Laurel and Hardy film. Powers expects to be playing and tinkering until show time.

"We've got to play the snot out of this thing over the next two weeks," he said.

Eric
KB7DQH