Digital Shorts
Sounds of an Orchestra: Restoring the Mighty Wurlitzer
8/5/2021 | 7m 8sVideo has Closed Captions
A brief look into the history and the restoration of The Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
A brief look into the history and the $500,000 restoration of The Mighty Wurlitzer organ at The Orpheum Theatre-Memphis.
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Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Digital Shorts is a local public television program presented by WKNO
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Digital Shorts
Sounds of an Orchestra: Restoring the Mighty Wurlitzer
8/5/2021 | 7m 8sVideo has Closed Captions
A brief look into the history and the $500,000 restoration of The Mighty Wurlitzer organ at The Orpheum Theatre-Memphis.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[organ music] - Well, I'm called the house organist, but...
It's more of a house music lover.
It's always been the role of the house organist to provide, music for a wide variety of events that can happen in a theater.
In the days of when this was installed, the organist accompanied silent movies, and would usually play a solo feature sometime during an evening's entertainment.
And, there would be vocalists, usually vocalists could sing a solo with the organ.
That was a traditional form of entertainment.
But nowadays, here at the Theatre, people get married in the Theatre, so I might be playing a wedding ceremony, or people might have dinner onstage.
I mean, there's all sorts of creative things that we do here at the Theatre.
And, if someone needs background music, well this is a big, loud musical ensemble that can also be a very subtle, quiet musical ensemble.
So, it can be used in a lot of different ways.
The Wurlitzer Company characterized these as unit orchestras.
They really didn't-- you hardly ever saw the term "Wurlitzer organ."
Perhaps if they had built one for a church, but a unit orchestra was a different kind of animal than your typical church organ.
It was designed to replicate the sound of an orchestra that played popular music in theaters.
So, you have a lot of sounds that by themselves are a little bit unusual.
And then, rather than trying to build a careful, sculpted sound that one would get in a church or a concert organ, this is more of an orchestra.
So, you have very individual tone qualities.
[organ music] - I was the house organist for a very long time, from about 1976 until 1987.
Now, I'm Tony's alternate at the organ.
However, I have bragging rights on this.
During a meeting with Brett Batterson I said, we were talking about the restoration of this organ, okay.
And I said here's what you need, and handed him the first donation.
And The Orpheum ran with it, and here we are.
It was installed to take the place of a nine-piece orchestra for matinees and many other shows, so that an orchestra would not have to be employed all the time.
And, it was also used for solo work and for other sorts of entertainment.
This organ's been lucky.
It's been used a lot since silent movies went away.
So, it's very lucky to still be in its original theater and have been heard by a great variety of Memphians all through its history.
A theater with an organ in it takes one person to make a show.
Any time we were trying to impress somebody while raising money to renovate the Theatre for the first time, if I was around you had a show.
I could sail up out of the pit, and playing beautiful music.
And, people were impressed, and all it took was one person, 'cause the organ is part-and-parcel.
It's built into the building.
It's just as much a part of the building as the chandeliers or the movie projectors.
It's really Tony's skill, Tony Thomas's skill as an organist, and his artistry, that has made the organ sound as good as it has sounded for the last few years when he's been organist.
Because he had to work around a lot of things that weren't operating.
- When the organ left Memphis, approximately a third of the ranks, notes for pipes or other infrastructure relating to the ranks or sets of pipes, were what were called dead notes.
You would play a key, and so certain notes just would not play.
So, the hardware had really come to its stopping point, and then the relay system, which is the electrical control of it, finally just gave out.
In fact, our historian and other organist, Vincent Astor, was doing a program where the thing finally just quit.
It wouldn't play.
So, things were pretty much at a standstill.
And we had lots of what are called wind leaks, 'cause all of these pipes are making their sound from wind, which is generated by a large blower in the basement of the Theatre.
And, you could hear rushing wind coming out of the pipe chambers, all these places that had leaks.
So, all of these mechanical problems had to be addressed, to where we got all the parts of the unit orchestra playing again, had all the pitch registers, and all of them attractive, and essentially noiseless.
No pipe organ is totally noiseless, but for an instrument like this, which is built using very high wind pressures, that's how you get the big volume out of all 739 pipes, is that extra wind pressure gives you more weight in the room.
So, it was night and day.
To get it back, have every sound working and in its proper position was like a dream come true.
[organ music]
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