To someone under the age of sixty the importance of cinema organs might need a bit of explanation. You’ve got to go back to the 1920s and 30s to understand the popular entertainment culture of the period.
There was radio in the home of course, but no telly. If you wanted to see pictures (and it was called ‘going to the pictures’), you had to leave home, stand in a queue for up to 30 minutes (more often than not in the driving rain) until you were called forward by a uniformed commissionnaire into the warm, dry sanctuary of the cinema,
There would usually be two films on offer, with an interval betwen them. If you were lucky, during the interval, the lights went up and an organist would rise out of the floor and begin playing music to entertain you. At the same time, and walking backwards, usherettes would sell icecreams, soft drinks and popcorn from trays hung about their shoulders.
These organs were originally expensive, but when the vogue had passed, they were ripped out and sold off in the 1960s (for a song?) At least one of these organs has found a permanent home – of all places – in a roadside garage in Derbyshire, another excellent recording opportunity arranged by the British Sound Recording Association.
Which just goes to show that there’s more in the Pipes in the Peaks than just petrol.
Another enjoyable listen, thanks! We’ve actually got a very active campaign in our area to save our old cinema, a Grade II* listed building and apparently the last remaining British cinema still with its original Christie organ.
More information about the campaign
Hi Mat
I find myself smiling throughout, as I listen to the recording it’s such a lovely sound. The tune Deep Purple has a great resonance for me; when I was learning the piano in WW2 we had the sheet music of this piece (the front cover of which was deep purple, of course) but it was way beyond my capability to play it. I’ve got a picture in my mind of me sitting at the piano in the front room mangling all the chords.
Fats Waller: I mangled my response to that cue in the interview; what I meant to say was that, as Dave Thorp said, he somehow fitted a Wurlitzer in his house but the whole thing was so large that he had to put bits of it into different rooms.
The recording was done in the open air, standing at the petrol pumps (you can just hear the organ in the background), two cars came past and, if you listen carefully, you can hear the swallows twittering as they swoop over our heads in the evening sunlight.