Wurlitzer

The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to simply as Wurlitzer, is an American company, formerly a producer of stringed instruments, woodwind, brass instruments, theatre organs, band organs, orchestrions, electronic organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes.

Over time Wurlitzer changed to producing only organs and jukeboxes, but it no longer produces either. The factory, in the same complex as that of the Eugene DeKleist company (another maker of band organs and orchestrions, acquired by Wurlitzer), is in North Tonawanda, New York, USA. The building is now home to a wide array of tenants ranging from an indoor batting cage to private apartments to various light industrial and commercial businesses. The building's current owner is in the midst of a vast restoration project and has recently replaced the original Wurlitzer sign with a new one.

Deutsche Wurlitzer, owner of the Wurlitzer Jukebox and Vending Electronics trademark, was acquired by the Gibson Guitar Corporation.

The firm's violin department, independently directed by Rembert Wurlitzer (1904–63) from 1949, became a leading international center for rare string instruments.

History

Wurlitzer is an American firm of instrument makers and dealers. Started in Cincinnati in 1853 by Franz Rudolph Wurlitzer (1831–1914), it was directed successively by his three sons until 1941, when it moved to Chicago. From importing musical instruments it turned in the 1880s to marketing automated instruments, including disc-changer machines and coin-operated pianos. The "Mighty Wurlitzer" theatre organ was introduced in 1910, followed by the successful coin-operated phonograph, or juke-box (1934–74). In 1909 the company began making harps that were far more durable than European prototypes, and from 1924 to the 1930s eight acclaimed models were available. The firm's violin department, independently directed by Rembert Wurlitzer (1904–63) from 1949, became a leading international centre for rare string instruments. Among Wurlitzer's electronic instruments, beginning with electric reed organs in 1947, the most important have been the fully electronic organs, especially the two-manual-and-pedals spinet type (from 1971 with synthesizer features) for domestic use.

The Wurlitzer Company came to an end sometime in the 1980s when Wurlitzer was bought by the Baldwin Piano Company. Although electronic organs are no longer manufactured, Baldwin places the "Wurlitzer" name on its lower-end line of pianos.

Theatre organs

Perhaps the most famous instruments Wurlitzer built were its pipe organs (from 1914 until around 1940), which were installed in theatres, homes, churches, and other public places. "The Mighty Wurlitzer" theatre organ was designed, originally by Robert Hope-Jones, as a "one man orchestra" to accompany silent movies. In all, Wurlitzer built over 2,200 pipe organs (and more theatre organs than the rest of the theatre organ manufacturers combined); the largest one originally built was the four-keyboard / 58-rank (set of pipes) instrument at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The Music Hall instrument is actually a concert instrument, capable of playing a classical as well as non-classical repertoire. It, along with the organ at the Paramount Theatre in Denver Colorado are the only Wurlitzer installations still in use that have dual consoles. While Denver's is the typical "master-slave" system, Radio City is the only surviving original Wurlitzer installation to have two identical and completely independent consoles playing the same organ.

Other large Wurlitzer organs still in their original locations include the Chicago Theatre in Chicago (the oldest); Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Virginia; Fox Theatre in Saint Louis, Missouri; Lorain Palace Theatre in Lorain, Ohio; Weinberg Center in Frederick, Maryland; Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan; Shea's Theatre in Buffalo, New York; Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, New York, Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda, New York; the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee; the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; Coleman Theatre in Miami, Oklahoma; the Denver Paramount Theatre in Denver, Colorado; the Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon and the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, Washington, the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, Washington, The Plaza Theatre, El Paso Texas, the Rose Theatre (originally Riviera), the Orpheum Theatre in Sioux City, Iowa, and the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Omaha, Nebraska. The Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was home to an impressive Wurlitzer organ on a lift that raised and lowered it from beneath the stage however, the console, lift, and blower of the Mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ were destroyed by the 2008 flood. The original organ at the Zeiterion Theatre, New Bedford, Massachusetts was sold to a private collector in the 1970s, then reinstalled and restored in the mid-1980s following a fundraising campaign publicized by the Standard-Times newspaper. Smaller instruments in the UK exist in their original installations, such as the Gaumont State Cinema, Kilburn and the Blackpool Tower Ballroom in the UK. These instruments are still being played several times a week.

)]] Another example of the large scale Mighty Wurlitzer can be found in the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum. The large four-manual, 16-rank Mighty Wurlitzer type 250 special was purchased by Werner Ferdinand von Siemens in 1929 and installed in the Siemens Concert Hall in August of that year. At the end of World War II the organ and the concert hall became property of the German state. The Mighty Wurlitzer survived the war, but was seriously damaged in 1962 by a fire, which was caused by a careless cigarette. From February 1963 to December 1963 Marvin E Merchant, a Berlin-stationed G.I., repaired the organ at his own expense. In 1982 it was given to the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, where it was restored completely and installed in the museum by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker GmbH & Co. in 1984. In the Musical Instruments Museum of this institute, where the organ is still located today, it is played every Saturday at 12:00 PM (noon).

Much larger and more versatile theatre organs have been built in the last 20 years by well-heeled private enthusiasts, the largest being the magnificent 5/80 organ at the Sanfilippo Estate in Barrington, Illinois. Other examples include the San Sylmar, California Nethercutt Collection 4/77, the Organ Stop Pizza, Mesa, Arizona 4/78, and the John Dickinson High School Wilmington, Delaware 3/66 mostly W.W. Kimball. These were built by a combination of older organs, with new pipework to achieve results.

New digital recreations of these instruments have also reached technological peaks in the last few years. Companies such as Walker Theatre Organs, Allen Organ Company and Rodgers Instruments have used high-level, digital sampling of original pipe organ sounds to incorporate into their electronic instruments, resulting in very close duplications of these original musical wonders (with the usual electronic-organ limitations).

In the 1950s, the American Association of Theatre Organ Enthusiasts (AATOE) was formed to preserve remaining theatre organs, including those by other builders, such as The John Compton Organ Co. LTD, Hill Norman and Beard, W.W. Kimball Company, M.P. Moller, Inc., Robert Morton Organ Company, George Kilgen and Sons, Marr and Colton Organ Company, the Bartola Musical Instrument Company (Barton Organ Company), and the Wicks Organ Company. The AATOE is now known as the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS). and there is a smaller but comparable society in the UK, the Cinema Organ Society.

Wurlitzers in Britain

There were a number of Wurlitzers in Britain in the period before the Second World War (1939–45). The first was a very small, six-rank instrument installed at the Picture House, Walsall in the West Midlands. The organ is now located in the Congregational Church in Beer, Devon, a small fishing village on the south coast, where it is now being restored. The percussions and "toy counter" division were removed and re-cycled when the organ was installed in the church, since it was not considered necessary for church purposes. Compatible replacements are now being sourced and fitted to replace those removed. Before the instrument was bought by the church it had been in a private residence in Sedgely, Staffordshire, after its removal from the cinema.

The second to be installed was also a two-manual six-rank instrument. This was at the Palace Cinema in Tottenham, North London. It was opened by the organist Jack Courtnay on 6 April 1925. This Wurlitzer remained at the Palace Cinema until 1957 when it was sold to the Grammar School at Rye, East Sussex. Rye College, as it is now known, has been home to this Wurlitzer ever since. Originally the console was installed sideways-on a balcony above the school hall. In recent years "Friends of Rye Wurlitzer" have raised funds to move the organ's console onto its own lift rising from beneath the stage.

Many Wurlitzers were located in larger cinemas and broadcasts were regularly made from them by the BBC. The more famous of these organs were at the Empire Cinema in London, The Tower Ballroom Blackpool and at the Granada cinema in Tooting - which is currently undergoing a lengthy restoration. It was recently played in public for the first time in 33 years. British organist Reginald Dixon was well known for his performances and broadcasts on the Blackpool organ.

The Trocadero Elephant and Castle Wurlitzer was the largest organ ever shipped to the UK, installed in 1930 for the grand opening of the 3,400-seater Cinema. Organist Quintin Maclean is associated with the instrument. This was closely followed in size by the Paramount/ODEONS at Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. The Cinema Organ Society has an extensive list of British cinema organs.

In 1939 the Blackpool Opera House organ, designed by Horace Finch, was the last new Wurlitzer to be installed in the UK. The Granada, Kingston also received a Wurlitzer in or around 1939, but most of this came from an earlier installation in Edinburgh. This was the last Wurlitzer installation to be opened and Reginald Dixon was at the console.

The Worthing Assembly hall houses the largest Wurlitzer organ console in Europe. This console was installed in 1981 after being brought from Blackpool. Originally built in the late 1890s, the organ was re-conditioned and brought back up to service in the 1960s. It was then bought by the national organ trust in the 1980s and installed in Worthing in 1981. The organ has been slowly upgraded to an electric air pump system, programmable pre-sets, and a full pipe system.

Many Wurlitzer organs have survived and are installed in private homes, town halls, concert halls and ballrooms throughout the country. The largest fully functioning Wurlitzer in a British cinema today is the four-manual organ in the Gaumont State Cinema in Kilburn, London (now a bingo hall). The Scarborough Fair Collection features two Wurlitzers, used both for tea dance's and regular concerts.

The St Albans Organ Theatre offers monthly concert demonstrations of a three-manual, ten-rank instrument. Originally installed in the Empire music hall (later the Granada) in Edmonton, North London in 1933 and opened by American organist Don Baker, this Wurlitzer was regularly featured by the famous Granada team of top organists. Fully restored in 1992, an unusual feature of this instrument is the provision of a dedicated chamber for percussion, controlled by an additional expression pedal. The installation at St. Albans includes a Weber Duo-Art grand piano playable from the Wurlitzer console.

The Villa Marina Arcade in Douglas, Isle of Man houses a Wurlitzer built in 1929. It was in use at the City Cinema Leicester until 1957. After a period of storage, it was bought for private use by Allan Hickling, who installed the Wurlitzer in his house, where it became well known and was played by organist Brian Sharp on BBC Radio 2 programme “The Organist Entertains”. Acquired by the Isle of Man Government in 1989, it became popular entertaining tourists at Summerland until its closure in 2004. The Wurlitzer has now been fully restored by organist, Len Rawle and is the focal point of the newly refurbished Villa Marina Arcade.

Band organs

The Wurlitzer Company began producing mechanical organs in the late 1890s, which were small organs, playing from a pinned barrel and powered by either steam or cranked by hand. Many of these organs have cases finished in dark (and sometimes black) wood, with gold incised designs, not unlike those of the European manufacturers of barrel organs. As electric motors became more feasible at the turn of the century, the organs made a shift to this new source, and the music source was changed from pinned barrels to perforated paper rolls similar to a player piano roll.

This roll would be electrically driven across a reader consisting of a line of small holes with locations corresponding to those on the paper roll, and when the openings of the roll would match up with the holes on the reader, a pneumatic system would play the appropriate note on the appropriate rank of pipes, or it would turn on accompaniment percussions such as a glockenspiel, or turn on drums or cymbals. Some larger organs such as the style 157 and style 165 have duplex roll frames, on which one roll plays while the other rewinds, allowing for continuous music. Each paper roll contained about 10 songs, but during the Great Depression, this was changed to 6 longer songs, in order to save money on arranging.

It should be noted that almost all Wurlitzer band organs are in some way or another copied from a design by a European manufacturer. For example, the style 105 (and style 104) were copied from a Gerbruder Bruder barrel organ, the style 146 (the only difference being that the portions of the façade covering the drum wings were removed), the style 157 was copied from a Gavioli special style of organ (only 1 or 2 of this style of organ is known to exist; the former organ at Dorney Park was one, but it was destroyed in a fire), and the style 165 is copied from the Gerbruder Bruder "Elite Apollo Orchester".

The only substantial changes between these organs and the originals they were based upon is that the Wurlitzer models is that they operated on Wurlitzer's unique roll scale. These included the 46-note style 125 roll (used by styles 104, 105, 125, and smaller organs that saw less production), the wider 46-mote 150 roll (used by styles 146, 153, and other less common mid-size styles), or the still wider 75-note 165 roll (used by styles 157, 165, and larger special organ models). Due to Wurlitzer's success and domination of the market, many smaller American manufacturers adopted scales similar to Wurlitzer's, but to little effect.

The different models of Wurlitzer organ that are copied from European organs are speculated to originate with the practice of Wurlitzer "converting" foreign organs to play their roll scales for a fee (as it was easier for an American organ owner to acquire new rolls from Wurlitzer), and some surviving examples of various models are indeed organs made by foreign manufacturers, with modifications made by Wurlitzer to serve as the basis of a new style.

The production of Wurlitzer organs ceased in 1942, the last organ to leave the factory being a style 165 organ in a 157 case (done because Wurlitzer had an extra 157 case still in the factory and the owner didn't mind the change). During the Great Depression leading up to the end of production, various cost cutting measures were made, such as the substitution of brass horn and trumpet pipes for ones made of wood (though arguably, the brass pipes produced a shrill and unpleasant sound, thus causing the change to the mellower wooden sound).

Known band organ models (now known as fairground organs) once produced by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company of North Tonawanda, New York, USA and information regarding currently active models and their locations include:
{| class="wikitable" |- !style="width:4em;"| Style: ! Active organ information and locations: |- | #18 | N/A |- | #103 | Flying Horses Carousel, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, USA |- | #104 | Merry - Go - Round museum SBNO |- | #105 | Museum Carousel, Museum of Carousel Art and History, Sandusky, Ohio, USA

DeBence Antique Music World, 1261 Liberty Street, Franklin, Pennsylvania, USA |- | #125 | 1901 Parker Carousel, Heritage Center of Dickinson County, Abilene, Kansas, USA |- | #126 | Mike's collection , under restoration |- | #145-B | Lakeside Carousel, International Market World, Auburndale, Florida, USA |- | #146-A | Dr. Floyd L. Moreland Carousel, Casino Pier, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, USA

1920 Allan Herschell Carousel, Ross Park, Binghamton, New York, USA |- | #146-B | 1912 Parker Carousel, Burnaby Village Museum, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

1925 Allan Herschell Carousel, Recreation Park, Binghamton, New York, USA

1926 Wurlitzer 146-B Band Organ (modified with a Wurlitzer 153 Band Organ facade) at 1928 Paragon Park Carousel, Nantasket Beach, Hull, Massachusetts, USA |- | #147 | N/A |- | #148 | DeBence Antique Music World, 1261 Liberty Street, Franklin, Pennsylvania, USA |- | #150 | 1906 Bartholomew Murphy Carousel, City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

1931 PTC Carousel, Idlewild Park, Ligonier, Pennsylvania |- | #153 | 1898 Antique Carousel, Canobie Lake Park, Salem, New Hampshire, USA

1913 Herschell Spillman Carousel, Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan, USA

1914 Bushnell Park Carousel, Bushnell Park, Hartford, Connecticut, USA

1925 Spillman Engineering Carousel, Tuscora Park, New Philadelphia, Ohio, USA

1926 Dentzel Carousel, Kennywood Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1870 Midway Carousel, Michigan's Adventure, Muskegon, Michigan, USA, Cedar Point,SBNO Sandusky, Ohio, USA, and Dorney Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania

1914 Mangels-Illions Grand Carousel, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Columbus, Ohio, USA |- | #155 | 1909 Wurlitzer 155 Band Organ (model nicknamed "Monster"), Elitch Gardens Carousel, Kit Carson County Fairgrounds, Burlington, Colorado, USA |- | #157 | 1903 Looff Carousel, Port Dalhousie Park, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada.

1928 Spillman Carousel, Public Museum of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA

1926 PTC Carousel #79, SBNO Kings Island, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

1967 Cinderella's Golden Carousel (Dentzel Carousel), Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida, USA |- | #160 | Band Organ (model nicknamed "Mammoth") (modified in 1915 to a Wurlitzer Style 165[?]), Joyland Amusement Park, Wichita, Kansas, USA |- | #165 | 1897 Herschell Spillman Carousel (2 Band Organs), Coolidge Park, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

1926 Band Organ at 1921 Dentzel Carousel, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, Maryland, USA

1912 Band Organ at 1911 Looff carousel, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa Cruz, California, USA

1915 Mangles Carmel Grand Carousel (Facade is made by Gavioli) Rye Playland Park, Rye, New York USA.

Circus World Museum - Baraboo Wisconsin

Jasper Sanfilippo Collection, Victorian Palace, Barrington Hills, Illinois, USA |- | #166 | N/A |- | #180 | Jasper Sanfilippo Collection, Victorian Palace, Barrington Hills, Illinois, USA |}

Some orchestrations made by the company can be found at Clark's Trading Post, Lincoln, New Hampshire, USA, the Music Hall, Nevada City, Montana, USA, and the Jasper Sanfilippo Collection at Victorian Palace, Barrington Hills, Illinois, USA. The company's patents, trademarks and assets were acquired by the Baldwin Piano Company with their purchase of the keyboard division of Wurlitzer in 1988.

Jukeboxes

The Wurlitzer was the iconic jukebox of the Big Band era, to the extent that Wurlitzer came in some places to be a generic name for any jukebox. Wurlitzer's success was due to a first rate marketing department (headed by future Indiana Senator Homer Capehart), the reliable Simplex record changer, and the designs of engineer Paul Fuller who created many landmark cabinet styles in the "lightup" design idiom. Although Wurlitzer ceded the crown of industry leader to rival Seeburg in the 1950s, Fuller's designs are so emblematic of jukeboxes in general that 1940s era Wurlitzers are often used to invoke the Rock n' Roll period in films and television.

Replica jukeboxes bearing the Wurlitzer name are still available. The more recent models are able to play CDs, as well as brand new special edition units also with iPod connectivity.

Electric pianos

From 1955 to 1982 the company also produced the highly regarded Wurlitzer electric piano series, an electrically-amplified piano variant.

Electric guitars

The Wurlitzer brand was applied to several lines of electric guitars during the 1960s. The first family of solid body electric guitars and basses were manufactured by the Holman Company of Neodosha, Kansas, USA from late 1965 until 1967. Models included the Cougar, Wildcat and Gemini, all of which had different body shapes. The majority of the Kansas made instruments were guitars, with only a handful of basses being manufactured.

The second family of guitars debuted in 1967, and were manufactured in Italy by the Welson company, and were semi-hollow in construction.

References

External links

Wurlitzer Jukeboxes

Deutsche-Wurlitzer USA

Wurlitzer Band Organs

Wurlitzer Guitar history

Wurlitzer at the Open Directory Project

Category:Electronic organ manufacturing companies Category:Pipe organ builders Category:Electric and electronic keyboard instruments Category:Jukebox manufacturers Category:Mechanical musical instruments