Well, it was a Valliant effort (and then some)

Last year, when Rob Richards teamed up with the Fremont, NE barbershop chorus known as the Pathfinders to deliver the Rose Theater's annual River City Theatre Organ Society concert, I didn't get to blog about it.

Had to rush right off and go to a church function afterwards.

No such circumstances this time around; I just got back this afternoon from the 2019 RCTOS extravaganza at the Rose.

I enjoyed it...just as I enjoyed the 2018 offering (despite it running overtime and me having to worry about lateness to that church function I committed to).

Still...when this year's bill was announced, I had mixed feelings. (That's my tough luck.)

I was excited to find out Brett Valliant was going to play the Rose's three-manual, 21-rank 1927 Wurlitzer pipe organ. (Saw one of his YouTube videos- the one where he played "Build Me Up, Buttercup-" and got excited.)

And, in 2005, I saw pianist Robert Glaser perform his brand of jazz at Omaha's since-closed Grande Olde Players Theater, which, at the time, put on a monthly jam session for local jazz performers.

Since then, I've loved Robert's way with a tune...his flair for turning a familiar song on its ear (such as "Ticket to Ride").

Today, Robert brought his Sing Sing Swing Orchestra to the venue at 20th and Farnam. Like Brett, Robert and his seven fellow instrumentalists in Sing Sing Swing play up a storm. And the band's featured vocalist, Julie Baker, sings up a storm. 

Julie was the first female performer to be part of a Concert at the Rose since...2011, when another Nebraska big band, the sixteen-member Swingtones, shared the bill with Ballet Nebraska and organ great Dave Wickerham. (At that time, pianist Jennifer Novak-Haar and saxophonists Deb Lund and Sarah Stratton were in the Swingtones.)

Well, if you dig into "Boston's Blog's" archives, you'll find a post built around Lady Gaga's 2016 observation that the music business is a...well, you know, a boys' club. Not just in rock, R&B, pop, and country, either.

And that's why I had mixed feelings (flinch).

So...I bit my tongue this afternoon.

And opened up my ears.

And heard Brett wow the audience with tunes like "Vanessa," "Tango Tedesco," the "South Pacific" gem "Bali Hai," "Atlanta, GA," Pietro Deiro's "Pietro's Return," Disney mainstay "Go the Distance," "Maple Leaf Rag," "Over the Rainbow," "Little White Lies," and "You Raise Me Up..." to say nothing of a medley of selections from a Gioachino Rossini opera, 1817's "La Gazza Ladra," or "The Thieving Magpie."

Almost a century after "La Gazza Ladra" debuted, theater organs started popping up, and the first people to play them in public often took operas and other classical works and adapted them for those Mighty Wurlitzers and competing brands. (They weren't initially called "unit orchestras" for nothing...and Brett showed that today.)

After a fifteen-minute intermission, the man from Wichita, KS came back to fire up "Wake Up and Live." 

He then turned the show over to Robert and Co.

Sing Sing Swing jumped out of the gate with "In the Mood" before Julie jumped up to sing 1964's "L-O-V-E," Nat King Cole's next-to-last chart single during his lifetime.

"One O'Clock Jump" followed before Julie grabbed the mike back from Robert to sing "That Old Black Magic." The two of 'em teamed up to sing "Chattanooga Choo Choo," and then it was all instrumental after that, with the orchestra teaming up with Brett to do "Sing, Sing, Sing" and an encore of "In the Mood."

Well...what can I say, after they had me moving in my seat to the music?

How about...encore?

David conquers Goliath...again!

Well, this afternoon, noted theater organist Dave Wickerham came back for another taste of the three-manual, 21-rank Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ at Omaha's Rose Blumkin Performing Arts Center.

It was the second time in three years that the Californian-turned-Arizonan-turned-Michigander concertized for the Omaha-based River City Theatre Organ Society. 

And just as he did in 2015, Dave hit it out of the park.

Except this time, it was a tape-measure home run. 

Dave kicked off his 2017 show with a "Happy" medley, where he hitched "C'mon, Get Happy" to "I Want to Be Happy."

Once the medley became water under the bridge, Dave- now the co-manager/organist in residence at the Crystal Theater in Crystal Falls, MI- told the huge audience at the Rose Theater that he wanted to take the Omaha crowd through several musical themes.

With that in mind, Dave went back to what's now the only concert-ready theater pipe organ in the whole state of Nebraska and delivered Scott Joplin's "Original Rags," then followed it up with a medley from "Mary Poppins," the 1964 theatrical movie that put Julie Andrews on the map for good. (All she did was pick up an Oscar for playing the title role.)

Keep the word "movie" in mind as you keep reading this post. 

Before attending today's concert, I thought "Colonel Bogey March" was written for the 1957 big-screen smash (and seven-Oscar winner) "The Bridge on the River Kwai." 

It wasn't.

The tune goes all the way back to 1914, when a man named Kenneth J. Alford (1881-1945) came up with the march. (His real name was Frederick J. Ricketts.)

When Dave played "CBM" today, he really made the audience feel it. 

Another theme Dave wanted to touch on was the Great American Songbook...and the first move in that direction was to fire up "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "Take the 'A' Train," two tunes made famous by Duke Ellington (who cowrote "Light" while one of his most famous arrangers, Billy Strayhorn, penned "'A' Train").  

Leonard Cohen's most familiar number, "Hallelujah," got into Dave's menu...and gave lie to the idea that songs written right here in the 21st Century can't work if played on a theater organ.

And then...the Encino Man paid tribute to John Williams (that's right, five-time Academy Award-winning John Williams).

After the ensuing medley (the longest medley in this afternoon's concert), it was intermission time.

Fifteen minutes or so later, Dave got back on the now 90-year-old organ to play three dance tunes from the 1920s...two of which were "Doin' the Raccoon" (a 1928 ditty written by Raymond Klages and J. Fred Coots) and the more familiar "Charleston."  

Then the audience was treated to a "Pie Fight." 

Actually, the film's title is "The Battle of the Century," and it came out in 1927- the very year the then one-year-old Paramount Theater (the Rose's original name) received the organ Dave triumphed on. 

And all that's left of this Stan Laurel-Oliver Hardy romp are the opening credits and...well, the three-minute pie fight (the biggest one ever filmed up to that time). 

In years past, RCTOS concerts paired a big-name theater organist with a local act.

This time, the Rose Theater audience became the local act...in the form of an audience singalong. And after cuing up the three-minute-and-forty-second movie, Dave accompanied the crowd in longtime singalong favorites like "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "Bicycle Built for Two." 

Now it was back to the movies for Dave as he turned in a great version of the Oscar-winning "My Heart Will Go On," one of the many reasons the 1997 movie "Titanic" remains so memorable. 

Time was running out on the performance, and Dave knew it...so he went on and knocked out two Cole Porter numbers, two by Irving Berlin, and two by George Gershwin in a "2-2-2" medley. 

It's hard to stage a Rose Theater Mighty Wurlitzer get-together without a patriotic medley...and this year's edition passed the test, too. This year's patriotic tribute started with the theme songs from all five of America's Armed Forces branches (from "The Caissons Go Rolling Along" to a stirring, stirring version of "The Marines' Hymn"), went to "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)," and morphed into "America the Beautiful."

"God Bless America" and "You're a Grand Old Flag" would've made the cut, too...if they hadn't been part of the singalong. 

We weren't going to let Dave get away to his next stop (Manchester, England) without an encore.

Result: Dave put an exclamation point on the end of his Rose romp by performing a classical piece. (Man, I wish I knew its title!) 

If you like theater organ music and you've never heard Dave Wickerham, check his music out...whether it's in person, on YouTube, or some other way.

You'll come away happy, too. 


 

Enjoying the Ride

That's exactly what a packed house at Omaha's Rose Blumkin Performing Arts Center did this past Sunday.

Doing the driving (courtesy of the River City Theatre Organ Society): Donnie Rankin, the 27-year-old Ohioan who's been wowing theater-organ audiences all over the world for the last nine years; and the Pathfinders, that award-winning barbershop chorus from Fremont, NE.

When Donnie climbed aboard the Rose Theater's three-manual, 21-rank Wurlitzer pipe organ (built in 1927) to deliver Busby Berkeley's "All's Fair in Love and War," he became the youngest performer to ever do a Rose Theater RCTOS concert. [He made club history a little after 3:00 PM (Central time).]

This year's program was titled "From Broadway to Hollywood," and Donnie made that message stick right off the bat. His next tune was George Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away from Me," from the 1937 movie "Shall We Dance." And that was followed up by a number Michel Legrand and the husband-and-wife team of Alan and Marilyn Bergman penned 32 years later for a movie called "The Happy Ending:" "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" 

Donnie showed his sense of humor right from the start, riffing from time to time about the Rose organ rising from (or getting lowered into) the pit: "I'd better not move to my left, or I'll fall into the abyss." 

Speaking of movies...after Donnie played "What Are You Doing," he gave a little demonstration of just what a theater organ was supposed to do for a silent film. (That's why Robert Hope-Jones developed the instrument in the first place; the folks at the Wurlitzer Company originally termed these products as "unit orchestras.") 

We then got to see- and hear Donnie cue- "One Week," one of Buster Keaton's early (1920) silents. (Buster was trying to use the title span of time to put up a prefab house, and...well, uh...)

Donnie R. closed out the first half of the 2016 RCTOS-Rose extravaganza with "Petite Waltz." 

When he came back out for Part Two, the man from the Akron area fired up two disparate selections: "The King Kong March" (from the 1933 movie) and good ol' "Take Five." (The 1958 Paul Desmond tune that put Dave Brubeck on the map was my favorite number in the whole show this past Sunday.)

Then came the Pathfinder Chorus.

Jacob Ritter's 90-member a cappella group- one of the twenty best barbershop choruses in the whole world- lived up to the billing and more, stirring up the crowd with six numbers. [The standouts were "Good Vibrations" (that's right, that "Good Vibrations") and a medley consisting of this country's five service-academy songs.] 

The barbershoppers' sixth number was actually a Pathfinders-Rankin collaboration that also celebrated America.

After the Pathfinders received thunderous applause, Donnie ran the concert's anchor leg...where he delivered "Over the Rainbow," the tune the American Film Institute determined was the greatest of the 100 greatest film songs. 

Donnie closed it out by playing a "Star Trek" medley to celebrate the franchise's 50th anniversary. (That's right- on Thursday, 9-8-1966, Americans got their first opportunity to turn on their TV sets and watch NBC's new sci-fi series about James Kirk and his crew. And three months and two days later, the Beach Boys took their "Good Vibrations" to the top of Billboard's US pop chart.) 

Well, actually...the "Star Trek" tribute didn't close it out.

Donnie came back to knock out Milton DeLugg's "Rollercoaster," used in another old TV show, CBS' What's My Line? 

In all, "From Broadway to Hollywood" clocked in at about two hours and a half.

And the ride was so enjoyable the 150 minutes just flew right by. 

Thanks, Donnie! Thanks, Pathfinders!

High Energy

Finally, finally able to get back to blogging! (Things got so hectic these last sixteen days that I couldn't get back to the computer to post this...and I apologize for that.)

Sixteen days ago, Dave Wickerham (one of the best theater organists on Planet Earth) came to Omaha, where he knocked 'em dead at the Rose Blumkin Performing Arts Center, the facility better known as the Rose Theater.

It'd been three years since Dave previously concertized here in the Big O...and when he came back for the 2015 version of the River City Theatre Organ Society's annual fundraiser, he was in fine, fine form at the theater's three-manual, 27-rank 1927 Wurlitzer.

Initial fears were that not as many people this time around were interested in watching the Encino, CA native punish (okay, coax) the only concert-worthy theater pipe organ installation in Nebraska.  

But a great crowd at the Rose destroyed those fears.

And the audience members watched him lead off with a medley of "Get Happy" and "I Want to Be Happy."

We in the audience got happy, all right...and after the applause died down, Dave got into some banter, then launched into some of the Great American Songbook.

Dave W. kicked that segment of the concert off by saluting Irving Berlin, throwing in tunes like "What'll I Do," "Always," and the one that put Irving on the map for good: "Alexander's Ragtime Band." 

The next medley focused on...rain.

That's right, rain. Dave put together "Singin' in the Rain," "Laughter in the Rain," and "Stormy Weather." (Don't laugh at the inclusion of "Laughter," the youngest song in the concert at forty years of age. After all, Neil Sedaka had that Great American Songbook ethos, too...as did other Brill Building graduates such as Carole King and Barry Mann- to say nothing of the teams of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.) 

Now the focus was back on a single composer, this time George Gershwin...and this time, the organ tried to punish Dave by going into cipher mode.

He wasn't having any of that.

All Dave did was continue to play through the cipher during a medley that included favorites like "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Strike Up the Band."

It's not really an RCTOS concert at the Rose without a silent movie, and Dave turned to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy for this year's showing. This time, it was the 1926 film called "Putting Pants on Philip," where Stan played a kilt-wearing Scotsman and Ollie was the American who ended up taking him in.

The movie did its job, adding to the fun of the outing better known as "Let's Get Lost in the Music."

"Putting Pants" led to a fifteen-minute intermission; after that, Dave came back out...this time paying tribute to Duke Ellington and his longtime arranger, Billy Strayhorn. The tunes: "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and "Take the 'A' Train."

By the way...it's also not an RCTOS concert at the Rose if a nationally-known theater organist isn't paired up with a local act.

And for 2015, the local act was a five-man group known as Omaha Street Percussion.

When Omaha Street Percussion walked onto the Rose Theater stage and began to take to all those unorthodox forms of percussion (trash cans, trash can lids, etc.), the energy at the theater kicked up a notch...actually, a bunch of notches.

After the first selection, the men of OSP launched an audience-participation exercise: "We'll give you a beat, and we want you to clap to it." The left half of the throng got a different beat to clap to than the right half. 

The audience ate it all up, all right.

As one concertgoer put it: "High energy."

Two high-energy numbers later, Dave himself jumped in, joining OSP in the famous "Tico Tico." 

With the crowd all pumped up after OSP's segment of "Let's Get Lost," Dave ran the event's anchor leg, delivering a medley that he played at this year's American Theatre Organ Society convention (held mostly in Philadelphia, PA, with Atlantic City, NJ taking on the convention's other events).

Yep...it was a patriotic medley. (And yep...it brought the house down at this year's ATOS get-together.)

"Yankee Doodle" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" got in there as part of Dave Wickerham's song cycle. "The Girl I Left Behind" and "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" were in there, too, along with "This Is My Country."

For the medley's last song, Dave motioned the audience into standing up.

And then, he took it all home with "God Bless America." (Many, if not most in the crowd, sang along.)

With Dave showing why RCTOS brought him back to the Big O to concertize, and with Omaha Street Percussion more than holding its own (okay...that's a real understatement!), this was one of the best fundraisers the local ATOS chapter ever staged.

All right...it was THE best!

Legends

Yesterday afternoon, I made it out to the Rose Blumkin Performing Arts Center (20th and Farnam Sts., Omaha, NE 68102) to check out the River City Theatre Organ Society's (a club I joined in 1984, the year it celebrated its first birthday) annual extravaganza.

Darn right it was a humdinger!

The featured artist was Portland, OR native- and theatre organ legend- Jonas Nordwall. 

Right from the start of the concert, Jonas showed the style that's enabled him to perform on four continents (North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe). It's a style where he's equally adept at both classical playing and pop music.

The outing was titled "A Sentimental Musical Journey," and Jonas started out with (what else?) "Sentimental Journey."

Right after that, he told the Rose Theater's audience (the place was 90% full) that a sentimental musical journey doesn't always have to be confined to the songs of the 1930s and 1940s...then he went out and proved his point by going back to the venue's three-manual, 21-rank Wurlitzer pipe organ (built in 1927) to fire up three tunes that were popular in the 1960s: "Spanish Flea," by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass; "Unchained Melody," which was popularized in the 1950s by Roy Hamilton, Al Hibbler, and bandleader Les Baxter (in separate recordings) before the Righteous Brothers got hold of it a decade later; and Frankie Valli's first smash as a solo artist, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." 

Jonas didn't leave the 1950s behind, covering that decade with Erroll Garner's most famous tune, "Misty." And the man with thirty highly-acclaimed recordings to his credit jumped into the 1980s by stringing together four numbers from "Les Miserables," including "Bring Him Home" and the one that made a name out of Susan Boyle, "I Dreamed a Dream."  

Just YOU try to tell someone it's impossible to feel sentimental about the Carter-Reagan-Bush the Elder years.  

Jonas showed his classical side by playing Manuel de Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance," and to top off the first half of the extravaganza, our featured artist cued a 1929 silent movie, "Big Business." (In it, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy tried to sell James Finlayson a Christmas tree. And no, Stan and Ollie weren't successful.)

Jonas Nordwall's got the kind of music you can close your eyes and really visualize. 

Well, I like to think so!

The organist for Rip City's First United Methodist Church came back out for the second half of the show by knocking out "Pietro's Return," a 1913 march by accordion legend Pietro Deiro. Jonas- who took up the squeezebox at the age of four- then shared an anecdote about Pietro's brother Guido...who happened to be married for a time to Mae West. (That's right...THAT Mae West!)  

Then Jonas turned the show over to another accordion legend...Omaha's very own Johnny Ray Gomez.

Jonas actually turned it over to a two-man band, for it was Johnny Ray and his namesake son, keyboardist Johnny Ray Gomez IV.

Johnny Ray- actually Johnny Ray III- teamed up with Johnny Ray the Younger to deliver a lighthearted, freewheeling, rollicking set that started out with a mashup of "12th Street Rag" and "The Glow Worm." The Two Gomezes then fused together "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Only You (and You Alone)," two of the biggest hits recorded by the Platters...the singing group Johnny Ray IV served as music director/pianist during the second half of the 1980s before he came back to Nebraska to start his own music production company, OnTrack, Inc.

Johnny Ray the Elder then stated: "We haven't done a polka."

And that was all the more reason for the Two Johnny Rays to switch the music to the durable "Just Because."

JRG IV got the spotlight next as he and his dad eased on into Floyd Cramer's "Last Date," followed by JRG III musically paying tribute to those veterans (and veterans' spouses) who'd made it to the Rose.

Their last tune together was Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire," featuring the keyboard work of IV.

After that, I was hoping that the three men would take the next tune(s).

Didn't happen yet...for Jonas went back to the Wurlitzer and covered the next two numbers by himself: "My Way" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever," the former a tribute to Joyce Markworth, the RCTOS member (and club president Bob's wife) who unexpectedly passed away this past March. 

The two numbers proved to be enough to merit Jonas a well-deserved standing ovation...and that ovation proved to be enough to lead Jonas and the Two Johnny Rays to, at last, team up...for "Sweet Georgia Brown."  

Well, that did it...RCTOS really nailed it. Made those hundred of people at the Rose happy...happy to be witness to three legends.