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.

The Steven and Jim Show

The next stop on my two-week-long piano crawl was Omaha's Rockbrook Village Shopping Center, the "Play Me, I'm Yours" stop that featured Paula Wallace's charming take on a Wurlitzer studio piano from the 1950s or 1960s (or maybe the 1970s). 

Paula gave the piano a Cinderella-themed look...right down to the presence of a fake mouse!

At any rate, if you're an American and your formal education took place between the 1950s and 1970s, chances are one of the schools you went to had a Wurlitzer studio piano...or one by competitors like Baldwin or Everett.

I didn't get to see Paula this time (although I met her at the "PMIY" kickoff at Memorial Park on 8-23-2013).

In fact, the only person I saw at Rockbrook Village the Tuesday (9-3-2013) I stopped by was...none other than Steven Raphael.

When I got to the Rockbrook Village gazebo, Steven was playing and singing "Ain't Misbehavin'." 

I knew Steven was (and still very much is) an excellent pianist (as a matter of fact, he got his own public access TV show on Cox Cable Omaha not long after moving here to Nebraska from California in 1998)...but I didn't know he sang, too.

Man, I really loved what Steven did with that Fats Waller-Andy Razaf classic from 1929. 

After that, Steven became the listener and turned the piano bench over to me. 

He wanted to know if I'd gotten any requests since the local "Play Me" kickoff...and I told him about a little boy named Joel, who saw me at Memorial Park after the art exhibit officially got under way. 

Joel's favorite song is "Baby Elephant Walk," from the 1962 movie "Hatari!" And I'd never even tried the song until "Play Me, I'm Yours" came to the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area...but now, because of Joel, I'm getting more comfortable with the Henry Mancini composition. (Speaking of Henry Mancini...after giving Steven "Baby Elephant Walk," I tried "Moon River..." from another movie, 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's.")

The conversation Steve and I had eventually came down to memory. 

And he wanted to know how I'd been able to remember people's names, what with me meeting so many during the local "PMIY."  

Steven found out that I try to repeat the person's name after I meet him or her; then I try to match the name with the person's face. 

Then he said something rather profound after I (sheepishly) told him that they tell me I've got a photographic memory: "Everybody's got a photographic memory in something." 

He's right.    

And what Steven Raphael said ranks right up there with one of my dad's favorite messages: "It's always the end of the world...for somebody."  

It comes down to what each of us tends to focus on.   

Steven and I had a ball as the next phase in our get-together shifted over to trading tunes with each other...and I ended up recording two of his numbers ("St. Louis Blues" and "New York, New York," the latter being the theme to the 1977 film of that name).

 

Then he turned around and caught me doing two more songs ["Ma (He's Making Eyes at Me)" and "In the Good Old Summertime"]

.

Anyway, the four numbers are now up on www.youtube.com.  

We kept it up until the clock struck 11:54 AM, when Steve and I went our separate ways (he to go back home not far from Rockbrook Village, I to go back home in the Dundee part of town). 

But I took a little detour...back to the Midtown Crossing Shopping Center.

And when I got back to that fun 1920s Werner upright, I did what I said I'd do: 

I fired up "The Crazy Otto."  

Speaking of fired up...wait 'til you read my next post. (It's about what happened at Omaha's most popular shopping center...another of the ten "non-rogue" street-piano sites in the area.)

Monday, September 2, 2013: M-A-G-I-C!

At first, it didn't look as if the second day of the ninth month of 2013 would have any magic to it.

And a snag ensued in the middle of the day.

But still, I'll never forget Labor Day 2013 as long as I get to draw breath. 

Just before 10:00 AM this past Monday, I arrived at Omaha's Tree of Life Sculpture (24th and L Sts.), site of a 1920s Richardson upright piano, decorated for the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area's leg of this year's "Play Me, I'm Yours" tour by Bill Hoover, who used a Haiku alphabet theme.

After parking in front of Southside Barbers (4526 S. 24th St., 68107), I started to walk up 24th Street when...a woman named Maria told me: "Hey! Come here! I want to talk to you!"

When somebody I don't know talks to me like that when I'm walking someplace, that's a red flag for me. 

Maria sat underneath one of the trees spaced along 24th Street in the south part of the Big O. When I sat down next to her, Maria announced that she was a Christian woman...and that she knew what people like me are like.

Oh?

She also informed me that she was drunk. (That after asking me to spend some time with her...and wanting to know what I was doing in South Omaha.) 

I told her: "I heard there's a piano a block away...and I just wanted to check it out."  

I had the feeling Maria was going to lecture me. I mean, I'd been there before with so many other people who'd been drinking and/or using some other drugs besides alcohol. (You know, it takes, for example, just One Stiff Drink before you've all at once got all the wisdom in the world.)

I wasn't going to have any more of that. I grew up with that kind of thing.

And so, when Maria pulled out a cigarette and began to light it up, I made my way toward the Tree of Life Sculpture...as quickly as I could.

When I got to the Richardson upright, I tested all its keys (and realized they were totally unaffected by the rain of the previous morning), took the music rack off, sat down, and thought of just what to start out with.

After a few seconds, I launched into Ritchie Valens' "Donna."

About three minutes later, I realized...four people were standing next to the old piano.

And they liked what I'd done with "Donna!"  

Marcos, Raimundo, Juan, and his young son Juan Jr. were the foursome who'd heard me do the flipside of "La Bamba."  

Man, I didn't want all the goodies to myself, so I asked them if any of the four also played the 88s.

I found out that Juan the Younger was taking lessons, so I traded places with him, took out my camcorder, and recorded footage of him trying out a song.

And I caught Marcos' playing on video, too...and, as soon as I get it all up on www.youtube.com, you'll be able to hear what Marcos and Juan, hijo, did. 

I had a chance to do some more playing (Juan the Elder even caught footage of me doing "Creeque Alley," a 1967 hit for the Mamas and the Papas) when...two more people stopped by.

Their eyes lit up when they heard ol' Richardson being played.

The two sets of eyes belong to a married couple: John McIntyre and Laura Vranes...the very couple who donated said piano to the "PMIY" cause. (John's a branch manager for a bank; Laura's a school librarian.) 

Here's what happened: John's grandmother sold milk and eggs to buy that piano back in the 1940s...only to, later, give the piano to her daughter, Barb (John's mom).  

Barb went on to okay the donation of that amazing piano to the "Play Me" exhibit.

If Barb McIntyre had made it to the sculpture this past Monday, she probably would've been as tickled to death about hearing somebody tickle the piano's keys as Laura and John were.

Speaking of tickled...I threw in "Tickled to Death," the 1899 rag written by Charles Hunter (AKA Robert Hampton). That morning, I tried to go all over the map, with tunes like "Chiapanecas," the 1933 Albert Ackley hymn "He Lives," Scott Joplin's "Peacherine Rag," a 1963 hit for the Orlons called "South Street," and so much more...when a mother and her three children strolled over to the piano.

And as a result, I got a chance to meet Marisol, her sons Maximo and Mauricio (I hope I got his name right!), and her daughter Marisol Jr.

First thing I thought of when I met Marisol the Elder and her three children: "Get them to actually touch a piano key!"

No problem at all.

In fact, Maximo, Mauricio, and Marisol the Younger were eager to show what they could do on that amazing upright under the Tree of Life Sculpture. And as a matter of fact, Marisol Jr. told her mom that she (Marisol Jr.) couldn't wait to get another crack at the Richardson.  

After Marisol Sr. and her three youngsters left to go home, I went back to the piano and played some more. And all that time, I'd tried to keep from clashing with the drivers who'd had their stereos cranked up as they were traveling on 24th Street.  

And I tried to get and stay mindful of people trying to use their cell phones.

One of those cell-phone users stopped by, taking a seat underneath the nearest tree to the Tree of Life Sculpture.

I found out her name's Lynn...and that she's a nurse. 

Well, Lynn, Laura, and I had a pretty good conversation. In fact, it was a very good conversation.

And eventually, Lynn told me she wanted to hear me do "Amazing Grace." (She also offered to sing it!) 

I played "Amazing Grace" the conventional way so that Lynn could sing the song...but she ended up leaving the site in order to get ready to go to her job.

When that happened, I turned John Newton's testimonial into a rag.

It was now Monday afternoon, and I fielded another request...this time, from a woman named Emilia.

Man, I'm lucky to have retained enough of my two years (1969-71) learning Spanish in high school to be able to converse with Emilia. As a result, I was able to find out she was looking for Santana's "Black Magic Woman."

Coming into Labor Day 2013, I'd never attempted this 1971 smash in my life.

But I dug right in and gave it a shot.

And the audience- which included a John McIntyre who'd come back from running an errand to join his wife Laura Vranes- enjoyed it.

Now I've got to find out who actually wrote "Black Magic Woman." In spite of what I told the audience, Tito Puente didn't come up with that song. (Tito penned a later Santana hit, "Oye Como Va.")

Well, it was now 12:35 PM (Central time), and I was ready to pack it in. I started to put the music rack (a two-piece job!) back on that stupendous Richardson upright piano when John offered to help me fasten the rack back on the piano.

Good thing the rack went back on...for four piano students (Bridget, Kate, Abby, and Emma), their dad (Pat), and two of their grandparents (Michael and Carol) made their way to the sculpture, adding to what was still a good-sized audience. To top it all off, Abby, Emma, and Kate brought sheet music with them. 

Bridget (the youngest of the four and the only one playing from memory) went first.

And the exercise she'd memorized cooked!

Kate was next up to bat...and she came up with Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D." This rendition received plenty of attitude from Kate.

And like Bridget before her, Kate received plenty of heartfelt applause.

Abby followed with Calvin Jones' most famous composition, "Whitewater Chopsticks." (It's the same selection that, when Gering, NE native Teresa Scanlan played it at the 2011 Miss America Pageant, helped her become the first Nebraskan to don the crown.)

Abby's version was excellent. Matter of fact, hers was an out-and-out killer...and the crowd let her know that.

Emma had to run the anchor leg...and run it knowing Abby had left the piano smoking.  

Well, Emma produced her own sparks. And she did it with a jazzy selection from the Mannheim Steamroller album "Fresh Aire."

 

With four excellent performances under their belts, Kate, Emma, Bridget, and Abby bowed to the audience, then waved to said audience.

A great time had by all.

Now it was time to go to Bellevue's Fontenelle Forest and try out the Wurlitzer spinet painted up by Bellevue University's Eric Luchian.

No such luck.

I got to the forest at 1:00 PM...only to find that the previous day's rains turned the Wurlitzer spinet's keys into 88 inanimate objects.

That still didn't detract from what turned out to be an excellent day...and I spent a couple of hours at my new safety valve: Midtown Crossing Shopping Center, the home of that 1920s Werner upright with the honky-tonk sound.

And with a morning and afternoon both full of wonderful memories, it turned out to be a magic (okay, M-A-G-I-C) day after all.

Extraordinary Talent...and Then Some

I belong to another music-oriented club besides the Great Plains Ragtime Society. In fact, I've been in this additional organization since 1984...the year it celebrated its first birthday.

It's the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society, the River City Theatre Organ Society.

Yesterday afternoon, RCTOS put on the 2013 edition of its annual fundraiser. Every year at this time, the club holds a concert at Omaha's Rose Theater, the one-time movie house (originally called the Paramount Theater; later the Astro) whose official current title is the Rose Blumkin Center for the Performing Arts. 

The place was packed.

And the talent was packed, too!

The theater's got a 3-manual, 21-rank Wurlitzer theater pipe organ that was built in 1927...and, currently, it's the only concert-ready theater organ in the Iowa-Nebraska-South Dakota area. 

Getting back to the talent being packed...this year's featured organist was Walt Strony, the Illinoisan-turned-Californian who was voted ATOS' Organist of the Year not once, but twice...in both 1991 and 1993.

Right from the first chords of his opener ("On the Sunny Side of the Street"), he showed the crowd just why. 

And when Walt followed that up with a medley from "My Fair Lady" and then his version of Mario Lanza's 1950 smash, "Be My Love," the Rose audience was in for one heck of a ride. 

Three selections later, Walt cued a silent movie, "Two Tars." (The two tars were none other than Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.)

Walt isn't just great. He's G-R-R-R-E-A-T!!

He and his unique style hit the theater-organ circuit in 1974 (at a time when Walt was 18)...at a time when RCTOS' 2008 featured organist, Donna Parker, was in her teens as well (and playing the organ at Los Angeles Dodgers games).   

After the showing of a movie that still proves to be some kind of funny, it was intermission time.

And after Walt came back out and fired up another number, the Pathfinders (a barbershop chorus group from Fremont, NE) took to the Rose Theater stage.

Last year, when Rob Richards played the Rose Wurlitzer, the Pathfinders turned out the concert with their movin', groovin' brand of a cappella singing...and proved to be so great that RCTOS invited them to come back for 2013.

The Pathfinders opened with a song called "Harmony" to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the International Barbershop Harmony Society...then brought back a tune they did in 2012, the 1967 hit "Lazy Day." ("Lazy Day" was how Spanky and Our Gang followed up their debut hit, "Sunday Will Never Be the Same.")

Fremont's Number One plus factor (well, I like to think so!) does the old, old ones, too...like "The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi."

One of the Pathfinders used to run RCTOS. His name is Greg Johnson, and he's no slouch as an organist, either.

Greg's successor as the club's president is no slouch, either. His name is Bob Markworth...who'd just been named ATOS Member of the Year for 2013. (Bob and his wife Joyce own a 1927 Kimball 3-manual, 24-rank theater pipe organ, the instrument locally known as "The Beast in the Basement.")  

Because of Greg, Bob, Joyce, and Jerry Pawlak (he's the club's secretary-treasurer), RCTOS membership grew exponentially throughout this early going of this 21st Century. 

The club now has 162 members. And you can't beat that with a stick!

Well, after the barbershoppers showed how "The Joint Is Jumpin'," Walt came back out to join them.

After Walt got the show (this year's show was titled "Let's Take a Musical Stroll") going, he talked about how some people ask him to play rock songs during his theater-organ concerts. 

Walt's answer is: "Forget it. You need a melody."

Guess what Walt Strony and the Pathfinders teamed up to do?

They  worked out "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."

By the Beatles.  

Oh, by the way...the 'Finders (formed in 1972, the year before Donna started playing at Dodger Stadium and two years prior to Walt's first theater-organ concert) recently did their thing at the IBHS competition in Toronto, ON, Canada...and ended up winning tenth place.

That's right: The Pathfinder Chorus is one of the WORLD'S ten best barbershop choruses.

No slouches are they.

Then Walt ran the concert's anchor leg by himself, closing it all out with a patriotic medley that featured the theme song from each of America's five military branches. (He invited veterans to stand up; veterans from four of the nation's five branches did just that...with only the Coast Guard lacking representation at yesterday's show.)

The medley continued with "The Stars and Stripes Forever" and closed out (the concert did, too) with what some people feel should replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as our national anthem: "God Bless America."  

Can't wait 'til next August...to see who's going to make the joint (ahem, the Rose Theater) jump. 

How about you?