My brother sent me the following "YouTube" link to Ethel Smith playing the Hammond Organ. This is the first time I have ever heard her playing. (Yes, I know -- I live a very deprived existence!)

Actually, she really was an incredible organist. Just watch her fingers fly over the keyboards and see her very quick stop changes. It's just hard to get past the tinny sound of the Hammond organ as she registered it. Would love to hear what she could have done on a Wurlitzer theatre organ!

This particular clip is a real hoot!

Charles,

That clip is from the Esther Williams MGM musical titled "Bathing Beauty". Ethel plays a number of songs in it. The movie also stars Red Skelton, Harry James, Xavier Cugat. I have an extra copy on VHS if you would like to see it.

Mike

Love the shoes, love the hair, love the outfit and more than anything, that lady can play! Wow! Why haven't I seen her before. I just love the style they had in the day. I agree Charles, imagine her on a Wurlizter.

Fred

Fab...love it..

Another of my favorite ladies is Winnifred Atwell, famous in the UK and Australia, almost unknown over here

Missy and I own this movie and have watched this scene over and over as it is one of our favorites in all "moviedom".

In addition to Ethel's superb playing and footwork, the cimematography is wonderful. That circular camera work looking down is great. Towards the end of the scene, you can see the boom crossing over the shot.

If you put it on surround sound and edit the treble and bass it is really something.

When I was a corporate trainer for the airline, I used to use it as an opener to get the room's attention and to get the adrenaline flowing.

Thanks so much for brining it to the attention of our forum readers. This is a true piece of Hollywood at it's best and we most likely will never see it again.

Another wonderful scene from another movie it Anne Miller dancing to, "Shakin The Blues Away". Again, we will never see anything like that again.

That is simply amazing. What a find. Charles-Richard, thanks for sharing.

now im hooked
Amazon had some of her stuff ordered 3 of her cd's

I almost get dizzy watching it!
That's incredible! That's something I've always wanted to learn - how to play the piano. Although something tells me that I'd never be able to play like that!

~Fred

I've been playing the organ for 6 1/2 years and I can't play like that.

I started piano lessons when I was 8 or 9 but I was always more enthralled by the organ. My dad wasn't unfortunately. I think he envisioned a cacophony of Hammond a go-go. I had to wait until I got my first apartment and I bought a 2nd hand organ. Havn't got one at the moment but I've been out to look at a few that have been advertized locally, most are trashed though, but a good one will turn up eventually. Problem with them is if they need repairing there aren't too many guys around anymore who can fix them, especially in small places like this, unlike a piano which providing it's not cracked can always be tuned.

I've been playing the organ for about 4 years now but will never be able to make my fingers fly like in those videos. What make of organ do you have vintageroyal611?

Gary

This is a 13 year old playing boogie-woogie. Fur Elise.

Ethel Smith was one of the best organist in the past 60 years. She came to play a few times at the Wurlitzer factory here in WNY many many years ago. Now that lady could play! And she was the nicest person you could want to meet too. She sat and signed two hours worth of autographs. Organ music is really beautiful. I hope it comes back into favor again!

At home I have an Allen church organ and I play a Hammond at St. James that is almost dead and a beautiful Conn church organ at St. Michaels. I play both of these for school Masses as I go to Catholic school. Pete, are you looking for a living room organ or a church organ?

I'm looking for something used mid to high end. A full pedalboard would be nice but in the spot I'm thinking about putting it that would be just enough to make it somewhat intrusive for walking thru the familyroom area into the laundry/garage/back door. Something akin sizewize to a Hammond Aurora I guess. I've followed up on a few ads but each one I've gone to look at were pretty much trashed and I've asked a few people selling them on E-bay who are located closeby and the usual response is they don't anything about them either because they inherited them or bought them at an estate sale and so don't know the first thing about one. One lady told me hers worked fine, I drive 30 miles to go see it and it was a piece of shite. It had been a beautiful Lowrey in it's day. The casing had obviously had numerous drinks spilled all over it,, into the keyboard no doubt, half the buttons and switches didn't work or were broken off.. yet she thought it worked fine? I forget the model name now but it was one of their most expensive home models in its day, I would guess that new it probably cost close to $12,000 if not more and she's letting her kids pound on it.

Pete,

I have 2 Lowreys that I am looking to sell - an MX-1 (mid 80s) and a Parade (mid 90s). Email me if you want more details.

Gary

MX-1 !!!! Pete!!! ,like that one I found at Sally Anne for $89.!!! Go get it!!!

Oh, does it have the matching bench, Gary?

Bench.

That is a pretty nice living room organ. But if you are looking to play larger works such as those of J.S.Bach or G.F.Handel you will need a larger organ. 61 keys per manual and 24 or 32 pedals. And a good amount of stops or if going with a Hammond drawbars. For a truly realistic pipe sound get an Allen church organ or a Rodgers church or theater organ.

Both will run you $40,000 and up depending on the model and features.

I used to sell Lowrey organs back in the mid 1970s. That organ is from their "Symphonic" series and it has some terrific sounds, especially for that era. Now, the model that was an embarrassment was the "Teenie Geenie." ugh

So Matt, when can Pete expect that cheque? LOL

Seriously tho, when you're in a hobby pipeline you're never going to pay full price - far from it. I get a good chuckle out of the asking prices on the various Theatre and Church Organ Trader sites. I doubt I have more than $5000 in my 23 rank Pipe Organ. Most pricey was the 3 manual Aeolian player console at $350. Got a 2 manual full pedal Hallman C100 amplified reed church organ for $50 25 years ago at Sally Ann and the Hammond D from the church up the street was free for the moving with two 4 motor Leslies. Buddy of mine in New Hampshire scored a 47 rank player Kimball for $3000 a few years back.

A basic 88 note upright player piano won't fetch more that $300 among hobby folks and a fully reproducing Duo-Art, Ampico or Welte in need of total restoration can be had for 2-3000. Naturally a superb restored 7 foot carved Art Case reproducing grand will command multiple thousands above that.

Any eager amateur classic organ player can wheedle his way into most churches small and large with pipe or digital organs if ya make nice and polite with the house organist.

What I'm saying is if one has the deep pockets by all means bottom them out but for your basic hobbiast, and I include vacuums - where there's a will, there's a way. There's no need to mortgage your future. Something will come along eventually.

Yep, I'll just write one up now for 40 grand, pocket change LOL
Gary, I sent you an email.

I certainly remember seeing those Lowreys for sale back in the late 70's and they weren't cheap. Heck I was making only about $800 a month before taxes back then and my rent was $260/month. I bought a 2nd hand Canadian made Electrohome at Woodwards dept store, they sold Lowrey. That cost me back then something like $1100. The only features it had was the awful rhythm master and a built in leslie but it had a great classical sound for a spinet. Certainly better than the Teenie Genie or those equally dreadful little Hammonds. But I couldn't afford anymore so I went with the one that had the best classical sound I could get for what money I had.

Yes, the top of the line when I was selling organs was the Lowrey Symphonic Theatre H25-3 -- 2 full manuals (keyboards), 25-note pedal, string and brass "symphonizer," many other woodwind orchestral voices, and a feature that would automatically play arpeggios up and down based on chords you were holding. It also had a cassette tape deck with which you could record and play back what you were playing -- a HUGE new feature! That model went for $9,000. $8995 to be exact.

The store I worked for at the time, a branch of Jordan-Kitt Music, was in the center island of a shopping center in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Because of our highly visible location right smack-dab in the middle of the shopping center, we were subjected to a pretty constant flow of pests. Annoying children who would run in and press all the buttons and bang on the keys, and annoying old people who would sit down and start playing, usually playing badly and loudly.

One day a rather grizzly-looking, bedraggled man wandered onto the sales floor. The store manager assumed this very shabby-looking man was just another pest so he disregarded him. Well, for whatever reason, I sidled up to the man and asked if I could help him. He said, "no, just looking." He wandered around a bit, looking at the various organs. Then he saw the Big One -- the H25-3 -- at the end of the showroom, up on a platform and lit with a flood light. He pointed a gnarled finger at it and said, "How much is thattun?"

I cleared my throat, shifted my feet and said, "Well, um, it's, um, nine thousand." He thanked me, and wandered off.

I thought no more about him, until later in the day when lo and behold he reappeared. He walked over to me, reached into his pocket of his rumpled overcoat, pulled out one of those vinyl bank cash bags, zipped it open, pulled out a thick wad of hundreds, and started counting them out on the top of my sales desk.

Ninety one-hundred dollar bills.

"Will that cover it?"

Turned out the man was, you guessed it, a rich eccentric. His wife loved to play the organ and he wanted to surprise her with a new rig for her birthday. So he got her the "best home organ that money could buy."

I never forgot that lesson, about "not judging a book by its cover." Nor did the store manager, who lost out on the Really Big Sale!!

p.s. Jordan-Kitt also sold Kimball pianos and organs and Allen church organs. I believe they are still the Allen reps in the Washington D.C. - Baltimore area. We did not have any church organs on the floor in the Glen Burnie store -- the Lowrey H25-3 was the largest one we showed since that store catered mostly to households and not church musicians. We did have a really nice 7-ft. Kimball grand, white high-gloss lacquer finish. It was gorgeous!

Iknew a friend that had a Lowrey organ and it had tubes-remember replacing them regularly.And all of those scrws that held the masnonite back cover!Was a really nice organ.

Dave,

Yes the MX-1 does have the matching bench. I purchased it about 4 years ago and had an organ tech from Niagara Falls come up here and service it so everything is fully functional on it.

Pete,
I got your email and sent you a reply.

Gary

Here's a pic of it. Looks dark in the pic, the wood is actually a bit lighter.

I've always had an affinity for this console design and the next generation model shown here, the MX-2, which has a 29 note pedal and 61 note centered keyboards and considerably more resources. Attractive oak veneer case with chamfers and bevels that soften the boxy look, that wonderful wrap-around aluminum control panel and the wild striped woven knee panel fabric to set it all off as 1980s high style.

The console layout and elements put me very much in mind of the electric blue arborite desk console of the Honeywell 360 (H B Beal was the first school in London to have a donated computer for student use) we learned Basic, Cobol and Fortran on in highschool way back in 1970/71. All those tiny lovely lighted pushbuttons and sliders. :-) The Honeywell had a bank of five refridgerator sized tape units, two 24" platter disk drives and programs were churned out of six gray IBM punch card machines in a separate soundproofed room. God forbid one should drop a stack on the way to the card reader...and we all did at least once. :-)

The MX-1, introduced in 1980 for a couple of years, weighs in at 350 lbs and is praised for its rich tone and innovative voices. You can go classical, theatre, or wildly contemporary in your registrations. And it has keyboard spotlights tucked in the side jambs as well as task lighting above the rockers, all switchable.

Lowrey was bought in 1988 by Kawai and it took about two years for Lowrey to switch from the G series tone generators to the new NT series (Kawai. The MX-2 came out in 1990. Lowrey is alive and well in La Grange Park, Illinois and still selling popular home organs.