For the past couple years, this time of year brings a flurry of activities into my life - from cultural festivals to several national award winning art fairs. I enjoy the cooler weather before the bitter cold sneaks in.
Two years ago, September 29, 2008, St. Louis lost an irreplaceable and priceless jewel from her crown - Mr. Stan Kann. I don’t need a time of year to remember a fallen icon, because I remember him all year round, but because he passed in the fall, I have moved his memory to the top of the list of things that I must do to recognize and capture a season, before it slips from my fingers.
For the uninitiated, Stan Kann was probably more famous to the general public across the country by his record-breaking 77 visits to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He was also more famous to a more broad range of people because he his vacuum cleaner collection. Yes, I said vacuum cleaners! He proudly played show-and-tell on the Tonight Show with his vacuum cleaner collection, while wearing a complete tailored suit made out of vacuum cleaner bags! There are photos of Stan with his vacuum cleaner collection, the suit, and him sitting at several Theatre organs that he has played over the past 50 years. St. Louisians are well acquainted with his comedy and vacuum cleaner past, but that is a minor fact in our memories, Stan was known for and loved for being one of the last full time working Theatre Organists in the United States.
Scroll down for pics of Stan with his vacuum cleaners, etc:, and Stan sitting at several theatre organs.
http://www.137.com/stan/
Check out the Fox Theater! Look at their website, or You Tube “St. Louis Fox Theatre”:
Click on “About Us” for a photo gallery of this 1929 Byzantine-Moorish highly gilded wonder - then scroll down!
http://www.fabulousfox.com/
or
http://www.fabulousfox.com/photo_gallery.aspx
Anything Stan did was done as best as he could, whether it be his humor or his fame as one of the last full-time theatre organists. Stan was the hurricane force behind restoring the Fabulous Fox Theatre’s 4 manual 36 rank Wurlitzer pipe / theatre organ back to a glorious playing condition. I was privileged to see him play for the silent movies “Ben Hur” and “Robin Hood”. Every knock on the door, trumpet blowing, or any sound effect in the movie was replicated with impeccable timing on the theatre organ. Basically, we were listening to a 3 hour organ concert with a moving playing at the same time. After a few seconds, you don’t miss the words to a silent film. This Wurlitzer Theatre Organ was built the very same year that ‘talkie” movies came out - 1929. Talking movies made Theatre organs obsolete. The theatre organs were built to accompany silent movies. When movies gained sound, the theatre organ was no longer needed (by some people’s standards, at any rate!) Thankfully, there are those of us that still love these huge pipe organs, and are grateful that many have been restores and maintained, and are still in use today. Stan is an individual that was responsible for the restoration and for playing the Fox Theatre Crawford Special Mighty Wurlitzer organ!
This organ has 3 ‘sister’ organs - one built for each of Fox’s movie palaces, located in Atlanta, Detroit, St. Louis and the demolished Fox Theatre in San Francisco. The organ at the San Francisco Fox Theatre was moved to Disney’s El Capitan theatre. All 4 organs and theatres can be seen on YouTube.
The Fox Theatres, themselves, are opulent beyond anything that has been built in the past 80 years, The Detroit AND St. Louis Fox Theatres are inch-for-inch identical - Byzantine-Moorish opulent movie palaces. In fact, before the current owners bought the St. Louis Fox Theatre and saved it, it was doomed for a wrecking ball, and the property was slated to become a parking garage! While they were doing the restoration in 1985, they went to the Fox Theatre in Detroit to take moldings of the plaster work that was missing from the St. Louis Fox Theatre, since they were identical theatres.
Let us take a moment to examine our choices here: We could have a timeless, glorious, powerful instrument that is no longer being produced, and only 4 of them exist in the entire world (and these 4 were the largest organs ever built by Wurlitzer!), or St. Louis could get ONE MORE parking garage! This is not a tough choice for me, and many others.
At a young age, Stan Kann requested that he be allowed to restore St. Louis Fox Theatre organ back to 100% functionality. He was granted permission, and the task has taken him and a couple other individuals 50 years to get as-near-completed as they could get it.
Although Stan has played many Hammond organs, he was definitely known more as a theatre organist. I have watched while Stan played a few bars of a tune on a Hammond, and I have caught him on several occasions, and by pure habit, looking up for non-existent stop rails to change his registration, with that all-too-familiar 'pointer finger' ready-on-the-draw, only to realize that he isn't sitting in his usual place on that bench at the Fox Theatre. A smile would spread across his face, and he would quickly realize that any changing to be done would have to be with drawbars. Occasionally, he would go ahead and make a drawbar adjustment to his liking, and there were times that he would decide "Once it is all said and done, what I am working with is 'just fine' !", and he wouldn't make a change at that particular moment.
He worked at the Fox Theatre the weekend before he passed. The St. Louis Fox still has tours on Saturday and Tuesday mornings, and in continuing with Stan’s wishes and in his memory, the organ is still played at these tours, A smaller ‘lobby theatre organ’ (but still a pipe organ, with 2 rooms and 2 floors of pipes!) is played in the entry hall of the Fox before and after each and every venue.
Stan was scheduled for a heart cath that he had put off too long. He was 83 yrs. old. After the heart cath (the one that he didn't survive), he was set to move in with a much younger doctor friend who was to look more closely after him. I visited this friend's house during an annual house tour, and noted a lowly little Hammond M3 upstairs in the ballroom-turned-game room. There were a couple pianos in the house. I whispered to Mark, "Is that man ever going to be bored when he moves in? ! ?" As the story goes, he died on the operating table, and never moved in.
During his memorial service, held at the Fox Theatre, the Doctor told this story:
"In the 1960's, Stan opened up a Disco club with a friend. After a couple years, the friend left the business, but returned in another couple years, and asked Stan if he could buy back into the business. Stan asked him, "What made you come back? Why are you here?" The returning friend replied, (and the story teller sang this part cheerfully!), "I Left My Heart In Stan Kann's Disco!" The audience just roared! I know that was Stan's own joke, and he was having a hearty laugh right along with us.
Every time Stan played that huge theatre organ, at the beginning of the show, like most theatre organs, it was raised up on a huge hydraulic lift to stage level.
At the end of the concert, he flipped the switch on the organ, and descended back under the stage as he continued playing. At the beginning of the memorial service, they brought that silent Wurlitzer up out of the pit. I was a wholesale florist before I technically was 'retired by the government'. That floral arrangement that covered the entire top of that Wurlitzer was not to be beat. At the end of the service, some folks got up out of their seats as if to leave the theatre. But...the MC simply walked down from his podium, and flipped the switch that lowered the organ. It sank slowly and quietly back into it's pit. Nobody moved. There wasn't a sound in the house. That act was a symbolic burial for all of us. Everybody left the theatre quietly, and nobody could talk to each other, for fear they would burst out in tears (so a few friends concurred with me later.)
I will never forget that service, and I will never forget that man. Much to my delight (and sometimes confusion!), he found me as 'curious' as I found him! I was always thinking, "Why the hell would a man of these talents take the slightest interest in ME?" I don't know why, but I found it a welcoming breath of fresh air.
I would often talk to him, and I would say, “I wish I could do what YOU do!” He would say back to me, “And I wish I could play music the way YOU do!
Another bit of trivia about the Fox Theatre organ. There is a small room in the basement of the theatre that looks and sounds like a mad telephone operator’s booth. It is the relay room. Every time a key or any other device is pressed on the organ console, a message has to be sent electrically (but not electronically!) to the relay room. The relays in this room then decide what needs to be done, and sends an appropriate message to that particular pipe, drum, cymbal, etc. The time it takes from the time a key is pressed until the required action is performed is called “latency”. I can deal with a latency of 50 MILLISECONDS or less. That is almost imperceptible to most people. The Fox Theatre organ, and many others like it, have a latency of 1.5 to 2 seconds. Most people think “How bad can that be? It’s only two seconds!” Please let me reassure you that a LOT can happen musically in two seconds! You can be playing several bars or measures ‘on down the road’ before the sound note you played two seconds comes out of the pipes! That can be hideously confusing to even the most seasoned theatre organist. Stan Kann was never your typical organist. I asked him, “How the hell do you play with so much latency? I can’t play with a lag of 1/10th that long!” He simply answered me, “The problem is that you are listening to what you are playing! You have to play the notes, but ignore any sound coming out of the organ!”
OK…OK… I understand that part. But… While he is playing with a 2 second latency - and the notes he played two seconds ago are coming out while he is playing OTHER notes, what is the explanation for the fact that he can be whistling an entirely DIFFERENT song at the same time - while he is playing notes that are not yet coming out of the pipes - and totally different notes than what is he playing and he is whistling a totally unrelated song? The answer to this riddle: PURE GENIUS!
They don’t make ‘em like that any more, folks. Each generation is quickly becoming less and less detail oriented - and these vacant minds are going to be the ones that will eventually be pushing your wheel chair!
At any rate, here is Stan Kann playing the Fabulous Fox Theatre organ. You can find other videos of him playing on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOPgg53855k&feature=related
St. Louis has definitely lost an irreplaceable and priceless jewel from her crown - Mr. Stan Kann.
- Michael
Mr.Toad's Wild Ride! Caution: May contain various ramblings referring to my hobbies and life, in general.
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