1910 Ruth Model 36-X Concert Band Organ Plays "Hello, Dolly!" Medley Arr. Mikey Mills 

Ditto! The characters' frozen faces scared me, and yet I was mesmerized by the machine and music. Hearing and seeing this brings me right back to Jolly Roger's and the carefree days of childhood.

It would be nice if the Crescent Park organ could have a keyframe refitted (and maybe MIDI?) as well as the 165 roll frames retained (for nostalgic appeal, since the last 40+ years of riders remember the organ playing this music). That is really a magnificent organ and deserves to be heard playing its full potential. One of only two Ruth 38s on public display in the USA to my knowledge (the other one is in temporary storage in South Carolina pending a new location... although no plans at present, at last report).

Jolly Roger's was magical, in large part because of this band organ. One of my most vivid and joyful memories of childhood. It was a shock and a joy when I found this video.

@@dannigro172 My feelings exactly!

robindeorgelman Robin your so cool

P.S. I've subscribed because of these Ruth organ recordings. 🙂

This is a fabulous, instrument, and the organ sounds so good.What a masterpiece.I played this over and over again. It makes so happy , and teariyeyed, because it brings back so many good memories, when I was young, and my parents were there , long time ago. My wife can’t get into this organ, but I listened to it over and over again. Thankyou for the beautiful memories, and great sounds.😊

CBF1 hi

hello

CBF1 thanks for replying

It is actually

:34 is Put on Your Sunday Clothes. 3:18 is Dancing. 6:28 is It Only Takes a Moment. (If you've ever seen the movie Wall-E, part of that uses It Only Takes a Moment as a jumping-off place for the romantic plot.) The movie of Hello, Dolly is pretty fun and the score is great!

@@LB-gi5eq Yes I have seen WALL-E and thanks for the titles.

@@andrewlardieri4110 So have I. When I first saw this video I thought the beginning song sounded familiar and then I realized. Wall-E is an excellent movie. So far I have not seen Hello Dolly but have listened to 2 OST's from it.

The organ has two MIDI adapters, one for the Wurlitzer scale and one for the Ruth Scale. Electronics from Klingerorgan.com

What idiot would want to play Wurlitzer arrangements on a Ruth?

@@arburo1 Agreed! Personally I find Wurlitzer arrangements awful, BAB roll arrangements are miles better.

@@MechanicalMusicTravels Same here. Most Wurlitzer rolls are just the same boring Fox-Trot tunes all over again. However I do think that the Ruth 36X is a part of the Wurlitzer 165 family. It's pretty much a Wurlitzer 165 with different voicing once W165 tunes are played on it, I'd go for something from Andy Park or Rich Olsen. Their arrangements are fantastic.

@@CBF1 Agreed! BAB arrangements are also very good, they bring out a side of each Wurlitzer that not even the manufacturer had intended! They make the organ sound more European.

CBF1 I DONT THINK SO

I think you ought to get a job (or two or three) and save up your money and eventually you'll be able to buy your own band organ... or maybe build one.

@@andrewbarrett1537 indeed, i'm kindof working on that rn... building wooden clocks(except the mechanisms)

Good idea! I was Nathan Detroit in that show years ago.

@@MechanicalMusics Amazing! I’ve Never Been in Love Before on a Ruth like this would drive me to tears

Mm09

That is the MIDI system! The board lights up when each note plays.

Wurlitzer band organs, when the pipe voicing is attended to in restoration (since small Wurlitzer organs were often shipped from the factory with only rough voicing and tuning done on the pipework... the larger and more expensive organs like the 157, 164, 165 etc got much more care in the pipe voicing before shipping), have good tonal plans... the arrangers are mainly hampered by the scales and especially by BOTH brass AND wood-trumpet organs playing the SAME roll scales with different results if the two musical sections are used for distinct melody and contra/counter-melody parts. See below. I don't know where the 125 scale came from (if it was ever a European cylinder organ scale) but DeKleist were using it as early as 1893 for their model 18 cylinder organ, which was a trumpet organ and the ancestor of the 125. The 150 scale was also used by DeKleist for the model 20 organ (not sure the year of introduction), but it has an older origin as it was used by Limonaire as a cylinder organ scale as early as the 1890s (1880s?) for a trumpet barrel organ. At least one Limonaire trumpet organ of this note scale still exists and is located at the Claude Jessett Organ Trust museum in Hadlow Down in East Sussex, England. This extant Limonaire organ can be considered the grandfather of the Wurlitzer model 150 organ. The 165 scale and organ were copied by Wurlitzer from one of the 65-keyless "Orchester-Orgel" Gebruder Bruder organs (known by the time of the 1924 Gebruder Bruder catalog as "Elite Orchestra Apollo) that were shipped to the USA. These organs were Gebruder Bruder's answer to the stiff competition from Gavioli and were more orchestral than their normal mixture-type organs of the regular series of models (like the 108, 107, 106, 103, 104, 105 etc). I have no idea how many of this organ model / scale were built by Gebruder Bruder but it must have been few, as only four are known to exist today (two in the USA, one Germany, and one in Italy. The two in Europe still play book music, on the original scale, I think, and the one in Italy is apparently the very first one ever built and is thus the grandfather of the Wurlitzer 165. (This is as per surviving Gebruder Bruder book-music shipping records, which, in the absence of any extant factory serial number lists / organ shipping records, present-day Waldkirch organ historians have used to ESTIMATE the approximate number of Gebruder Bruder book organs built of each model as well as the date of the first example shipped). When Wurlitzer copied this model in 1914 they appear to have copied the facade, pipework, chest, case and *maybe* pump from Gebruder Bruder. However, they used their own drum actions, player stack / suction system, duplex roll frames, and suction register control for the organ, and invented a new paper roll scale for it. So if you don't like the Wurlitzer 150 scale, blame Limonaire; if you don't like the Wurlitzer 165 scale, blame Gebruder Bruder; if you don't like the Wurlitzer musical arrangements, blame the various arrangers who worked for them including Fred Benz, Charles Nilson, John William Tussing, and Ralph W. Tussing (as well as a couple of other unidentified arrangers). But also don't blame them totally, since they were fine musicians but hampered by Wurlitzer's policy of using the SAME roll scales for both brass AND wood trumpet organs (no doubt a measure of economy promoted by someone like Howard Wurlitzer who liked to cut costs wherever possible). Each of these arrangers had their own unique style, although they did have to follow the Wurlitzer mode of arranging which was to play the melody on the TRUMPETS and MELODY section TOGETHER, so that when the roll was played on a BRASS TRUMPET organ (for example, a model 150 organ playing a 150 roll), the louder brass trumpets would predominate and the melody would be heard, but also when the SAME roll was played on a WOOD TRUMPET organ (for example a model 146 organ playing a 150 roll), the louder melody section would predominate over the softer wooden trumpets and the melody would STILL be heard clearly. This insistence on the part of the Wurlitzer (and North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works) management on making BOTH brass AND wood trumpet organs play the SAME roll scales for economy, hampered the arranging style in a way it didn't hamper European organs (since, from the factory, smaller brass-trumpet and wood-trumpet or no-trumpet organs usually played DIFFERENT SCALES for which DIFFERENT STYLE arrangements could be made to suit that organ; the largest organs with brass trumpets like huge Marenghis and Gaviolis, already had so many other wooden pipes that the brass trumpets and trombones, while adding to the volume when playing, didn't necessarily overwhelm all those other pipes). For proof of this theory I have put forth, check out the very earliest 165 roll arrangements from around 1914-1915. They were, and are, of a quite different style and more orchestral than the so-far-existing military-style 125, 150, and 155 roll arrangements. The two melodic musical divisions were used in different ways and play off of each other more in the way of traditional European fairground organs and less in the "American" style of "both-sections-playing-the-melody-at-once-plus ornaments". However, when Wurlitzer brought out their first brass-trumpet, military-style band organs playing the 165 scale (the 162/163 in 1916; and the 164 in 1917), the style of the 165 arrangements changed to be more like the 125 and 150 arrangements where the melody had to be played in both divisions at once to prevent the melody from being lost when either the melody section or trumpet section overwhelmed the other section. For further proof, check out the very earliest 125 and 150 scale arrangements made in the 1906-1910 period when ONLY brass-trumpet organs were available to play those scales. I think those early arrangements are also very 'uncluttered' since the trumpets carry the melody... the piccolos / melody play high ornamentation but don't 'doodle' all the time and certainly don't double the melody ALL the time. They're very nice. However, when the first wooden-trumpet models were introduced playing those scales (the models 126 in 1911, and 147 in 1910), things changed quite a bit, in order to keep the music sounding acceptable on the more numerous models of organs.

@@andrewbarrett1537 thank you from a big theatre organ fan who also likes band organs.