MERRY CHRISTMAS
From
THE SIMONTONS
Helena and Richard Sr.
Margaret-Richard Jr.-Robert-Mary
Our Rooftop Organ sends your way
a mighty peal of Holiday Cheer,
every note a wish from us that
this Christmas be for you a joyous one
and the New Year most prosperous.
P.S. We Don't really have a pipe organ 
on the roof, it just looks like one.
P.P.S It isn't really Santa Clause playing,
it's Gordon Kibbee at our Mighty Wurlitzer
1000 Toluca Lake Ave., North Hollywood, Calif, 91602.

Transfer from 1963 45 RPM privately pressed record RCS 1263-1 by Matias Bombal, December 24, 2021.
Selections:
Jingle Bells
Winter Wonderland
White Christmas
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Frosty The Snowman
We Wish You A Merry Christmas

The Sound of Christmas from The Simontons - Private Pressing- RCS 1263-1

Ann Leaf Broadcast, 1934 - CBS Radio, NY Paramount Studio

Bill Thomson playing "La Bikina" at the Roaring 20's Pizza Parlor, Grand Rapids MI, circa 1979

La Bikina-Bill Thomson-Roaring 20s Wurlitzer

Bryan Rodwell playing a Hammond X5 with Leslie 760 in the home of Neville Wainman ~1975. Recorded on home reel-to-reel recorder.

Wave

Buddy Cole - Capitol Transcription B-384 - 01 Aren't You Kind Of Glad We Did

My arrangement of the Skye Boat Song, recorded at my concert in July 2016, on the superlative 4 manual 42 rank Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ in Berkeley Community Theatre, California.

Skye Boat Song

I get plenty of requests for Michel LeGrand and so I put my fingers to this old favorite. I'm using ALL twenty layers of the Ivory II American Concert D by Synthogy.

The Summer Knows (Summer of '42)

A snippet from my impromptu visit to the Berkeley Community Theatre to try The NOR-CAL chapter of ATOS' 4/41 Wurlitzer.

Here's That Rainy Day (snippet)

I created this piece in a response to the recent uptick in violence against African Americans. Each chime heard represents a life lost at the hands of police. You can put in any name you can think of to represent the chime. The choir voices heard represent the voices of those lives lost. Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Oscar Grant, Calvon Reid, and at least 1004 just in this year (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/). 
I myself have felt threatened more than once by police and even was handcuffed in front of my mother for expired tabs( clearly my fault, but does it require handcuffs) or another situation where I was pulled over by 4 cop cars because of "burned out license plate lights" (they weren't burned out at all). The piano chords represent the wheels of justice churning and not changing (only two chords played throughout the entire piece). The vocal choir represents a requiem to those who have died and the last chord  is the cries of those who have been left to mourn and feel the loss of those who did not need to die.the soprano on top of the choir represents the mothers of those left to mourn their children. This is not a happy or light piece of music but one that leaves the listener with a question- if you are not a person of color and have never said anything but have friends of color, what are you going to do to change the narrative?

Cries of the Black Innocent

Cries Of The Black Innocent

Theatre organ playing at it best - Lew Williams performs at the Wurlitzer at Organ Stop, Phoenix Arizona. 

Wade Bray, the recording engineer, captured one of the best recordings I've ever heard of a theatre organ, and transfer to disk is great quality.  This copy was professionally cleaned to remove the pressing solution that is often left behind in the grooves. The result is a full bass range that wasn't there before.  

Lew Williams - String of Pearls

I arranged this Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke "gem" while fondly remembering my early days of playing "piano bar". Yes, my lyric "cheat-book", my tuxedo, my hair and my nails may have reeked of cigarettes, but the clinking glasses, all the smoke and best of all, the marvelous people I met - that's what inhabits my memory.
This selection is performed on the Paramount Organ Works 4/50, a virtual theater pipe organ available from www.paramountorganworks.com

Lew Williams - String of Pearls

ROHOJO