First Posted: 1/15/2009
LUMBERTON -- A vintage performer, his merry band of prime timers and a one-of-a-kind antique pipe organ will be the centerpieces for a musical trip back in time at the Carolina Civic Center.
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. veteran musician and multi-media entertainer Terry Jordan will tickle the keys of the Center's 1928 Robert Morton pipe organ. The show's ring master will guide his band, the Hay Street Ramblers through a selection of Big Band, Dixieland and Southern Gospel numbers.
The event is free to the public.
“We play those styles and anything else we can think of, maybe even something someone in the audience yells out,” said Jordan. “If one of us knows it, that's usually good enough to get us through, we really feed off each other well.”
Jordan, whose weekly radio show, “At the Console,” has played for more than 20 years on WAZZ and WFNC, insists it is a performance and not a concert.
“A concert may give the false impression that we may know what we're doing,” he said with a laugh. “There's going to be humor, music, requests and everybody sort of keys in on my wackiness. I just believe the whole purpose is to have the audience enjoy themselves. We're not here for any other reason.”
Downplaying the music, however, is a mistake. Few can play a piece of machinery like the “Mighty Morton” as well as Jordan, and just as few can keep the laughs and pace moving.
“He's a terrific musician and knows how to entertain people,” said former Michael Bloomer, former director of the Center.
Don't expect any lulls as long as Jordan is the frontman. He spent 20 years at WFNC, 640 on the AM dial, before moving to Beasley Broadcasting's WAZZ, 1490 on the AM frequency, in September. “Console” features sacred and classical pipe-organ music recorded from churches in the Carolinas and Virginia. The show airs on Sundays.
He also spins '60s and '70s rock classics, Dixieland and Big Band tunes during the weekday drive time hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on his “P-M Fayetteville, The Radio Show.”
Big band
The six other members of the Hay Street Ramblers don't lack experience, either.
Vocalist Alan Porter, saxophonist Dick Perry, bassists and singer Shirley DeMay, keyboardist Janet Hales, vocalist Lea Condrey and drummer David Waylette are all old-school musicians.
Porter was the long-time choral professor at Methodist College.
“He's a '30s crooner who milks a tune for all it's worth,” Jordan said.
Perry's savvy and polished enough to hide imperfections.
“Yeah, he knows almost every song written and the ones he doesn't know he does a great job at faking it,” Jordan said. “That's really quite a talent.”
Talent isn't in short supply for either Hales or DeMay.
“Janet is probably the best Gospel pianist I've ever worked with,” Jordan says. “As for Lea, my best line about her is that she sings Patsy Cline better than Patsy Cline.”
DeMay plays the (non-electric) bull bass and may be the most versatile musician in the group, while Waylette, the newest member, wails and thumps his skins in Gene Kruppa style.
Grand lady
Jordan, the organist at Hay Street United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, says the Civic Center's pipe organ is a rarity.
“There are no new theater pipe organs being built, mainly because of the price to duplicate one today,” said Jordan. “It would probably cost over $500,00 to replicate. The heyday of its life was 20 years before talking movies began.”
It was originally installed in the National Theater in Greensboro in 1928 and then moved to the Center Theater in Durham until the mid-1960s. Used primarily for silent films, it was then moved to Burlington for several years before the Piedmont Theatre Organ Society took over ownership in 1980. It reached the Carolina Civic Center in 1988.
“The first time I saw it in '88 it was in a thousand pieces and I thought it would be impossible to ever get it all back together,” said Mayme Tubbs, a longtime member of CCC's board of directors.
The installation happened because of the efforts of the Organ Society, a non-profit group responsible for installing and maintaining vintage and antique theater organs and music.
“It's a reminder of the past,” said organist Allen Lloyd, a former board member of CCC, long-time church organist and key member in getting the “Mighty Morton” back into action. Lloyd was feature playing the organ on the cover of the Robeson County phone book for 1994-95.
“It's something you can't replace and something you can't put a value on,” Lloyd said. “It was a labor of love of the people who restored it, love hearing it play and enjoying organ music.”
The organ's CCC debut was Dec. 18, 1991, when it played in accompaniment with a Laurel and Hardy silent movie. After sitting three years before arriving at CCC in crates, the performance was an accomplishment.
The only organ of its type between Richmond, Va. and Atlanta, complete with two manuals and eight ranks, it has been modernized slightly with the addition of a computer, and can play by itself when programed.
Seeing the “Mighty Morton” rises up from the orchestra pit evokes passionate feelings.
Today, few have the skill and knowledge to make the “Mighty Morton” hum air through is pipes. Those who do cherish the experience.
“There's nothing like sitting at the console of the organ in the bottom of the pit, pushing the elevator button for it to rise and as it is rising watching a beam of light in the back of the theater focus on you,” Jordan said. “At that moment it's just the audience, the organ and the music.”
