George Wright

Reflections by Don Leslie
Excerpted from Theatre Organ, July/August 1998

As one of the multitude of George Wright fans, I had the fortunate experience of spending quite a bit of time with him over many years. George and I met in 1941 at the Sherman Clay store in San Francisco when he was a mere nineteen years old, . Even at that time, he was regarded as the most talented musician in the area. At this meeting, he heard and played the Hammond with my speaker. This meeting led to the rather close association with my wife Carolyn and our family, lasting over a good part of our lives.


George Wright at his Hammond X66
In the old days, we would be honored to have George at many of our parties. At one, I was sitting on the piano bench while George was producing incredible things at the organ. During a lull, I accidentally bumped my elbow on the piano keyboard, depressing three adjacent keys, and within a hundredth of a second, George played the same three notes on the organ!

At one time, George was working with the Conn organ, preparing to make a recording. He complained that the 1' Flute did not include the last octave. I made another octave of flute generators and added it to the Conn, but it was so high in pitch that I was having trouble trying to tune it. I casually mentioned to George that it was so high that exact tuning perfection probably would not be needed. He wouldn't stand for such an attitude and told me he could identify any notes played in this octave. After helping me tune the octave, George immediately identified every note I keyed in this top octave of the one-foot stop. What an ear! I had a little fun with George, for when I installed the top octave, I sneaked in a matching stop tablet engraved Stomponette - One Foot Only.

Then there was the studio organ. It seemed George was always dissatisfied with recordings on many various organs. The organ operating noises, acoustic environment, and pipe selection did not meet the excellence that he felt was required for recording. So, quite "Wrightfully," he decided the only way to have an organ which would satisfy him for recording was to build it from scratch. After quite a search, we found the proper building. He started to acquire pipes he particularly liked (some came from Europe), completely rebuilt the console, chests, etc., and after about two years, we had an organ.

The organ turned out to sound exactly as he thought it should. Without any knowledge or experience in the recording industry, George recorded the album, Let George Do It, and we were in the record business using Solo as the label.

We soon learned that we could not cope with the business methods then prevalent in the recording field and we quickly gave up. Dot Records picked up the album, so the organ effort was not wasted. Many wonderful records were made before a fire destroyed the organ.

It is indeed unfortunate that he could not go on forever, providing us with his most inspiring and unusual music.