George Wright

Reflections by Steve Levin, Editor, Marquee
Excerpted from Theatre Organ, July/August 1998

Were it not for George Wright, you might not be reading this. While standing apart from "organized" theatre organ, he was its principal catalyst. Without his recordings from the 1950s, I don't think the theatre organ revival would have been as strong or have lasted as long. True, there were many theatre organ records out there then, but his were somehow different:


George Wright, ABC Television: General Hospital

George's exuberant and precise playing, coupled with the HiFi label's pumped-up audio, engaged many new ears and made the theatre organ sound like more than a cobwebby relic from the musty past. No one could spend very much time in a hi-fi store without hearing one and maybe wanting to take a copy home. Any bug that goes around will always bite a few, and I'm sure more theatre organ enthusiasts were created by George Wright than by anybody or anything else.

I speak from experience. Growing up in the movie theatre business, I knew vaguely about theatre organs like I knew about, say, projectors, but not until hearing George's records on a local FM station and attending the midnight San Francisco Fox concert the station was promoting did I really care. Theatre history came alive for me that night, and I owe what I do today mainly to George Wright.

Just as George Wright was not "the next Jesse Crawford," nobody will ever be the "next George Wright." He came from an era when theatre organ -- in theatres, on records, and on the radio -- was a part of the entertainment scene, and those days are long gone.

The organists who have followed George Wright all draw from what he did, and always will, but they play mostly for a select audience and will never be able to do what he did. George Wright was unique, essential, and irreplaceable.