When Leroy Lewis got to the Surf City Hotel in 1957, he was just 22 years old and already a skilled player of the largest of all musical instruments, the theater pipe organ.
KEYS TO FAME: Lewis (above) commanded any console. The ads in The Beachcomber in 1959 showed him playing the 3/16 Wurlitzer, which a previous Surf City Hotel owner, Hank Crane, donated to Richmond, Va.
They were designed to accompany silent films, but the advent of “talkies” led to organs’ being scrapped or sold to churches, private homes, museums, skating rinks and restaurants. The 1950s brought the theater organ’s second golden age, thanks to hi-fidelity recording and the LP phonograph record.
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