The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to simply as Wurlitzer, was an American company that produced stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass instruments, theatre organs, band organs, orchestrions, electronic organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes.
Over time Wurlitzer changed to producing only organs and jukeboxes, but it no longer produces either. Deutsche Wurlitzer, owner of the Wurlitzer Jukebox and Vending Electronics trademark, was acquired by the Gibson Guitar Corporation.
The firm's violin department, independently directed by Rembert Wurlitzer (1904–63) from 1949, became a leading international center for rare string instruments.
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Wurlitzer was an American firm of instrument makers and dealers. Started in Cincinnati in 1853 by Franz Rudolph Wurlitzer (1831–1914), it was directed successively by his three sons until 1941, when it moved to Chicago. From importing musical instruments it turned in the 1880s to marketing automated instruments, including disc-changer machines and coin-operated pianos. The "Mighty Wurlitzer" theatre organ was introduced in 1910, followed by the successful coin-operated phonograph, or juke-box (1934–74). In 1909 the company began making harps that were far more durable than European prototypes, and from 1924 to the 1930s eight acclaimed models were available. The firm's violin department, independently directed by Rembert Wurlitzer (1904–63) from 1949, became a leading international centre for rare string instruments. Among Wurlitzer's electronic instruments, beginning with electric reed organs in 1947, the most important have been the fully electronic organs, especially the two-manual-and-pedals spinet type (from 1971 with synthesizer features) for domestic use.
The Wurlitzer Company came to an end sometime in the 1980s when Wurlitzer was bought by the Baldwin Piano Company. Although electronic organs are no longer manufactured, Baldwin places the "Wurlitzer" name on its higher-end line of pianos.
Perhaps the most famous instruments Wurlitzer built were its pipe organs (from 1914 until around 1940), which were installed in theatres, homes, churches, and other public places. It was marketed as "The Mighty Wurlitzer".
Englishman Robert Hope-Jones, considered the inventor of the theatre organ, had developed a concept of the organ as a "one man orchestra" to accompany silent movies. Hope-Jones concept was based on two principles:
Among his sound innovations were a kind of electro-pneumatic action, the Diaphone and the modern Tibia Clausa with its strong 8′ flute tone. The Tibia eventually became a staple of theater organs. Hope-Jones organs were also noted for such innovations as stoptabs instead of drawknobs and very high wind pressures of 10″ – 50″ to imitate orchestral instruments. He also used a system of unification which multiplied considerably the number of stops relative to the number of ranks.[3]
Between 1887–1911 his company employed 112 workers at its peak, producing 246 organs.[4] But shortly after merging his organ business with Wurlitzer in 1914, he committed suicide in Rochester, New York, frustrated by his new association with the Wurlitzer company, it is said.[3] Moving the business to their North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Factory, from 1914 to 1942, Wurlitzer built over 2,200 pipe organs: 30 times the rate of Hope-Jones company, and more theatre organs than the rest of the theatre organ manufacturers combined. A number were shipped overseas, with the largest export market being the United Kingdom.
The largest one originally built was the four-keyboard / 58-rank (set of pipes) instrument at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The Music Hall instrument is actually a concert instrument, capable of playing a classical as well as non-classical repertoire. It, along with the organ at the Paramount Theatre in Denver Colorado[5] are the only Wurlitzer installations still in use that have dual consoles. While Denver's is the typical "master-slave" system, Radio City is the only surviving original Wurlitzer installation to have two identical and completely independent consoles playing the same organ.
Other Wurlitzer organs still in their original locations include:
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The Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was home to an impressive Wurlitzer organ on a lift that raised and lowered it from beneath the stage however, the console, lift, and blower of the Mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ were destroyed by the 2008 flood. CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - The 2008 flood severely damaged the historical organ in Cedar Rapids. On Friday March 11, 2011, another organ that will be used to restore the damaged one arrived in Eastern Iowa. The more than 100-year-old model is from Brooklyn. Now, the old organ's keys and parts will go on the Brooklyn organ's body. Both organs were actually manufactured by the same factory and crafted by the same artisans. Both the city and organ society hope to have the theater and organ restored by 2012.
The original organ at the Zeiterion Theatre, New Bedford, Massachusetts was sold to a private collector in the 1970s, then reinstalled and restored in the mid-1980s following a fundraising campaign publicized by the Standard-Times newspaper. Smaller instruments in the UK exist in their original installations, such as the Gaumont State Cinema, Kilburn and the Blackpool Tower Ballroom in the UK. These instruments are still being played several times a week.
Another example of the large scale Mighty Wurlitzer can be found in the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum. The large four-manual, 16-rank Mighty Wurlitzer type 250 special was purchased by Werner Ferdinand von Siemens in 1929 and installed in the Siemens Concert Hall in August of that year. At the end of World War II the organ and the concert hall became property of the German state. The Mighty Wurlitzer survived the war, but was seriously damaged in 1962 by a fire, which was caused by a careless cigarette. From February 1963 to December 1963 Marvin E Merchant, a Berlin-stationed G.I., repaired the organ at his own expense. In 1982 it was given to the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, where it was restored completely and installed in the museum by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker GmbH & Co. in 1984. In the Musical Instruments Museum of this institute, where the organ is still located today, it is played every Saturday at 12:00 PM (noon).[6]
Much larger and more versatile theatre organs have been built in the last 20 years by well-heeled private enthusiasts, the largest being the magnificent 5/80 organ at the Sanfilippo Estate in Barrington, Illinois. Other examples include the San Sylmar, California Nethercutt Collection 4/77, the Organ Stop Pizza, Mesa, Arizona 4/78, and the John Dickinson High School Wilmington, Delaware 3/66 mostly W.W. Kimball. These were built by a combination of older organs, with new pipework to achieve results.
New digital recreations of these instruments have also reached technological peaks in the last few years. Companies such as Walker Theatre Organs, Allen Organ Company and Rodgers Instruments have used high-level, digital sampling of original pipe organ sounds to incorporate into their electronic instruments, resulting in very close duplications of these original musical wonders (with the usual electronic-organ limitations).
In the 1950s, the American Association of Theatre Organ Enthusiasts (AATOE) was formed to preserve remaining theatre organs, including those by other builders, such as The John Compton Organ Co. LTD, Hill Norman and Beard, W.W. Kimball Company, M.P. Moller, Inc., Robert Morton Organ Company, George Kilgen and Sons, Marr and Colton Organ Company, the Bartola Musical Instrument Company (Barton Organ Company), and the Wicks Organ Company. The AATOE is now known as the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS).[7] and there is a smaller but comparable society in the UK, the Cinema Organ Society.[8]
See Wurlitzers in the United Kingdom for details in the United Kingdom.
After the United States Government imposed high import tariffs on both street and fairgound organ importation from 1892,[9] Wurlitzer began producing mechanical organs. Most were small barrel organs, playing from a pinned barrel and powered by either steam or cranked by hand. Many of these organs have cases finished in dark (and sometimes black) wood, with gold incised designs, not unlike those of the European manufacturers of barrel organs.
As parts were not subject to import tarrifs, it should be noted that almost all Wurlitzer band organs are in some way or another based on or latterly copied from a design by a European manufacturer. For example: the style 105 (and style 104) were copied from a Gerbruder Bruder barrel organ; the style 146 (the only difference being that the portions of the façade covering the drum wings were removed); the style 157 was copied from a Gavioli special style of organ (only 2 or 3 of this style of organ is known to exist; the former organ at Dorney Park was one, but it was destroyed in a fire); and the style 165 is copied from the Gerbruder Bruder "Elite Apollo Orchester".
As demand for organs grew from the fairground operators, Wurlitzer was approcahed by Eugene de Kleist, an-ex employee of Limonaire Frères and the founder of the North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Factory. After De Kliest developed the Tonophone for the company, which after winning a gold medal at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, Wurlitzer invested in his company.
After buying De Kliest out of the business in 1908, they changed the name of the factory to the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company. This allowed the company to invest in new technology, resulting in the adoption of electric motors, and the music source was changed from pinned barrels to perforated paper rolls similar to a player piano roll. Some larger organs such as the style 157 and style 165 have duplex roll frames, on which one roll plays while the other rewinds, allowing for continuous music. Each paper roll contained about 10 songs, but during the Great Depression, this was changed to 6 longer songs, in order to save money on arranging.
The only substantial changes between these organs and the originals they were based upon is that the Wurlitzer models is that they operated on Wurlitzer's unique roll scale. These included the 46-note style 125 roll (used by styles 104, 105, 125, and smaller organs that saw less production), the wider 46-mote 150 roll (used by styles 146, 153, and other less common mid-size styles), or the still wider 75-note 165 roll (used by styles 157, 165, and larger special organ models). Due to Wurlitzer's success and domination of the market, many smaller American manufacturers adopted scales similar to Wurlitzer's, but to little effect.
The production of Wurlitzer organs ceased in 1942, the last organ to leave the factory being a style 165 organ in a 157 case (done because Wurlitzer had an extra 157 case still in the factory and the owner didn't mind the change). During the Great Depression leading up to the end of production, various cost cutting measures were made, such as the substitution of brass horn and trumpet pipes for ones made of wood (though arguably, the brass pipes produced a shrill and unpleasant sound, thus causing the change to the mellower wooden sound).
Some orchestrions made by the company can be found at Clark's Trading Post, Lincoln, New Hampshire, USA, the Music Hall, Nevada City, Montana, USA, and the Jasper Sanfilippo Collection at Victorian Palace, Barrington Hills, Illinois, USA. The company's patents, trademarks and assets were acquired by the Baldwin Piano Company with their purchase of the keyboard division of Wurlitzer in 1988.
See List of Wurlitzer Band Organs for detail list of models.
The Wurlitzer was the iconic jukebox of the Big Band era, to the extent that Wurlitzer came in some places to be a generic name for any jukebox. Wurlitzer's success was due to a first rate marketing department (headed by future Indiana Senator Homer Capehart), the reliable Simplex record changer, and the designs of engineer Paul Fuller who created many landmark cabinet styles in the "lightup" design idiom. Although Wurlitzer ceded the crown of industry leader to rival Seeburg in the 1950s, Fuller's designs are so emblematic of jukeboxes in general that 1940s era Wurlitzers are often used to invoke the Rock n' Roll period in films and television.
Replica jukeboxes bearing the Wurlitzer name are still available. The more recent models are able to play CDs, as well as brand new special edition units also with iPod connectivity.
From 1955 to 1982 the company also produced the highly regarded Wurlitzer electric piano series, an electrically-amplified piano variant.
The Wurlitzer brand was applied to several lines of electric guitars during the 1960s. The first family of solid body electric guitars and basses were manufactured by the Holman Company of Neodosha, Kansas, USA from late 1965 until 1967. Models included the Cougar, Wildcat and Gemini, all of which had different body shapes. The majority of the Kansas made instruments were guitars, with only a handful of basses being manufactured.[10]
The second family of guitars debuted in 1967, and were manufactured in Italy by the Welson company, and were semi-hollow in construction.[10]
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