Friday, March 25, 2011

Gene Roberson Rides The Mighty Wurlitzer

Close To You

Gene Roberson Rides The Mighty Wurlitzer
Dean Brown Productions

The jacket art makes perfect sense. Apparently there once was a famous bike shop, Koons Motorcycle Shop in Long Beach, California whose owner (Joe Koons) was a pipe organ enthusiast. Joe spend over 3 years and a ton of money to install a large pipe organ in his bike shop. After a hard week of selling bikes folks would come on down for a little organ concert. This is where Roberson made this recording.

From the back cover: Gene Roberson is no newcomer to the thousands who have attended his church and theatre organ concerts. Easily bridging the generation gap, each week he packs over 50 students into his organ workshop at Laguna Hills Leisure World... one of the largest retirement communities in the nation.

Recently his Sunday evening Bach organ concert was sponsored by the college department of his church and was hailed as a successful "Youth Happening"

1 comment:

  1. There was indeed a motorcycle shop in Long Beach, California with a pipe organ built in to it. Joe Koons' Suzuki-BMW-Vespa Motorcycles as it was known when I worked there in 1980.

    Pipe organs were one of Joe's passions. This one, a 3/34 Wurlitzer was out of an old movie theater as I recall.

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