Largo Than Life

Bay Theatre owner Dick Loderhose just wanted to give Orange County audiences some good toe-tapping tunes.

But back in the disco-reeling 1970s--when the rich sound of a theater organ lingered only in the collective memories of a generation past--Loderhose bought a piece of musical history decades after most such instruments had been sold for scrap metal or a song.

Lucky for organ enthusiasts, he lugged it from New York’s Paramount Theater--five truckloads in all--to Seal Beach’s Bay Theatre.

Loderhose’s acquisition, also known as “The Mightiest Wurlitzer,” is rich with history dating to the 1920s when the late, great Jesse Crawford played it to accompany silent films and then, when talkies came, used it for live radio broadcasts and recordings.

Loderhose, of Newport Beach, now has arguably one of the largest theater organs in the West and certainly one of a handful in the U.S., with 28 preset pistons, 160 keys on four manuals, 46 ranks of pipes and some flashy bells-and-whistles effects, including a Chinese gong sound.

“His organ is an antique,” said Wayne Flottman, with the Los Angeles Theater Organ Society--an organ preservation group. “It’s an historic instrument.”

Sure, Loderhose’s “Mightiest Wurlitzer” can belt out everything from the Beatles to baroque, but everyone knows, Loderhose says, that nostalgia is its main attraction.

“Years ago,” he said recently during a pause in his spontaneous jazz rendition of “Silent Night,” “people went to Baghdad for a quarter. You could just close your eyes and you could go anywhere. This organ brings back memories. It’s a sound that’s been long forgotten.”

On Sunday, Loderhose will crank up his “Mightiest Wurlitzer”--as he does on occasion--for an hourlong concert of favorite holiday sing-a-long tunes. The 423-seat Bay Theatre--which usually shows art films--will be rocking. The organ’s pipes are so massive and numerous that they had to be bent to fit the place.

“It’s like a B-52,” Loderhose said, unable to keep his hands off the pulls and stops. His feet below are butterflies dancing on pedals. “You’ll need to hang on to your trousers.”

Loderhose, at 74, claims he’s not the showman he was in his heyday in the mid-1940s. Then his stage name was “Dick Scott” and he played “the best of ‘em on and off the stage.” His organ music provided intro, exit and filler for such golden oldie acts as Boris Karloff, the Three Stooges, Danny Kaye, Tommy Dorsey and Liberace.

But for Sunday’s show, Loderhose, who sold his adhesives business when he had heart bypass surgery three years ago, isn’t coming out of retirement. Instead he’s hired award-winning organist Lew Williams to do the honors while he toe-taps in the wings.

“This is my passion, my job,” he said. “I just want to present the best musicians I can,” he said.

Williams--who was named Organist of the Year in 1988 by the American Theater Organ Society, now plays pizza parlors in Arizona when he’s not touring. He’s a crowd favorite among organ music aficionados, Flottman said, especially for his amazing improvisations.

“He can start out playing ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” said Flottman, “and it can digress into an amazing tour de force.”

Williams is expected to play everything from reverent carols to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” in a mixed bag of seasonal and other favorites.

But Loderhose will tell you: organists are only as good as their instruments. And the way he sees it, his “Mightiest Wurlitzer” is one of the greats.

“This thing breathes like an angel,” he said, stroking the keys like a jockey caresses a thoroughbred. “She’s all right.”

Lew Williams plays an organ concert of seasonal music at the Bay Theatre, 340 Main St., Seal Beach. Program beings Sunday, 1 p.m., (doors open at 12:15 p.m.). Admission: $12. Call: (562) 431-9988.

On the Radio

Can’t get enough of that great big sound? Tune in to radio station KPCC (89.3 FM) at 7 p.m. Sundays for a weekly one-hour show called “Gee Dad! It’s a Wurlitzer,” hosted by Bob Ralston, formerly with the “Lawrence Welk” television show. The program features theater and other organ music played on instruments similar to the one at the Bay Theatre.