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Dick Smith In Concert
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E. P. "Mike" Phillips is a member of the Allen Organ Owners Group on Yahoo!, and was one of the first to join the group over four years ago. We are proud to feature his installation and the artistry of Dick Smith here at Walnut Hill. To learn more about the Mighty Allen GW319EX at Mike's place, click here. Dick Smith has been a professional musician for most of his life. He began playing the piano at the age of five, and performed his first professional Theatre Pipe Organ concert at the age of 13. Dick has played in most of the major theatres of the United States which have organs installed. He has also played for most of the major manufacterors of electronic organs, including Allen, Conn, Hammond, Rodgers, WurliTzer and Yamaha. Phillip's Seafood Restaraunt located at the Inland Harber of Baltimore, Maryland has employed the services of Dick as the house organist for the last 27 years. He has also played concerts on the Mighty Kimball installed at John Dickenson High School at Stanton, Delaware during the past 29 years. Dick's style of playing includes everything from ballads to boogie, big band to Bach, and everything in between.He has recently played at the Intercontinental Harbor Court Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. During the day, he works as an independant Baldwin piano technician. |
The Second Concert
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Disc One
Disc Two
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The First Concert
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Disc One
Disc Two
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About The Music |
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We made contact with Dick via email concerning his performance and this is what he had to say during the impromptue interview. We quote him in blue text below: Richard, Thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful incredible web site you have just made for me. I have played most of the numbers and the sound is fantastic. I hope you enjoyed them. You are most welcome, my friend. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every song, basking in that glorious sound you brought forth from this magnificent machine. Feel free to link to this page everywhere the mood strikes. What a priviledge to have you featured in my humble corner of cyberspace. Mike was my original recording engineer on my Concert Time album recorded and performed on the Richmond Loew's Mighty WurliTzer. We haven't seen each other in 39 years, and then all of a sudden, it happened. Mike deserves abundant kudo's for his engineering prowess and having you at the console. His capture was simply amazing, bringing out all the detail this powerful organ possesses under your agile fingers and feet. The Allen is unbelieveable. I am returning for another concert on it April 28th, 2007. Maybe you could be there too and hear this instrument LIVE!!!!! Please accept my humble thanks. Nothing would please me better but alas, I am poor and just too far away out here in California. But I would love to hear the end result via CD sent to my office. You are most welcome, indeed, Sir! The numbers that are very special to me are I'll Follow My Secret Heart (one of my dearest friends was Buddy Cole,) Forgotten Melody and My Sin by Jesse Crawford. I had the honor of knowing both of these wonderful people. I miss them dearly. Jesse was indeed the master and if he were alive today, would be joyfully proud of your stunning renditions of these lovely and timeless songs. I'll Never Smile Again is a loving tribute to another dear friend of mine, Al Melgard. On this cut, we duplicated the incredible reverb that was in the late Chicago Stadium. What a loss, both the building and the organ, now just a memory. Well, Sir, the organ console is now resting at the home of Phil Maloof in Las Vegas, Nevada along with some of the rankage. He is feverishly working to get it all going again, and at last count, I think he has most of the 51 ranks going. I spoke with Phil during the 2006 Annual ATOS Convention held in Tampa, Florida. He told me all about it at length as we enjoyed lunch at Roaring 20's Pizza & Pipes in Ellenton while Dwight Thomas thrilled us on the 4/42 Mighty WurliTzer, also known as Black Beauty. And Al Melgard could rip on the huge beast, Barton's biggest (and the biggest TPO there ever was,) for sure. I have some of his recordings on vinyl LP's. Tumbling Tumbleweeds, South, and Hard Hearted Hannah were a tribute to George Wright, which the organ is named after. Ah, yes, King George! I love his work with a passion and am trying to collect it over time, but he did so much I will be old before I find it all! Another favorite of mine, though I never meet her (for she was gone before I was born,) was the late Helen Crawford and her beautiful song that she wrote entitled The Moonlight Reminds Of You. Also a favorite as well was Forgotten Melody, written by Jesse Crawford (it was his signature theme song for years.) You played those songs with such a passion I nearly cried as I listened to the final master. About twenty some years ago I was playing one of my concerts at John Dickinson High School on their magnificent 3/66 Mighty Kimball Theatre Pipe Organ. I played some Jesse Crawford favorites and, on my intermission break, a lovely lady came back stage and said "I closed my eyes and I heard my Dad." It was Jessica Crawford, Jesse's daughter. What a thrill. OMG. I bet. The hairs on my arms are standing up just thinking about the feelings that must have been coursing through your veins right about then. Well, I hope to see you in April and again, thank you so very much. I wish there was a way for me to make it out there. I guess I will have to be content to hear the concert after the fact via CD media. But then, you never know what might happen between now and then... Looking forward to hearing from you via email. Thanks so much for writing to me. This means a great deal, my friend. I also have a concert coming up on March 10th at John Dickinson High School. Now there is an organ I would love to feature as well as get the opportunity to play! There are not many pictures of her and very little is known about what is probably one of the finest Kimballs ever made. Could you possibly get some high resolution pictures of her and perhaps record the show for us? What a treat that would be! I agree that Jess's untimely death left a gaping hole in the Theatre Organ Universe. His mastery of the Theatre Pipe Organ is unmatched to this day, truly, the poet of the organ. Thank you for your comment about Jess. I know not only would he have enjoyed the two pieces of music I played, but he would have gone wild over the Allen. It's a shame he passed away much too early. He was only 66 years old. He could have played for many more years but the tragedy of it all is that he died shy of three months before he was going to play his first public theatre pipe organ concert at Dick Simonton's Mighty WurliTzer in 25 years. Death took him suddenly and without warning. Raymond Shelley played The song is ended but the melody lingers on at the 1962 Annual ATOS Convention at the Wiltern. I was there. Other very close friends of mine were performing there also, including Leonard MacClain and his lovely wife Dotty. Well, take care. Sincerely, Dick Smith |
About The Session |
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Dick Smith played this concert on the evening of Friday, November 17th, 2006. The recording was made using a Sony Linear PCM Digital Recorder and then transferred to a laptop computer running PowerTracs Pro 10. The concert was captured as a single file which was broken up into separate tracks for CD mastering. No modifications were made other than to convert the MIDI file generated by the organ into Quick Play format for playback on most Allen organs.
Mike sent Walnut Hill Productions two CD's and three glossy prints of the installation. We scanned the images into our server and processed them in Adobe PhotoShop and ImageReady CS12. The audio was extracted and opened in SoundForge 6, wherein we did the following post edit tweaks to each track to bring them into standard broadcast media complience:
I told Mike via email of my reaction to the recording. I was amazed at how you instlled that great big organ in that little house, though you have three times the floor space I do, hence, no organ at present. Having non-parallel walls is a big bonus where music is recorded. And this approach works for the Allen, yealding an intimate but still live sound. Very impressive. Mike had this to say in a reply about the installation and the session. We quote him in blue text below:
The most interesting aspect of the organ is the "big sound" in such a "little house". I only have 1400 total square feet. This may inspire others to go for it as room size and house size are simply planning factors, and not necessarily limiters. It's about making the best use of available space and angles.
The single SR-5 sub-woofer crammed in the corner next to the breakfront would have to do. It did!
Another engineer involved with the project was Jim Reinhart. He had this to say about the session. We quote him in blue text below:
Richard, Thank you for the glowing review of the Dick Smith concert at Mike Phillips' residence. I don't know if Mike told you, but we captured that whole performance on MIDI so that the audio recording could be made at a later time when there were no people or noises in the room. Also, it gave us time to work with microphone placement and seek out that perfect spot to mike it from. I was the one who captured and prepared the MIDI files from the concert that were used to produce the recording session. I had to break the MIDI recording into separate song files and keep the registration data intact. There were a couple of minor edits to the registration in places where Dick had so many couplers and so many notes in his two hands and feet that he actually maxed out the organ's capability and some strange sounds emerged. I am glad to say that artistically, Dick's performance was not altered in any other way, other than to eliminate those couple of blips. I put silent measures into the MIDI files at the beginning and end of each song so that Mike could get a clean start and stop without all of the stop tabs clunking. Most of the registration changes during the performance are masked by the music, but we did not try to do anything about them, as they are also present in a real pipe organ recording if one is situated near the console.
Also, in the live performance, Dick made use of the Digital Toy Counter (DTC) that is installed on this organ. Unfortunately, the DTC is not MIDI capable and so the audio recordings Mike produced do not include all of the neat tricks Dick did with the toys - epsecially on the Pink Panther, where he used a generous amount of sound effects, and also on the Christmas songs where he was playing along with the sleigh bells. You can hear his tempo vary as he follows the slightly irregular reiteration pattern of the sleigh bells. Thanks for posting these wonderful recordings. We are so pleased with Dick's performance and with the sound of the organ. We want to be able to share it with as many people as possible and the Walnut Hill site is helping to make that possible. Thanks again, |
