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Back in September, we visited the Basement Bijou, otherwise known as the house that Fred Hermes, Sr. built in the 1950s in Racine WI. Inside this unassuming three-bedroom home on the shore of Lake Michigan, is a 18ft-deep basement, built to house a very rare 5-manual Wurlitzer pipe organ – Wurlitzer only built three organs…
As part of their annual “Pizza Week” coverage, the Portland Mercury has posted an online article about the Organ Grinder and the documentary project. Excerpt: Amid the strip malls and used car lots along SE 82nd, one big building, now home to Super King Buffet, looks out of place: glass walls stretching tens of feet…
Sam Battle is a popular YouTuber in the vintage tech and music spaces. He’s best known for his channel “Look Mum No Computer”, and related channels “This Museum is Not Obsolete” and “Look Mum No Engine”. Among Sam’s many projects, he created a series of videos where he restored a residential pipe organ that was…
After a whirlwind trip filming in Wisconsin, I returned home and jumped right in to attending Doc Camp, an intensive workshop for documentary filmmakers to share their works-in-progress and meet with industry veterans, organized by Oregon Media Lab. It was a highly rewarding experience. (There is more about the latest Wisconsin trip in this post.)…
Here’s a newly-restored and upscaled vintage commercial from the famous Organ Grinder restaurant in Portland, Oregon. This ad was produced in the late 1980s, and features cameos of brother-and-sister Jay and Stephe, children of Organ Grinder co-founder Dennis Hedberg. The Organ Grinder Documentary Project has digitized and restored dozens of hours of vintage footage which…
Featuring Jonas Nordwall and Sawyer Best. The Cleveland High School Theatre Pipe Organ began in the late 1920s as a nine-rank Kimball from the Columbia Theatre in Longview, Washington. In the 1930s, it was installed in Portland’s Simon Benson High School, as a gift from the graduating class, and enlarged by Seattle’s Balcom & Vaughn…
(And Switches and Knobs) Playing a theatre pipe organ inherently requires keeping track of a lot of things simultaneously – with many controls such as: And of course, powering up the blower and relay (the organ’s brain) that make everything possible. But for the organists who performed regularly in pizza parlors, that was just the…
Portland, Oregon’s Fox affiliate, KPTV, has just aired a feature piece about the Kimball pipe organ at Cleveland high school, which is being removed due to a project to replace the school building. The new school, unfortunately, will not have room for the organ. Footage from the Organ Grinder documentary was provided to KPTV to…
In February of 1996, shortly before Organ Grinder Portland closed, fans turned out to visit the restaurant one last time. Fortunately, several brought their camcorders with them, and have provided their footage to the documentary project. In this video, patron Ted Welty recorded organist Don Feely’s rendition of “Powerhouse”, which you may recognize as the…
John Ledwon is a music educator, theatre organ enthusiast, and experienced performer. We caught up with John (no easy feat, as he often commutes between Henderson, NV and Los Angeles) in November during our Southwest Road Trip. The interview took place at Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, CA. (Special thanks to the board…
An Organ Grinder Documentary Project Special Feature As part of our return to the Midwest in September, 2025, one of our stops was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for a visit with Jeff Baas, owner of the Kenosha Theatre. Jeff and his brother purchased the derelict theatre in the 1980s, with plans to restore it and reopen…
(With the recent relaunch of The Muppet Show, the article title seemed appropriate. For those who don’t get the joke, here’s the reference.) In the late 1970s, Science Fiction/Fantasy and Superhero movies were making a big comeback. Blockbuster hits like 1977’s Star Wars (before it was called “A New Hope”) and Close Encounters of the…
Dave Moreno describes himself as an organ technician, organist, designer, and builder. Top photo: Dave working on the console of the Fair Oaks Community Clubhouse’s Wurlitzer-Morton organ in Fair Oaks, California. When you’re one of the few people around for miles that knows the ins-and-outs of a theatre pipe organ, your skills are sought after…
During our Southwest Road Trip, we passed through Palm Springs, stopping in to interview Rik DeRose. Rik shared some amazing stories from his musical career, ranging from a stint as a “pipe organ & pizza” performer, to Las Vegas glitz. Rik’s musical development and early interest in playing the organ started, like it often did…
While visiting the Phoenix area during our Southwest Road Trip in November, we interviewed Martin Meier, who has a fascinating story about how he came to acquire the Denver Organ Grinder instrument, and then sadly had to let it go. Martin and his partner Tim Stoddard owned a bed and breakfast, the Pikes Peak Paradise…
(Updated December 22nd with additional information, more photos, and clarifications/typo corrections.) During the 20th century, over 100 restaurants with theatre pipe organs were established, most of them pizza restaurants. But where was the very first pizza restaurant to have a pipe organ? How did this all get started? As part of our Southwest Road Trip,…
In the early years of the Organ Grinder, the restaurant was an undeniable success. This allowed two of the original founders, brothers Paul and Jerry Forchuk – already from an entrepreneurial family – to enjoy a lifestyle in keeping with a high-income earner in the 1970s & 80s. Fortunately for the staff at the Organ…
Last week, the documentary’s Southwest Road Trip commenced. The first stop on that journey was a somewhat solemn affair, despite being a visit to what is normally a location created to be beautiful and joyful: A pilgrimage of sorts to the Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon, where organist Paul Quarino performed on, maintained, and…
This is a big update about everything that has happened with the Organ Grinder documentary over the past 22 months, plus what’s coming next, and how people can help me complete principal photography. Correction: In the video I refer to Howard Vollum as the “founder of Tektronix”. There were in fact four original co-founders of…
As mentioned in our post about the Kenosha Theatre, the story of the Organ Grinder is also the story of the movie palace and the theatre pipe organ. We’ve previously been lucky to obtain and restore rare footage of the Oriental Theatre in Portland, Oregon. The Oriental’s Wurlitzer was the basis of the instrument in…
