(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, we were able to record first-hand accounts about the establishment that started it all, Ye Olde Pizza Joynt (“YOPJ”), in Hayward, California.
While in the Bay Area in October, we were treated to two interviews, one with Mary Ann Henningsen Frankenfeld, daughter of YOPJ founders Carsten and Joyce Henningsen, and another with Susan Langford, wife of the main and most charismatic performer at YOPJ, the late, great Bill Langford.
Mary Ann told us how her father Carsten, an industrial engineer with a love for gadgets of all kinds – especially antique ones – didn’t really enjoy his desk job. His coworker, engineer Norm Markell, was also looking for a change. Norm had previously worked at a pizza restaurant, and the two – to the astonishment of their families – decided to quit their jobs and build a restaurant.
This first YOPJ restaurant, located on Mission Blvd in Hayward, did not house a pipe organ – that was to come later at a 2nd location – but it featured live entertainment in the form of a ragtime group with banjo player, upright bass, and piano.
The premiere location proved to be quite popular, so in 1960 the two business partners opened a second YOPJ on Hesperian Blvd near the San Lorenzo / Hayward border.
This 2nd location was also successful, but by that time Carsten and Norm were having differences about the future direction of the restaurants. Carsten had an inkling to lean into the musical entertainment aspect, while Norm wanted them to become more of a Hofbrau / Neighborhood pub.
The two founders decided to amicably part ways, with each taking a location as their own. The original location, now exclusively Norm’s, became “Rocky’s”, and continued to be successful.
Carsten, relating to his interest in antique mechanical devices and musical instruments, was enthusiastic about theatre pipe organs.
Organ concerts were still popular events at the time, often selling out shows. Carsten recalled 5,000 people waiting in line to hear the San Francisco Fox Wurlitzer in the 1950s. He decided to try combining the popularity of pipe organ entertainment and pizza.
(There had been other restaurants and nightclubs with pipe organs, as well as banquet halls and dance halls, but no family-oriented pizza restaurants. This was new territory.)
In 1962, he had a pipe organ installed. The main core of the instrument was originally the 1928 Wurlitzer from the Warfield Theatre on Market Street in San Francisco.
The organ was an instant hit. The first organist there was Dave Quinlan, which made Dave the world’s first “pizza organist”, of which many more were to come.
But perhaps the organist most associated with YOPJ is Bill Langford, who had a legendary 17-year tenure at the restaurant.
Susan Langford became acquainted with YOPJ at a very early age – one of her earliest memories is of being held aloft in her grandfather’s arms in the restaurant. She remembers seeing a wall where you could see all the pipes.
At that time, Susan had no idea of just how much this restaurant would become a part of her life.
As a teenager in high school, Susan’s first interaction with Bill Langford was when she went up to make a song request, saying “do you know you brought a new kind of love to me?”, which turned out to be an unintentionally prophetic question.
At age 19, Susan got a job at YOPJ, working the pizza-making line in the kitchen, making dough, and mixing the proprietary sauces. Not to mention, dish-washing.
“It was like you had walked into just this musical world, this environment that enveloped the whole place. It was a small place. It was not a big place. It was very, very small with concrete floors.”
“And now you imagine this theater organ going, right? And how that sound just completely filled the space. And it was fun. It was impressive. It was impressive as a new person in the working world to see how packed we were all the time. And it was just a lively, fun environment.”
But it wasn’t until the 1980s, when the staff got together for a Halloween party, with Susan dressed as Harpo Marx, that a romance developed with Bill. Bill struck up a banter, in a slapstick character mode, and the two really hit it off.
They would date a bit in the early 80s, but Bill took a gig performing at the Cardinal Music Palace (another pipe organ and pizza eatery) in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and Susan remained in Hayward working at YOPJ.
Bill later returned to California, a bit older and wiser (and having been through marriage/divorce more than once). The two reunited in the mid 1990s, and despite Bill’s reticence to marry again, they tied the knot in 1995, and were inseparable from then on.
Bill continued to perform in multiple venues, although by this time others were performing at YOPJ.
Bill passed away in April, 2017, peacefully in his sleep, according to his obituary.
Susan and Mary Ann both described bill’s famous (and sometimes infamous) antics as a performer.
Unlike a lot of pipe organ restaurants that were to follow, YOPJ was open late, and after “family hour” was over and the crowd was made up of adults (many of whom were well-lubricated with alcohol), Bill would perform as an array of characters and in many costumes, producing props from a steamer trunk by the console, and making all kinds of innuendos, both verbally and musically.
Bill would frequently call attention to patrons as they exited the restroom, playing “Hail to the Chief”, or the inappropriately-complimentary “He’s got the whole world in his hands”. Susan recalled:
“In one instance, when some poor soul made their way to the restroom and would have to eventually come out, I remember they tried to wait him out, you know, and [Bill’s] playing along, doing his little thing, ‘April showers’, ‘I’ll wait forever’, you know, all that kind of thing. And the whole crowd’s into it.”
“And finally he stops playing and the person assumes that he has taken a break, and they came crawling out on their hands and knees, you know, they can’t see him immediately cause they’re crawling, right? And he breaks into this big fanfare. So you couldn’t escape it. He was like a spider. He had eyes everywhere, and the crowd, they got into it, and it was all in good humor.”
Once the word of the pipe organ entertainment spread, patrons would line up around the block to get in to YOPJ (sound familiar?), and it wasn’t long until other entrepreneurs wanted to get in on the action. Mary Ann:
“A few years into our operation, then we got, you know, imitators, both in the Bay Area and across the country. And they had their own spin on it. There was Bella Roma and Martinez. There was one in Redwood City. There was, of course, the Organ Grinder in Portland that we did visit. And I also visited the Organ Grinder in the early 90s by myself. And so really they coexisted fairly amicably.”
The performers at YOPJ innovated a number of musical gimmicks that spread to most all of the later pizza restaurants, from the “Train Song”, imitating a steam train leaving the station, leading into a medley which would always include Chattanooga Choo Choo (YOPJ even had a real train whistle installed on their pipe organ, with its own separate compressed air supply), or the “Space Medley”, starting with the theme from “2001” and later adding in newer blockbuster themes like “Star Wars”.
But sometimes, YOPJ would copy from other restaurants as well. For example, Mary Ann recalls this about the mechanical monkey which was a signature gimmick of the Organ Grinder restaurants:
“At one point during our visit to the organ grinder, we noticed that the organist had an act involving a mechanical monkey. And we liked it. And, you know, to be honest, we stole that. We borrowed that. And Bill Langford incorporated the monkey very successfully. And someone from the Organ Grinder, and I don’t remember who, wrote Bill a congratulatory letter saying, ‘We’ll be sending you a present of our own monkey, but it will be ticking’, which is the kind of humor that people could do back then.”
As Mary Ann said, this competition was mostly amicable, and as a result it was common for organists to travel around and perform limited runs at other restaurants (often in combination with a concert tour which took them to nearby towns), or to substitute for organists who were on vacation or out sick for extended periods.
Susan recalled that Organ Grinder organist Paul Quarino would sometimes substitute for Bill while pretending to be Bill – seen at the console from behind, the two men had a similar build, and the audience wouldn’t notice (although loyal regulars probably did notice immediately).
The fun would continue at Ye Olde Pizza Joynt until 2003, when a devastating kitchen fire upended everything. Mary Ann:
“I was out of town at the time, but my understanding is that there was a malfunction with the oven and it was also at the end of a Saturday night, so by then you have a lot of the upper part upper near the ceiling, there’s going to be a lot of warm, greasy air, so once this malfunction happened with the oven, then of course the fire spread all along the ceiling.”
“The organ bench actually was untouched, but the instruments that were on the ceiling, there was some lead soldering that literally melted, everything along the ceiling got pretty crispy. And the pipes that were in the pipe chamber were also unharmed.”
Mary Ann and her brother explored ideas on how to repair, remodel, and reopen the restaurant. Ultimately, what sank the idea was that so many areas of the building were not up to current code, including the size of the restrooms not meeting ADA requirements, that the available floor space for seating would’ve been reduced from its already compact area. This and the expenses involved meant that the restaurant likely wouldn’t pencil out financially. So it was decided to auction off what wasn’t charred, including tables and benches, and the bar.
As for the organ:
“Some [pipes] have been sold to other pipe organ people, and many of them are in my living room as we speak, and my garage is entirely full of those pipes, but as probably this documentary points out, some people just didn’t want to pay the storage costs, and sometimes other people sent their pipes to landfill, which is, you know, sad, but fortunately all of mine pretty much have a home in some way or the other.”
Still, for a pipe organ and pizza restaurant (not to mention the first one) – or any restaurant – a run of 45 years of entertaining guests with music and mayhem (41 with the organ) is quite the accomplishment.
The building is still there – for a number of years it was a payday loan shop. Today, a Mexican / Salvadoran restaurant operates in the space.
And the first location’s building is still standing as well, currently utilized by an Afghan restaurant. Although the area around the building has changed quite a lot as the area population has grown, you can still see hints of the original Pizza Joynt, including the sign.
Mary Ann and Susan brought a huge collection of photos, documents, and recordings to share. We plan to produce a full-length video for YouTube about their experiences and the story behind Ye Olde Pizza Joynt in the near future.
In addition to Mary Ann and Susan, later in the road trip we interviewed two more people with experiences to share about YOPJ – stay tuned.
You can help support the project by purchasing from the Crowdfunding Shop.
