Work begins to restore Granada Theater's original organ

Jul. 25—BLUEFIELD — One of the most anticipated attractions at the renovated Granada Theater in Downtown Bluefield is the original organ that was first installed in December 1927.

The Wurlitzer Opus 1790, Style EX, played for the first movie shown at the Granada on Jan. 2, 1928, "Rose of the West," with Mary Astor. The movie was made during the waning years of silent films, which were often accompanied by live organ music in theaters.

When members of the Bluefield Preservation Society (BPS) started working on the massive project of renovating the theater in 2012, the thought of bringing back the organ surfaced.

But since it had been sold and removed from the theater in 1970, no one knew if returning, and reassembling it, would ever be a possibility.

As fate would have it, everything eventually fell into place for that to happen and work began on reassembling the organ system in October 2020.

Julie Hurley, a BPS member, has spearheaded the Granada renovation project, with about $3 million raised over the last several years to pay for the work.

Restoration of the theater is essentially complete and an opening date should be set soon.

Hurley said the organ, when reassembly and restoration are complete, can be played for many occasions, including with silent films. However, it will most likely be some time next year before the organ system part of the project is finished.

But Hurley said just being able to bring the organ back to Bluefield and finding the people with the expertise to restore it has been quite a process.

According to a recent article in Theatre Organ, published by the American Theatre Organ Society, John Wolford of Evansville, Ind. purchased the organ and removed it from the Granada in 1970. It had not been used most likely since the 1930s or early 1940s.

Initially, the organ was installed in Wolford's home and during that time some alterations were made and some of the organ's features were not restored with reassembly.

After Wolford died in 1999, his widow sold the organ to Bob Edmunds, a native of the area who had always dreamed of hearing the organ played in the Granada Theater, which closed its doors in the 1980s and had fallen into disrepair with no plans to ever reopen at the time.

That apparent permanent closure led to an agreement with the Keith-Albee Theatre in Huntington and the organ was brought in to replace its previous organ, an Opus 1780, which had been sold.

Edmunds and a group of volunteers installed the organ and the project was completed in 2003.

The organ was used at Keith-Albee as a preview feature before films, for graduations and at special events.

In 2009, Edmunds bought the 1780 that was previously in the Keith-Albee with the initial intention of combining the two organs into one. which was partially accomplished. But the sentiment was to return the 1780 to its home in its original form, not a combination.

Not long after that, Edmunds learned of the purchase of the Granada Theater by the BPS, which had plans to restore the theater. The BPS also was interested in having he organ returned to its original home.

The timing could not have been better as Edmunds was restoring the 1780, so the 1790 was donated to the Grenada. Both instruments would then be restored.

The 1790 was moved back to Bluefield in 2015 and placed in the Granada's basement for storage until it could be reassembled as renovations to the theater progressed.

But putting the organ and all that came with it back together and in top working order was a major task, and this is where Mac Abernathy, treasurer of the Piedmont Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society, stepped in.

"It was a circuitous route (of getting involved)," he said Friday while at the Granada.

"Bill Webber, the house organist at Kentucky Theatre, knew about this (Granada) because they were familiar with this organ when it was at the Keith-Albee," he said. "Bill and his friends knew it was coming here and he called up Julie one night and she said she didn't how they would do it (reassemble the organ) and he told her he had an idea..."

Webber's idea was to call Abernathy.

"He called me," he said, and that got the ball rolling. He met with Hurley and was named head technician responsible for reassembling the 1790 in the Granada and Edmunds was tapped as a consultant.

"It's been day trips and weekends ever since (from his home in Liberty, N.C.)," Abernathy said. "Jimmy Jenks and Harry Moore are doing their work when I am not here."

Another volunteer, Chance Parrish of southern Virginia, and Barry Simmons, also with the Piedmont chapter, have been coming up to help.

Abernathy does not call himself an organist and only plays for his own enjoyment.

"I am an organ geek," he said. "That is what my description is."

But his father was an organist and he helped him work on organs.

"I was a "gofer' for my dad," he said. "We had a smaller Wurlitzer in our basement. When I was in college he got a larger organ and asked me if I wanted to put it together."

That was around 1970 when Abernathy was 19 and he as been working on organs ever since.

"It is all volunteer work," he said. "I wish I would have been paid for all the work I have done. But it is the love of the instrument, the love of the genre. I would work just as hard to save a church organ."

To Abernathy, the workings of a pipe organ is "multiplied simplicity" as the complicated parts and connections seem overwhelming to most people but condense down to simple steps.

For example, the magazine article describes the Style E as a one-chamber instrument with two manuals and seven ranks. Opus 1790 was a divided organ with two chambers.

The main chamber housed a flute, diapson, violin and celeste and chrysoglott. The solo chamber had a tibia clausa, vox humana and style D trumpet with a xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes and a full toy counter configuration.

A theater organ is similar, but different, to a church organ, he said, and an organist has a period of adjustment to make the transition.

"Everything is reversed on this compared to what a church organist would be used to," he said.

That is just a starter for an explanation of the complexity, but it is routine for Abernathy, who explained that a 7.5-horsepower Spencer Orgoblo blower had just been installed at the Granada and will provide more than enough wind power to the pipes in the Main and Solo chambers that tower on each wall beside the stage, covered with "blinds" that can be opened and closed to control the volume of the music.

"The blower may be cranked up this weekend," he said Friday, to give them a chance to hear the sounds from the pipes playing in the Granada for the first time in many decades.

"This is just testing," he said, and no one knows what the sound will be like. "The best analogy is a diamond pulled out of the mine. It is rough and must be cut, polished and set."

Abernathy said the blower and pipes and all the rest, except the console, can function by using "tracks," but it will be for "editing" purposes to get everything ready for the console itself.

"I have recorded tracks of music that I can take and translate those tracks to play this organ," he said. "That will help us diagnose, fix and adjust, and regulate. But it will not be played for the public until the console is done."

Abernathy said the goal is to clean up and restore the console as well as and add some stop actions and some stops it doesn't have now.

"For now, though, it's a matter of getting the system up and running and we will see what we can do about raising some money to restore the console."

That cost will probably be at least $15,000, with the hope that it may not be damaged or need more work than anticipated, which happened with the rest of the system.

Since the work on the system started last fall, many problems have been encountered.

"There were quite a few things missing from the organ and some water damage to it," he said.

But with the help of Swope Construction, contractor for the Granada project, and the ability to find parts donated by organ owners, including some from his father's old organ, those issues have been remedied.

However, more volunteers are needed to help finish the organ project, and especially to maintain it in the future.

"We are looking for anyone who wants to be involved with it, what I call the 'care and feeding of a Wurlitzer,'" he said, and that includes anyone with enough interest to learn. "It is just something you have to jump in to and be a part of."

Abernathy said he is looking forward to hearing the organ after the work is done, and he hopes local audiences will participate, especially when it is played with silent films, which have regained popularity in recent years.

"We started noticing the demographics of the audience in Greensboro," he said. "It used to be the older generation (having in interest in silent films), but we are seeing people in their 20s and 30s now coming, especially for name recognition films like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Lon Chaney."

Abernathy said he also hopes the restoration of the Granada helps spark interest in the history of theaters.

"There is a strong contingent (of interest) in Greensboro about the history of theaters and I am sure that is going to be the case here too, and I hope it is," he said.

For Hurley, the entire Granada project was dependent on volunteers and community support.

"I can't say thank you enough," she said. "We are going to have a treasure here. Everyone invested in every way possible they could. That is amazing, Everyone I have spoken to outside our community cannot believe we have funded this project, that we are going in debt free."

That is because of the generosity of the community, she said, and the faith residents had in recognizing the need for the return of the Granada Theater.

— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com