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Remembrance Tom Hazleton Available on CD CD $17 UK Customers Only (PPD): CD 12 GBP |
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Remembrance Tom Hazleton Available on CD CD $17 UK Customers Only (PPD): CD 12 GBP |
1. I Wish I Were In Love Again (2.07)
2. I Don’t Know How to Love Him (3.05)
3. Love Is Just Around The Corner (1.50)
4. Romeo and Juliet Love Theme (3.10)
5. Our Winter World of Love (4.13)
6. Love Locked Out (3.50)
7. What The World Needs Now (2.26)
8. Love Story (4.18)
9. It’s Love (2.43)
10. Love Is Blue (2.46)
11. For All We Know (2.40)
12. I Wish You Love (3.23)
13. Proud Mary (3.18)
14. The Summer Knows (4.59)
15. Masquerade (2.28)
16. 10¢ a Dance (3.57)
17. In Old New York (2.02)
18. With a Little Help From My Friends (3.27)
19. Prelude # 2 – Gershwin (3.40)
20. Rhapsody in Blue (7.13)
21. In The Garden (2.33)
Tom was one of the very few organists in the world to be both a top rate theatre and classical organist. At the time that this recording was made, he was Director of Music and organist to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto and he was also the senior staff organist of the Cap’n’s Galley chain of pizza parlors in Northern California. Tom is featured on this CD on the former Buddy Cole organ, a 3/25 in the Campbell store (a suburb of San Jose), and at the 4/27 in Redwood City. He was responsible for the re-designed specification of the Redwood City Wurlitzer, (originally a 4/18 from the 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle), and was consultant concerning the re-design of the other two organs in the chain.
The basic Campbell organ was a stock Wurlitzer 260 built in 1927 and installed in the United Artists Theatre in Los Angeles. It was purchased and removed by Buddy Cole and his family in 1959. The Robert Morton portion of this installation was originally in the Iowa Theatre in Marshaltown, Iowa and was later re-installed in a Los Angeles radio station. The complete installation was later purchased by Buddy Cole and added to the Wurlitzer to compete the organ as you hear it on this CD. After Buddy’s untimely passing the entire organ ended up in an unsheltered warehouse where it experienced extensive damage due to exposure. It was purchased in 1970 by Bill Breuer, the owner of the Cap’n’s Galley chain and moved to Campbell. The installation was not an easy one, due to the damage – the pipework was badly mangled, the chest water damaged and the relays crushed. It is a great credit to the crew that the organ as featured on this CD sounds so beautiful. When the Campbell store closed the organ was removed and much of it went to England.
Tom Hazleton received his formal musical education at San Francisco State and at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His principal teacher was the famous Richard Purvis, organist at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Tom was introduced to the theatre organ in the late fifties and he played in the San Francisco California and Paramount Theatres, and was the last staff organist at the latter. He then became the first staff organist at the S.F. Avenue Theatre.
Tom could get down and dirty with the rest of us when playing the incessant pizza requests such as “The Train,” The Sting,” “2001” and so on but he always did it with a certain panache and sophistication that no one else had. His late Sunday night sessions, when the pizza crowds had gone, were legendary, his taste was impeccable. He also had a quirky sense of humor which led to his occasionally playing the theme to “Dr Zhivago” as a brisk 6/8 march and “Hava Nagilah” in 5/4 time. If you wonder how a theatre organist can control a crowd of rebellious teenagers one hearing of “Proud Mary” will show how it was done.
At the recording session at Redwood City, he had finished his big closer, "Rhapsody in Blue" and then for fun launched into a schmaltzy Viennese waltz version of “In The Garden,” not knowing that the tape recorder was still running! He was mortified when he found that it was included on the album and wondered to us, “What will people say?” We assured him that everyone would realize that it was just a gentle satire and that no one would complain, and no one ever has.
Born in Monterey on Sept. 27, 1942, Tom Hazleton passed away on March 13, 2006.
Thanks are due to Bill Johnson of Concert Recording for providing the original master tapes of these two recording sessions, and to Tom Blackwell and the Puget Sound Theater Organ Society (http://pstos.org) for the cover photo of the organ.