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Memories Of The Mosque Reginald Foort and Eddie Weaver at the Mosque Theater
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Memories Of The Mosque Reginald Foort and Eddie Weaver at the Mosque Theater
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EDDIE WEAVER
1 Dance of the Hours
2 Secret Love
3 Georgy Girl
4 Stumbling
5 Sweet Georgia Brown
6 Somewhere My Love
7 I Ain’t Down Yet
8 It’s Alright With Me
9 Thoroughly Modern Millie
10 I’ll Go Home With Bonnie Jean / Coming through the Rye
11 Something Stupid
12 The Impossible Dream
REGINALD FOORT
13 She Didn’t Say Yes, She Didn't Say No
14 Mood Indigo
15 Valencia
16 Laura
17 My Hero
18 Blue Moon
19 Canadian Capers
20 The Doll Dance
21 Lullaby of Broadway
22 St Louis Blues
EDDIE WEAVER
At the time of this recording in the late sixties, Eddie Weaver held the all-time record among theatre organists. For 43 years at that time he had played daily to cheering theatre audiences. Eddie passed away at the age of 92 in 2000.
Eddie Weaver’s early training partly explains his unparalleled success; the rest was due to his tremendous talent and energy, his friendly humor and warm personality, and his unerring sense of solid musical values and showmanship. He learned piano at an early age from his mother, at 17 was offered $100 a week by the Lafayette Theatre in Batavia, N.Y. to play organ accompaniment for its silent movies, then learned the true theatre organ style from the famous Henry Murtagh in Buffalo.
Murtagh taught Eddie two basic axioms of show business. The first of .these was “Smile”, which Eddie learned so well he has hardly frowned since. The second was “If it doesn’t go, throw it out”. After a stint in Floradia playing for Paramount theaters, he moved to the New Haven Paramount to be closer to his future wife. Here he stayed for ten years during which Paramount sent him to study with Jesse Crawford and his wife in New York.
In 1936, Eddie Weaver moved to the Loew’s Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, playing for over twenty years, before taking the position at the larger Byrd Theatre organ. During those past thirty years he was a featured artist for countless radio shows, benefits, combos, organ clubs, recordings, and special events.
REGINALD FOORT
The long-silent Mosque organ is now known around the world through the recordings of Reginald Foort. “The very name of the Mosque spells glamour to people, for it touches their imaginations,” Foort commented.
The list of Foort’s discs numbers more than 200, probably more than that of any other theater organist except Reginald Dixon. By an odd coincidence Valencia was included in Foort’s first recording session in June 1926 when he became the first person in Europe to record on a Wurlitzer.
In his native England, Reginald Foort played organs from St Paul’s Cathedral to vaudeville, which is “still going strong there” [circa 1956]. He recalled that he once toured the country with a five-manual travelling organ weighing 25 tons that required a staff of 14 to set it up and dismantle it.
ABOUT THE MOSQUE
Richmond's most bizarre building, a lavish replica of a Moslem temple now called Richmond's Landmark Theater was formerly known as the Mosque. It was formally opened on October 28, 1927 by ACCA Temple of the Mystic Shrine and became the property of the city in 1940. The building has an exotic splendor. Into the dome alone went 75,000 square feet of gold leaf, and another 35,000 square feet of aluminum leaf was used. The Auditorium decorations include Saracenic decorations and ornamental tile imported from Spain, Italy and Tunis, along with lush carpets, silken curtains and paintings. Besides the auditorium which seats nearly 5,000, there is an 18,000 square foot ballroom and a 20 by 70 foot swimming pool.
ABOUT THE FOORT RECORDING
Emory Cook (1913-2002) was an audio engineer and inventor who used his Sounds of our Times and Cook Laboratories record labels to demonstrate his philosophy about sound, his recording equipment, and his manufacturing techniques. From 1952 to 1966 Cook recorded, manufactured, and distributed some of the highest quality audio recordings in the world, including two of Foort at The Mosque. Emory and Martha Cook donated their record company, master tapes, patents, and papers to the Smithsonian Institution in 1990. The Institution kindly agreed to make these Foort archival treasures available to Pipe Organ Presentations and to license them for re-issue in CD format.