Electronic Boogie
Organ Music In A Margie Meinert Mood (Manner)
Cover Design by Burt Goldblatt
Faternity F-1033
1957
From the back cover: Here is the finest young organist to arrive on the scene in years... Margie Meinert, who has broken through the sound barrier on the organ.
Through her radio and television appearances this young Iowa girl has become famous throughout the midwest. It's time for the rest of the nation to hear her confident mastery of the electronic organ.
Some years back, it looked like the organ would wind up as a relic of a by-gone civilization. About the only places where you'd find the magnificent sounding pipe organs were in some churches and a few of the big theaters.
Then along come electronics, which made possible things like radar, pocket radios and the electronic organ. Since this musical masterpiece is not as big as a piano, it sparked a rebirth of interest in the organ as an instrument for the home. Organ sales began perking up and the organ, sacred from the brink of a museum collection, is now more popular than ever.
The problem today is the scarcity of good organists. To do justice to an organ; to extract from it all the many tonal possibilities that are built into it, requires a skilled manipulator. Many can play it well. Few reach concert status.
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, who manufactures the instrument Margie Meinert plays so well, has virtually adopted her as "Exhibit A". They call her the "Wurlitzer Sweetheart". The firm has sponsored a 12,000 mile air tour of major cities in the United States and take obvious and justifiable pride in her ability to coax beautiful music from their baby.
In this album you will get an example of the multitudes of sound that an electronic organ can produce when there's an experienced artist to conjure them up. For example, she tackles "Flight Of The Bumblebee"... admittedly as a showcase but a good one, anyhow... and it sounds more like a bumblebee than most bumblebees do.
And she goes sweet on such as
Anniversary Waltz" and "Sweetheart Of Sigma Chi". On the former, especially, the results sound like a mighty pipe organ with somebody like Bach or one of his students doing the pumping.
Margie Meinert goes popular with "Ivory Tower". The end product will make any teen-ager in the crowd sit up and take notice.
Then, for an added attraction, she wheels in the latest mechanical marvel... the electronic piano. Listen to her on "Clarinet Polka", with her left hand on the electronic organ and her right on the piano. Here is a new sound to make the devotees of the echo chamber and the multiple track record turn green with envy. It's a piano with a built-in echo; a piano that reverberates; a piano with vibrato. And, with Margie Meinert doing the playing, it's a piano that sings.
She plays boogie-woogie; she plays Latin rhythms. She makes the organ croon, dance and shout. This is what the electronic organ was invented for.
And it seems that Margie Meinert was invented for... or born for.. the electronic organ.
When she was seven, she gave a radio concert over WGN in Chicago. The newspapers called her a "child prodigy". They were wrong. At that time she was an experiences artist.
Actually, she went through her prodigy period when she was five. She was born in Clinton, Iowa, and her parents detected her musical ability early. She started talking piano lesson at three and two years later she gave her very first recital.
Margie Meinert graduated from the Dubuque University Conservatory Of Music in Dubuque, Iowa. She studied under the famous NBC organist, the late Lou Webb. She began with radio station KROS in her home town, Clinton, then switched to WOC in Davenport. She stayed around the station when TV game along and her program over WOC-TV, "Musical Mood", became the strongest local feature the station ever had.
She's had eight different radio shows and eleven different TV shows in Davenport, making her the most-likely-to-be-heard performer in that part of the midwest. But her performing hasn't been limited to Iowa. She's appeared on many network programs... with stars like Lawrence Welk, Kate Smith, Arthur Godfrey, Herb Sheldon and Ralph Edwards. She's played at Disneyland in California and soloed with the Tri-City Symphony.
Her talent appears limitless. She can switch at will from jazz to classical, from popular to Latin rhythms. She has written and recorded many compositions, among them "Electronic Boogie" and "The Whistler". She has perfect pitch. And she can cook.
There's something about Margie Meinert that inspires the nickname-coiners. In her career, she's acquired quite a few. Her talent made John Sullivan of Ringling Brothers Circus call her "The Ballerina Of The Foot Pedals". As already noted, the Wurlitzer people think of her as their "Sweetheart".
That isn't all that Wurlitzer has to say. After hearing virtually all the professional organists perform, the official Wurlitzer opinion is this:
"The truly magnificent way in which Miss Meinert captures the many true instrument effects in recording this entire album on the Wurlitzer Organ with Instrumental Percussion, reflects her masterful control of the keyboard."
Nowadays, with the organ regaining its place in the musical sun, there's a spate of organ records issued. Every major recording company and many of the minors, have at least one organist under contract. Mot of them sound the same. Margie Meinert has that rare gift of being able to be musically artistic and yet create a different style. At the same time, she's an exciting performer.
Considering the fact that she stands about five feet tall and weighs around 90 pounds, soaking dry, that's quite an order. But listen and see if you don't agree. – Dick Kleiner, Record Columnist, NEA Service, Inc.
Flight Of The Bumblebee
Ivory Tower
You're The Cream In My Coffee
On The Trail
Sweetheart Of Sigma Chi
Anniversary Song
Granada
Electronic Boogie
Indian Love Call
Clarinet Polka
Moon Over Miami
Mexican Hat Dance
Sleep
