ROBERT ELMORE playing the Ballroom Organ
IN THE ATLANTIC CITY AUDITORIUM AND CONVENTION HALL
WORLD’S LARGEST BALLROOM ORGAN – WORLD’S LARGEST AUDITORIUM

BOARDWALK PIPES – The 55-ranks Kimball Organ
00:00 The Stars And Stripes Forever – Sousa
02:09 Stars In My Eyes – Kreisler
04:40 Caprice Viennois – Kreisler
09:41 Old Refrain – Kreisler
14:53 Liebesfreud – Kreisler
18:29 Fantasy On Nursery Themes – Elmore
23:55 Eklog – Kramer
29:01 Squirrel – Weaver
31:27 Marche Champêtre – Boex
35:49 Trumpet Voluntary – Clarke

MERCURY RECORDS SR90109

The Adrian Phillips Ballroom at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City is equipped with a magnificent pipe organ, installed in two chambers behind the grill-work on either side of the proscenium. The instrument was completed in 1930 and dedicated in a recital by organist Rollo Maitland on May 25th of that year. The console is located in the musician’s balcony (house right). The Ballroom is a venue of gigantic size, 181 feet long, 128 feet wide, and 75 feet high. It seats 5,000 people (including the rear balcony). Thus, it is actually larger than Radio City Music Hall, and nearly twice the size of the Symphony Hall at Lincoln Center.
Originally envisioned to provide the soundtrack for silent movies, the Kimball organ, Opus KPO 7073, can provide a wide variety of musical styles and genres and can conjure up every imaginable effect from the singing of birds to an entire symphony orchestra. There are 55 ranks of pipes in this instrument controlled from a four-manual console.
https://www.boardwalkorgans.org/kimball

HI-FI FACTS
Three very sensitive microphones were used in the recording of “the world’s largest theatre-type pipe organ,’’ and the matter of placement, challenging in any circumstances, be-came really formidable in the gigantic Atlantic City Ballroom. Seemingly endless cables and pulley attachments were hung from the ceiling, and from these the microphones were sus-pended. If they were hung too close to the two Chambers which housed the organ pipes, the resonant qualities of the hall were thrown out of aural focus; if they were too far from the source of sound, the reproduction became dim and veiled. After much manipulation and re-placement, the desired balance was achieved—a balance between sound and reverberation and between chamber and chamber—with the result that the listener not only hears the organ, but actually experiences the sound as if he were sitting in the ballroom itself.
After the recording sessions were over, the three channels of sound which the microphones had picked up were transferred to a composite two-channel tape by means of a special electronic process, and from the two-channel tape this Stereophonic disc was made.
Wilma Cozart was recording director for the sessions, Harold Lawrence was the musical Supervisor, and C. R. Fine was the chief engineer and technical Consultant. George Piros made the subsequent tape-to-disc transfer.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to this music, so any request from the rights holders will be met by me taking the video down. Thank you.
[email protected]