Sounds of Tower Ballroom will never die, says organist

A FAMOUS seaside musician believes organ music will never die.

Phil Kelsall, who has been the principal organist of the Wurlitzer organ in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom for 48 years, performed in Henley on Sunday.

He played tunes from his “light music repertoire” on the Allen MDR3 organ at the town hall, which comprised familiar songs from television and radio as well as show tunes.

Composers Mr Kelsall chose to play included Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Irving Berlin.

His set also included covers of “nostalgic” songs from the wireless including Sailing By by Ronald Binge, known from the Shipping Forecast, and In Party Mood by Jack Strachey, known from Housewives’ Choice.

The afternoon event was organised by Henley Rotary Club in conjunction with the Henley Organ Trust and Mr Kelsall has played in Henley every January since 1979.

Prior to his performance there was a small technical setback when the floppy disk he used to load his chosen presets into the stops was not accepted and so he spent the morning resetting the stops manually.

Mr Kelsall joked to the crowd: “Apologies if you are expecting some sounds which you have heard before. They may have changed a little bit, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.”

He first became acquainted with the famous Wurlitzer organ in Blackpool as a child. Mr Kelsall explained: “There was an organist in the tower called Reg Dixon, who was very famous. He was a household name on the radio every day and a big icon of Blackpool, they called him ‘Mr Blackpool’.

“My dad used to be a fan of his and he used to take me when I was a small boy. We used to go every week to watch him play. That inspired me to learn the piano and then, of course, the natural thing was to then switch over to the organ. I learned classical organ and I’ve been playing ever since.”

Aged only 17, Mr Kelsall was offered a job as organist for the Tower Circus band, later becoming an organist in the Ballroom in 1977. He said: “The Tower Ballroom you see on Strictly and the organ in there is like the Henley one but twice as big and is a proper pipe organ with 1,000 pipes.

“There’s a lot more co-ordination playing the organ than a piano or any instrument because all your limbs are going all the time. Both feet, both hands and brain.”

Mr Kelsall, who was made an MBE in 2010 for services to music, said he believed the genre would stand the test of time.

“It will never die,” he said. “It does appeal to an older age group but there are young people as well who enjoy it. I think once you mention the word ‘organ’ people immediately think of the church and it’s not like that. It’s totally different. It’s popular music. Some of these orchestras you have probably heard of, such as André Rieu, he’s attracting thousands of people. He plays the same material as I’ll be playing today but he attracts younger people.”

The Henley Organ Trust was originally founded in 1971 and concerts originally used an organ based at the Regal Cinema. The inaugural concert at the cinema by the late Reg Dixon attracted about 1,200 visitors to the town. After the old cinema was demolished in 1993 to make way for Waitrose the concerts moved to the town hall where an organ was installed.

David Rusman, who lives in Sonning Common and is treasurer of the rotary club, has been involved with the Henley Organ Trust for about 20 years.

He said: “The organ is only 30 years old but there aren’t many organs like that. It is specifically designed for the town hall. The problem we have is that most residents of Henley haven’t a clue that this is here.”

Mr Rusman said he would like to see more people attending the monthly musical afternoons. He said: “We have found that our audiences dropped off since the covid pandemic and they haven’t really recovered since then.

“It’s a musical afternoon for anyone who wants to listen to live music and all the organists are different. Some of them play more classical, some play musical scores and some play jazz-type stuff.

“The beauty of an organ like that is that you can play a lot of different types of music on it.”