Two Men and an Organ

We stood in the back of Town Hall the other day, John Phipps and I. All the chairs had been removed, and a dozen people our age were playing pickle ball. John’s attention, however, was not on the balls sailing over and sometimes into the nets, but on the music filling the auditorium.

The music came from a theatre pipe organ to the left of the stage, played by town organist Bruce Netten. Bruce was giving it a whirl after 10 years of renovation work.

John, a highly sought-after organ technician, listened to the full-throated sounds of the Wurlitzer, one of only a few such organs left in the country. “I’m very happy with it,” he said, his eyes moistening.

Each year, for the last decade, John has left his home in Cape Coral, Florida, to spend six months working on the Town Hall organ. He’s also rebuilding one at the Andover Theatre in Worcester.

John’s love of theatre organs started early. Growing up in Milton, he would, as a teenager, travel to Stoneham just to play the Wurlitzer, which the folks here let him practice on. He loved how it sounded, but he also was fascinated with how it worked.

Now a highly sought-after technician, he’s listening to the pipes—almost a thousand of them. There are flutes, horns, clarinets, oboes, trumpets, drums, glockenspiel, xylophone and more. Some are wood, some zinc, some brass.

“We rebuilt it from the bottom up,” John says. The “we” is John and Bruce Netten, who, as town organist, has been playing the organ before Town Meetings and special occasions for 23 years.

“My job was to hand John the tools,” Bruce says.

Bruce and John share more than a love for old organs. They also share a commitment to revitalizing this particular, complex instrument, and to doing it right.

“I only tolerate perfection,” John says.

Stoneham’s Town Hall is the only one in the country with a theatre pipe organ. A Wurlitzer 2/14—that means two keyboards and 14 ranks of pipes—it was donated in 1942 by Ralph Patch of the E. L. Patch Cod Liver Oil Company in Stoneham. Before then, it was the organ at Radio City WNAC in Boston. There it was assembled with components from two theatre organs in New York City.

However, time passed, and with the advent of television and cinema, theatre organs lost their following. Most of them were dismantled or destroyed, including one in Somerville, ruined by fire in 1975.

Ten years ago, with the Stoneham Wurlitzer badly in need of an overhaul, the town turned to Phipps, allocating $3,500. But of course that was only a start, and it took years of fund raising and donations to cover necessary work. A recent grant from MELD, a Stoneham organization supporting the arts, helped them complete the project.

If you’d like to hear the rebuilt organ, come to the special Town Meeting on Monday evening, June 18, when Bruce will perform. Be in your seat by 6:15.

John and Bruce are excited about what’s coming to Stoneham in October. Acclaimed theatre organist Clark Wilson will debut at Town Hall in a celebration of the Wurlitzer’s restoration. His music will accompany silent movies, a throw-back to the early days of cinema and music.

It will be fun. Stay tuned.