Thomas Electronic Organ – “Demonstration Record”

It’s not a band or a song—just trying to keep the heading under control. The full title is: “Here is the amazing new single manual Thomas Electronic Organ. The first luxury organ without a luxury price.” There is no record label, really, except “Thomas”—but it looks like a cool record label—in that “ye-olden thymes” font (not a real name, I’m just calling it that) silver letters on dark blue. I’d be on that record label. I can’t find the date—I’m guessing it’s the 1960s—but I may be wrong. It’s a “Demonstration Record” for their line of home organs—I’m not going into the history of the company or how they compared with similar products of the time—you can find it all online. I can’t resist these promotional/demonstration records, when I see them (if the price is right) just because they are odd artifacts that kind of function as time machines. You can find no end to them on YouTube, of course, but listening to the actual object is a completely different kind of thrill. The narrator is classic—I wonder who that guy is. If you were going to find an actor to play a guy reading narration on an electronic organ demonstration record, this would be your guy. He says things like… “and finally, the diophasing effect…” I’m kind of making that up—I don’t know what he’s saying. He also says, “You can’t make a bad sound with a Thomas.” Maybe that’s about the “Color-Glo System”—or I missed something. I “collect” (inasmuch as I collect anything) versions of the song, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”—just because I’m obsessed with it—partly due to a Thelonious Monk version that may be my favorite piece of recorded music. Anyway, the record starts out with the organ playing that very song. I’ll see if I can identify any other songs. “America the Beautiful,” “Tea for Two,” “Lover” (Rodgers and Hart). There’s another, it’s really familiar, but I don’t know. And it ends with something I’ve never heard before. The record is certainly not collectable, and I don’t think the organs are either—but I read that they did, for a time, have the rights to produce Moog synthesizers—so those might be exciting to find. Here’s a tip—the Model 370 Monticello spinet organ had a synth built into the upper manual—that might be kind of cool.

6.2.23