INDIANAPOLIS — Although the music inside the Paramount Music Palace ended nearly 30 years ago, you’ll have the chance to remember this iconic institution this Sunday at the Hilbert Circle Theater.
Organizers bill the show “Remember the Paramount” as a salute to the Paramount Music Palace.
“The Paramount Music Palace was a pizza parlor on steroids,” according to organist and former WRTV sports reporter Ken Double. “One wall of the building was this enormous theater pipe organ.”
Although one might hear the word "organ" and associate it with the church instrument, the theater organ is a show all on its own.
“These were designed to make music for silent films replacing the orchestra,” Double said. “There was a xylophone, a glockenspiel, a marimba, a piano, cymbals, tambourines, all wired into the organ.”
Paramount Publix I Opus 2164 was more widely known as the “Mighty Wurlitzer.” It was first installed in the Paramount Theater in Oakland, Calif., in 1931. But its life there was short lived as the “talkies” replaced silent films.
The Paramount Music Palace opened in 1978 and operated on Indianapolis’ east side for more than 15 years.
WRTV reporter Phil Ponce visited the Paramount Music Palace for a performance from renowned organist and composer Gaylord Carter on May 3, 1981.
The Paramount Music Palace met its demise in 1995 when it was razed and replaced by a Don Pablo’s restaurant. WRTV reporter Grace Trahan filed a report on the venue’s swan song on Jan. 15, 1995.
Ken Double played the “Mighty Wurlitzer” one more time in a report with WRTV reporter Derrik Thomas that same week.
This Sunday’s show will revisit what theater organists refer to as the “Dirty 30,” or the 30 most requested songs including, “Happy Birthday,” “Over the Rainbow,” and "Chattanooga Choo Choo."
Double says the performance is for everyone.
“For those who don't know anything about the Paramount, and don't know anything about the Wurlitzer pipe organ, [it’s] a musical experience,” Double said. “There is nothing quite like it. It can be whisper quiet, it can be thunderous and stunning, and it can present most anything from the field of light classical, to popular, to novelty. This is going to be a spectacular piece of variety entertainment, with an instrument that will leave those that don't know it blown away.”
All proceeds from the show will benefit the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Symphony in Color and the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society.
Double the Fun
Ken Double also took a stroll down memory lane while visiting Indianapolis. Double says this visit may have been the first time he’s been back to WRTV since he left in 1984.
While the news business has changed quite a bit since then, Double also witnessed change in the industry.
“When I arrived in 1980, they were just completing the switch from film to videotape,” Double said. “There were still a couple of film photographers out there and they still would dip the film in the soup to get it developed and edited.”
Double also didn’t have the luxury of using a computer, but he credits his piano-playing for making him proficient with the typewriter.
“You had a six-sheet carbon-copy piece of paper that you put in your typewriter,” Double said. “You type your script up, and I got a copy, the producer in the booth got a copy, the director got a copy, the assignment editor got a copy and somebody else got a copy.”
Double recalls working along WRTV legends like Tom Carnegie, Clyde Lee and Howard Caldwell.
“Howard was a journalist,” Double said. “He wasn't a TV anchor star, he wasn't worried about his hair and his makeup, he was delivering the news of the day, and he was a great journalist and a great guy.”
