Organ music is played at a baseball stadium for the first time - April 26th, 1941

On this day in 1941, the Chicago Cubs became the first Major League team to have live organ music performed at a ballgame.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that runs the basis of history every day of
the week. I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're
looking at a nostalgic milestone in baseball history, the day

(00:22):
when the music of a pipe organ first drifted over
a ballpark. The day was April twenty sixth, nineteen forty one.
The Chicago Cubs became the first major league team to
have live organ music performed at a ballgame. Cubs owner

(00:45):
Philip K. Wrigley installed a pipe organ behind the grandstand
of wriggly Field to provide fans with a little pregame
entertainment as they took their seats. The inaugural concert took
place before an afternoon game between the Cubs and the
Saint Louis Cardinals, and the tunes were supplied by local
organist Ray Nelson. There's no record of which songs he played,

(01:09):
but there's a good chance this was one of them.

(01:35):
According to the Chicago Tribune, the more than eighteen thousand
fans in attendance that day were delighted by Nelson's performance,
even though the music wasn't allowed to continue during the
actual game. Apparently no one had bothered to clear the
rights for the songs Nelson played, and because the game
was set to be broadcast on the radio, they had

(01:57):
to stop the music before the first pitch was thrown.
The same thing happened at a game the following day,
but the team's manager assured fans that by the time
the Cubs returned home from a series of away games,
they would have a deal worked out with the BMI
Music publishing company. With that in mind, the Tribune urged

(02:17):
readers to send the organist's suggestions for quote, any little
number you'd like to have rippled off some afternoon. Unfortunately,
working out the details proved trickier than expected, and by
mid May, both the organ and the organists had disappeared
from Wrigley Field. The Cub's home turf would remain organ

(02:40):
music free until nineteen sixty seven, but in the meantime,
other teams took notice of the promising experiment in Brooklyn,
New York. For example, Dodger's president Larry McPhail loved the
idea of bringing live music to baseball. After all, organ
music had already found a home at some of New

(03:01):
York's other sporting events. Organist Gladys Gooding routinely played in
Madison Square Garden during both Rangers and Knicks games, and
if she was good enough for hockey and basketball, then
why not baseball as well. McPhail invited Gooding to play
the organ for the Dodgers at Ebbitts Field, making her

(03:22):
the first full time organist for an MLB team. Gooding
continued in her role as the ebbitts Field organ queen
from nineteen forty two to nineteen fifty seven, when the
Dodgers made their infamous move to Los Angeles. During that time,
other pipe organs began popping up at baseball fields all

(03:42):
over the country, but it wasn't until the nineteen sixties
and early seventies that the instrument truly became a fixture
of the ballpark. The Chicago White Sox installed their first
organ in nineteen sixty, and because they still use it today,
they can now claim the type of longest uninterrupted organ
tradition in all of professional baseball. Two years later, the

(04:07):
Dodgers reintroduced the instrument at their new stadium in LA
and in nineteen sixty seven, the Chicago Cubs, the team
that started at all, finally welcomed the organ back to
Wrigley Field. They went through a string of organists over
the next two decades, but in nineteen eighty seven, the
Cubs met their match with Gary Pressey. In his astounding

(04:30):
thirty three year run from nineteen eighty seven to twenty nineteen,
Pressey played the organ at every single game two thousand,
six hundred and seventy nine in total. Few would have
guessed that a throwback instrument like the organ, one that
was previously reserved for cathedrals, vaudeville acts, and silent movie screenings,

(04:52):
would later come to define the sound of America's favorite pastime.
And no one would have predicted that the organ's cent
what happen in the middle of the rock and roll era,
But against the odds, that's exactly what happened. A lot
of the credit for the longevity of ballpark organ music
belongs to Nancy Faust, the longtime organist for the Chicago

(05:15):
White Sox. When she first took the job at Kamiski
Park in nineteen seventy, she pretty much stuck to the
baseball organ playbook. She played the Star Spangled banner at
the start of every game, and take me out to
the ballgame during the seventh inning stretch. She also carried
on the tradition of musically introducing the players at bat

(05:35):
by playing the anthem of their home state. After a while, though,
Nancy realized the state songs were feeling a bit dated
and didn't garner much reaction from crowds used to rock
and roll, So from then on she started playing songs
that fans were more familiar with, always careful to somehow
tie each song to a player's name, number, or disposition.

(05:59):
That would have been innovative enough, I mean, she basically
invented walk up music as we know it. But Nancy
didn't stop there. Fueled by the crowd's positive response, she
began using the organ to react to the game itself.
When someone stole a base, she'd play smooth Criminal, and
if someone streaked naked across the field, as often happened

(06:21):
in those days, she'd launch into an organ rendition of
is that all there is? But Nancy's most famous addition
to the baseball songbook has to be the one she
played during strikeouts nineteen sixty nine's Nana Hey, Hey, Kiss
Him Goodbye by Steam, Take a listen. The playful commentary

(06:58):
that Nancy provided on the organ heightened the experience of
attending a baseball game, giving the crowd something to laugh, sing,
or chant along with far more than mere background music.
Her performances essentially scored the action of the game as
if it were a film, just as past organists had
done for silent movies, except in her case, she mostly

(07:20):
decided what to play on the fly, which made the
whole experience feel lively, spontaneous, and unique. Nancy's knack for
knowing what to play and when to play it quickly
made her a legend among baseball fans. Her talents were
so renowned that other teams started sending their organists to
Komiski Park just to watch her in action. Pretty soon,

(07:43):
her soundtrack approach to organ playing became the standard of
the trade, characterized by comedic punctuation and topical song choices.
In the decades since Nancy faust reinvented the game, ballpark
organ music has had its ups and down. In the
nineteen eighties and nineties, some teams moved to new stadiums

(08:04):
and didn't bring their pipe organs along. Others had their
organists retire and then just didn't hire new ones. Still,
even in those cases, organ music didn't fade from their
stadiums completely. Pre Recorded tracks were still played over the
loudspeakers to add a little nostalgia to the proceedings. Fans

(08:25):
expectation of hearing organ music at a ballgame eventually led
to a resurgence of the practice. In the twenty tens,
teams started hiring back their organists, and as of twenty
twenty four, more than half of the thirty teams in
the MLB now employ one, even if only part time.
In many cases, a ballpark organist is now paired with

(08:48):
a DJ who spins more contemporary tracks in between the classics.
That compromise has helped secure the organ's future in American baseball,
and it's a good thing too, because rooting for the
home team just wouldn't be the same without it. I'm
Gay Blues Yay, and hopefully you now know a little

(09:11):
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd
like to keep up with the show, you can follow
us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show,
and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free
to send them my way by writing to this day
at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to kazb Bias for producing

(09:32):
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in history
class