Chicago Blackhawks and their pipe organ

From Tim Panaccio's blog:

When Chicago Stadium closed after the spring of 1994, Frank Pellico, the guy who played the world’s largest pipe organ, was mostly beside himself.

“It was just so large with a six keyboards and 800 switches, we didn’t know what to do with it and we couldn’t take it out of one building into another,” Pellico told me Wednesday night at United Center.

So Pellico, who is now 65, met with club owner Bill Wirtz. “I said, ‘Mr. Wirtz, what do you want me to do? Do you want one of these fancy new organs that sound a lot different or do you want me to find something close to what we had at Chicago Stadium?’”

Wirtz pointed to an old black and white photo that hung in the organist booth at Chicago Stadium. It showed longtime organist Al Melgard at the “Mighty Chicago Stadium Organ, the World’s Largest Pipe Organ.”

“I want something like that,” Wirtz said, pointing to the picture. So, Pellico traveled to Macungie, Pennsylvania (near Allentown) to visit the folks at Allen Organ Company, who build monster church organs. They designed a special organ in Blackhawk colors that had electronically recorded sound from original pipe organs so that every key, every note sounds like the real thing even if it isn’t.

It cost Wirtz $150 grand.

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Pellico, who learned his craft from Melgard and late succeeded him following his death, has been doing this 13 years, including the final three season at old Chicago Stadium.

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