Jesse Crawford

Jesse Crawford
Jesse Crawford at a Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ (Pre-1930)
Background information
Born	(1895-12-02)December 2, 1895 Woodland, California, United States
Died	May 28, 1962(1962-05-28) (aged 66) Los Angeles, California
Occupation(s)	Instrumentalist
Instruments	Piano, organ
Years active	1909-1962

Jesse Crawford (December 2, 1895 – May 28, 1962), was an American pianist and organist. He was well known in the 1920s as a theater organist for silent films and as a popular recording artist. In the 1930s, he switched to the Hammond organ and became a freelancer. In the 1940s, he authored instruction books on organ and taught organ lessons.

Crawford's father died when he was one year old, leaving an impoverished wife and mother, placed the baby in an orphanage asylum near Woodland, California. He taught himself music there. By age nine, he was playing a cornet in the orphanage band. At age 14 he left the orphanage to play piano in a small dance band, and then took a job playing piano in a ten-cent-admission silent film house.

His early theatre organ experience was at Washington's Spokane Gem Theater in 1911 and at the Clemmer-owned Casino Theatre (on an eight-rank Estey organ). He next played briefly at theatres in Billings, Montana, Spokane, Washington and Seattle. When he met Oliver Wallace, Crawford learned about the then-new types of theatre organ sounds. Crawford’s next jobs were playing at the Strand in San Francisco and the Mission Theatre in Los Angeles.

In the 1920s, Crawford began forming a fan base and was dubbed the "Poet of the Organ" for his style of playing ballads in Chicago. In 1921, he was employed by the Balaban and Katz theatre chain playing its 29-rank Wurlitzer in the Chicago Theatre. Likewise, Crawford was hired to play a large Wurlitzer organ in Grauman's Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles.

From 1926 to 1933, he performed at New York City's Paramount Theater, with his wife Helen Anderson (also an organist) playing a twin organ console. They met in 1923, and married in 1924. Helen died in a car accident in 1943.