Wright, Johnny

WRIGHT

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 4/17/2007 at 08:27:58

Still has the "Magic Touch", an echo from vaudeville.
Johnny Wright featured at Hotel Decker Coffee Shop.
"Take your silly swing songs and your "boogie woogie" thrill-Give me the stirring melodies of good old vaudeville!"
Such is the way one man expressed his preference in music, and such is the sentiment of hundreds of others, if the Sunday dinner hours attendees at Maquoketa's Decker House coffee shop are any criterion. Currently featured at this savory Timber City restaurant is Maquoketa's own Johnny Wright, distinguished, world acclaimed pianist of the vaudeville era, who gives patrons "music you love, the way you love to hear it", every Sunday between noon and two o'clock.

His coffee shop repertoire is heavily sprinkled with the old vaudeville favorites, along with popular compositions of more recent dates. He avoids the ultra long-hair stuff entirely. And he wouldn't attempt "boogie-woogie" at the point of a gun. The two hour Sunday performances are his only professional appearances now - except special concerts for local organizations. His principal capacity at the Decker House is night manager, and Jack Wherry, director of the enterprising, long-established Maquoketa hotel, claims he is as capable at the desk as at the keyboard.

Two decades ago during the golden age of show business, Johnny Wright was probably Maquoketa's most illustrious son. Although capable of enthralling an audience with his own talent alone, he seldom appeared in vaudeville as a soloist. Accompaniment was his calling, and he provided the music for scores of the great and the near great acts of that day. His tributes from leading critics both here and abroad made a sizeable collection of press clippings in a span of a few years.

The son of Minnie Wright-Jacobsen of Maquoketa and the late Howard Wright, the still agile pianist might have become a grocer. His father operated a food store here, and his grandfather, the late J.A.Wright, was a Maquoketa grocer for 58 years. His aptitude for groceries, however, has always been confined to the dining room.

To Miss Lena Blessing of Maquoketa goes the credit for teaching his first lesson, and he acquired most of his fundamental music knowledge through her guidance. He also received a few of his early lessons from Mrs. Lola Wantz of Maquoketa.

Upon reaching the advanced age of ten, however, he enrolled for more conscientious study under the stern tutorial direction of Prof. R.J.Hammell, an advocate of the constant practice theory who then operated a school of music on West Platt Street, diagonally across from the county jail. Hammell, to whom many Maquoketans owe their musical education, was himself a venerable musician. He conducted classes for the learning of virtually every existing musical instrument.

Hammell had Johnny Wright playing in his school orchestra after but a few lessons. The group rehearsed every Sunday afternoon, without exception, and presented frequent regular recitals in the old Lyric Theater on North Main Street.
The young musician was recognized early as possessing a rare, almost magic touch, and he was ready to "turn professional" at the age of 12. He played at his inagural dance engagement at that age with Frank Keeney's orchestra in a dance hall that was then located over the storeroom now occupied by Gamble's store. He played three hours, was paid two dollars-and thought it was wonderful. A dozen years later, his earnings in the big time vaudeville circuits were soaring to astronomical heights.

He played for Keeney until his early high school days, when he joined Al Scholl's Hawkeye orchestra and became known to patrons of popular pavilions throughout eastern Iowa. Although it crowded him more than a little, playing late nearly every night and trying to stay awake in school the next day, he remained the Hawkeye's featured pianist until he finished high school here and entered the University of Iowa.

As a student at Iowa City, he utilized his ability to meet some of the expenses involved in attending the university. One of his best friends on the Iowa campus was Jack Leonard ("Little Jack Little"), and when he left school, Wright took his own band, "Johnny Wright's University Six-Artistic Syncopation".

Immediately following his school days, he took his band on a mid-west tour-and it was during this travel(in 1921) that he was spotted by Walter A. Stone and given his first vaudeville contract. He was signed as the featured pianist for "Stones Novelty Boys" and went on national tour in the Keith circuit-later the Keith Orpheum circuit and popularly known today as "RKO".

While playing an engagement in the east, Johnny and the Stoneboys were signed by Alma Neilsen and company as the stage orchestra for an acrobatic dancing act produced by Adelaide and Hughes, the world's top dance team of that era. Hughes was immediately impressed by "the talent approaching genius" of the young Maquoketan and devoted much time to instructing him in techniques and orchestral direction.
When Stone's group closed their 1923 season after an engagement at the Palace Theatre in Chicage, Wright struck out on his own with the belief that he was ready to graduate to an accompanist. His hunch proved lucrative.

Bob Nelsen, much heralded comedian of the lush twenties, whose weekly earnings were in the high four-figure bracket, signed him as the accompanist for his act at the Palace in New York City-and Johnny Wright was in the "big-time".

Nelson had just married "Miss America of 1921" and he and his new wife accompanied their new found ivories artist on a vacation to his home here, following their engagement at the Palace. Pianist Wright had returned to Maquoketa in triumph. The Nelsons visited Maquoketa once again during the two years Johnny accompanied his act.
Three months in London.

Next came a series of contracts with leading vaudeville performers, and finally a two-year engagement as accompanist to Chic York and Rose King in their world renown "Old Family Tintype" act.

The act toured America and then Europe, including three months in London at the Palladium, the Regent Palace, the Alhambra, the Holburn Empire, and the Coliseum.
Command Performance

In England came his greatest thrill-a command performance at the Palladium for the British Monarch, George V, and Queen Mary. He also played for the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VIII, and who is now the Duke of Windsor.

In a decade of vaudeville, Johnny Wright was billed with such theatrical dignitaries as Edward Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby, the original Siamese twins, Ted Lewis, Guy Lombardo, Jack Hilton(the Whiteman of England), Sophie Tucker, Vincent Lopez, Beatrice Lilly, Ben Bernie and probably a hundred other "name" performers. He appeared many times on the same program with Ernest R. Ball, the great composer of Irish ballads ("Mother Macree", Little Bit of Heaven", "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"). He was a close friend of Ball's and was in his dressing room when the Emerald Isle composer died. The walls of his room at the Decker are lined with autographed pictures of them all.

Mr. Wright's travels extend into the high thousands of miles. In addition to his European tour, he circled the mid-west and eastern areas of the United States 28 times, made three west-coast tours, six to New Orleans and several to Canada

Vaudeville is dead, but its music will live forever, claims the reminiscent Johnny, who believes that the popularity of motion pictures and the radio will prohibit any return of the old days. "The golden age is buried forever, but I'm no one to weep-its four-shows-a-day pace was too fast for anyone."
Jackson Sentinel, December 13, 1946.

Gravestone photograph
 

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