The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-13
nr DOLLY pALnYMPLE


 .0ne of the most appreciated com pliments I have ever received, certainty one which shed a very new light on music in the movies, was when a critic said to me once that had caught the secret of playing good music as if it were popular music and popular music as If 1t were good music
 MT. George Len 1Iamrek, the ac- complished and talented organist at the Strand theatre, was talking to me the other day about the music which is em- ploved nowadays in the moving pie ture theatres. and among other things made the foregoing statement which oc- CUTS to be the keynote-the dominant chord-which revolves the music problem in the movies into simple concrete fact
 Mir. Hamriek has been resident or Birmingham for the past two years ana his beautiful work at the strand has given countless thousands pleasure; he is greatly interested in his work he has been connected with music and the movies for several years past and he has seen the standard of music gradually raised from the screeching, shrieking, shriu noees of the old-time mechanical piano 'out front" to the present situa- ton when thousands of dollars are ex- pended upon the handsomest organs and various instruments which the moving picture people are installing.
 MT Hamrick is proud that he Is the real, simon pure American made brand of musician; he proudly informs you at the start that he is from the hills Of good old Georgia, where he acquired his musical education and began his career.
 MT. Hamrick has filled with great cred it many notable church positions before he came to Birmingham, and the eonbi- nation of a church organist and the atrfcal organist gives him an almost lfnitless scope al to musical literature and musical knowledge.
 My first lessons were with Professor Snow" said Mr Hamrick, "and through the interest and courtesy of Congress- man Adamson's wife-from my home state-I was associated with Bischof, the fanous blind organist, in Washington, under whom l studied and learned many of my first principles of organ music, which have been of vast beneht to me in later years"
 often thought Ol HONs "iASiA the movies first came into popularity, Mir. Hamrick said, 1T saw the splendid future ahead for music in connection with them I realized that the hum- drum, tin pany piano couldn't last long, because people wouldn't stand for 1t; Tn early days, of course, the pictures them- selves were very ordinary but just as the pictures have improved and the great operatic stars. as we'll as the stars of the legitimate, have become identified with them, just as music has been regarded as a great asset-an important element ln the general makeup of pictures.
 T recall very distinctly the first big picture I ever saw" MT. Harmick said. Tt was The Great Train Robbery, an Edison picture-a 1200-foot picture and it required music other than that which the ordinary twe-reel pictures had re- ouired I had become identified at the time with the first moving picture the atres in Atlanta and was anxious to do some really good work-play some real Iy good music-and so it happened that one of the pioneer promoters of pictures in that city went to Chicago, there he visited the first big movie theatre in the country, the AlcaZar. There was a wonderful pianist-a blind pianist-whc was playing and there was drummer