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The Coca Cola company had a special carillon built especially for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The instrument has a staggering 762 bells. However, the bells are not the usual “bell shape,” seen in the picture on the right. They are tubular bells, which to me is reminiscent of the theme music, Tubular Bells, composed and played by Mike Oldfield for The Exorcist.
I have been reading and hearing about this gigantic instrument since it first performed at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. After the Fair, it was moved and installed at the Stone Mountain State Park, near Atlanta. In the 1980s, I went to a national convention in Atlanta. That was the chance for me to play hooky from boring lectures to make a side trip over to Stone Mountain and finally get a chance to hear the great instrument.
Everything was peaceful, broken only by the buzzing of insects and wind rustling tree leaves.
Just as the concert was to start, a family with a half dozen elementary age kids showed up. They acted like...well...kids. Running, shouting, playing, and generally being loud. Disappointed that their parents were oblivious to the glares from all the people sitting there wanting to hear the carillon, undisturbed. An entire park in which to play, and they chose that spot near the carillon. After the “recital,” I went to the gift shop and bought an album of music. The Christmas Album is their best seller.
This is probably the largest and certainly the heaviest musical instrument in this country. After the World’s Fair, Coca Cola donated the carillon to the state of Georgia. After all, Coke is a Georgia based company, having started there. John Pemberton, a Confederate Colonel, was wounded in the civil war. Due to his wounds, he became addicted to morphine, and was looking for a medication to help him get off the morphine.
Col. Pemberton was the proprietor of Pemberton’s Eagle Drug and Chemical House, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia. He came up with what he first named, “French Wine Coca.” However strong prohibition laws were in place at the time, so he created a non-alcoholic version. He believed that carbonated soda was a healthful drink, so his first drinks were carbonated instead of alcoholic. On May 8, 1886, it was sold for the first time at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. The first bottling of Coca-Cola occurred five years later, in 1891, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
I should note that I have had a drink of original Coca Cola at Biedenharn’s original plant in Vicksburg. It was made by the same machine used back then. They give you a tiny paper cup of the drink. It tastes like modern day Coke, more or less, but is flatter and has almost no fizz compared to modern Coke.
Years ago, someone gifted me a very rare original Sample & Lake Coke bottle from the Sample & Lake Bottling Company in Jackson, MS. It does not look anything like the curvy bottle designed by that came later. It is a thick greenish glass with straight sides. And it still has part of the original lead stopper inside. You read that right. The stopper was lead. When it was pulled, the lower part breaks off when the seal is broken, the bottom plug part falling into the bottle. And if you think French Wine flavor was unusual, Sample & Lake made theirs with celery flavor.
I am rather fond of that old bottle. Seems that Mr. Sample and Mr. Lake were only in business together for about six months; therefore, very few bottles bearing both names were made. When Sample and Lake each went on alone after the partnership broke up, they both made a lot of bottles, so while rare, they are not as rare as a Sample & Lake bottle.
The curvy Coke bottle design came much later, in 1915.
Back to the Coca Cola carillon. Georgia and Coke officials had to decide on where to put the carillon so it could be enjoyed by as many people as possible. They also wanted it to be in a location conducive to peace and quiet, free of city and traffic noises. They settled on Stone Mountain State Park. Near Atlanta, visited by thousands of tourists, but still a charming and quiet place. There is a lake some distance from the Stone Mountain granite monolith with its excursion train circling the base.
The park landscape architects placed the carillon on a spit of land projecting into the lake, so it can be seen and heard easily from almost anywhere around the lake. It is not only one of the world’s great musical instruments, it is also a beautiful sculpture standing 13 stories tall, totally unlike the usual bell tower we think of when thinking of a carillon. There are 732 “bells” or chimes.
The carillon has been played by Ms. Mabel Sharp since the instrument’s premier concert in 1974. There are frequent performances, and a schedule is posted. One can purchase recordings of her carillon concerts at the gift shop. Her best selling album is probably the one of Christmas carols.
Ms. Sharp plays daily. On her rare days off, the concerts are done electronically by songs she has pre-programmed. She says the secret of her unbroken record is that if she feels sick, she takes about five aspirin and goes to the console.
It is 380 feet from her console to the bell tower. They are connected by underground wiring. She points out that it is not only a complex instrument, it is a potentially dangerous one. The notes of the brass tubular “bells” are created when electric hammers strike them. However, in order to be heard a mile away, the soft mellow chime of the bells must be amplified by a massive array of high fidelity speakers. As she likes to point out, “I am pushing more than 8,000 watts.”
All the kids with their boom box cars and trucks driving past my house should slink off in a thick cloud of fail.
This video shows scenes around the lake as Ms. Mabel Sharp plays the biggest, baddest, and most dangerous musical instrument in the country; possibly the world.
Unchained Melody:
Ode to Joy (Beethoven’s Ninth):
Other carillioniers have recorded on this fabulous gigantic instrument. One favorite album is of old-time hymns by Herbie Koch. This album was recorded on professional equipment by professional sound engineers:
(Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor begins at 10:32.)
Sunday’s Lagniappe:
Since it is on my mind, here is Mike Oldfield with his masterwork:
Tubular Bells was composed and performed for the first time when Mike Oldfield was only 19. Somebody posted a comment to YouTube:
Let me help everyone by posting the time stamps for all the tracks to this album:
00:00 - Tubular Bells
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