Reginald Dixon

Reginald Dixon MBE (born 1904 in Sheffield, died 1985) was a theatre organist.

Reginald "Mr Blackpool" Dixon is best known as the resident organist at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, where he played the Wurlitzer organ from 1930 until his retirement in 1970, only interrupted by military service in the Royal Air Force during the second world war. He attained the rank of Squadron Leader.

Born in Sheffield on the 16 October 1904 to parents Richard and Alice in very humble surroundings. Held posts as organist on the Wurlitzers of the West End Birmingham, Regent Dudley and in Preston before applying for the job at the Tower Ballroom in 1930. He made his first radio broadcast in June 1930 from the Tower.

The present Wurlitzer organ installed at the Tower dates from 1935 (installation started in December 1934) and was designed by Reginald Dixon himself with playing for dancing as its main function. The Wurlitzer company presented him with a gold watch to mark the opening of the new 'Wonder Wurlitzer' and 1938 saw him voted as the UK's number one Theatre Organist. His fee at this time was £2000 per annum.

Sunday afternoon concerts continued until 1976 when the current policy of all day dancing was introduced. The original, smaller Wurlitzer organ was enlarged as a 'twin' and installed in the Empress Ballroom Blackpool under the hands of Horace Finch.

His farewell tour lasted ten years after retirement from the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. He also had a very successful recording and broadcasting career spanning 50 years. Concerts had been arranged for 1981 but he had become too ill to fulfil the engagements. His final recording was released in 1981 made on the Wurlitzer Organ of the Thursford Collection in Norfolk.

Reginald Dixon (Tower Organist) is not to be confused with Organist Mr. J.H. Reginald Dixon F.R.C.O.

The following excert is taken from the retirement performance programme at Blackpool Tower Balloroom, 1970

REGINALD DIXON is the Yorkshire lad who adopted Lancashire and rose to worldwide fame and affection on the seat of a Wurlitzer organ in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.

The dancers of the ‘30’s christened him Mr. Tower of Blackpool. But it was as “Mr. Blackpool” that the Queen greeted him when she presented him with the insignia of his M.B.E. in 1966 and told him “I often listen to you playing”.

The splendor and dignity of that Buckingham Palace scene of four years ago, however, was a far cry from the scenes of Reginald Dixon’s earlier days back in Sheffield, where he was born in 1904.

There, the hard way, he had his baptism in show business. First as pianist-cum-musical director at the Stocksbridge Palace, at the princely salary of £3 a week. It was before the “talkies” arrived, and every situation in a film had to have its own mood music.

He remembers, “While I was trying to read the music with one eye I had to keep the other eye on the screen to watch the plot. I had to register on the keyboard the appropriate sentiments”.

One day he hit upon an idea. He removed the bottom from his piano, and whenever there was an explosion or the sheriff’s posse thundered through the sagebrush for a last-minute rescue he would give the piano strings a series of hearty kicks with his boot. “The effect”, he says, “was terrific”.

It was all good training for what was to follow.

He thought he had really “made it” when the Picture House, Chesterfield, paid him £5 a week, and especially when, at the age of 21, he sat at his first cinema organ, also in Chesterfield.

From Chesterfield he went to Dudley as solo organist at 7 guineas a week, and only eight months later he was promoted to Preston at 8 guineas a week.

Exciting times, indeed, particularly since romance had moved into his life. Besides his cinema work he was teaching the organ in a Sheffield church, and every night when the lessons were over a charming young lady went round putting out the lights.

Her name was Vera and the courtship was a short one. On a day off from Preston, Reginald took her into the Tower Ballroom to hear Max Bruce playing the first Wurlitzer there, and sitting in seat 33 in the balcony he popped the question. They have lived happily ever since.

That Tower Ballroom visit was prophetic. For only eight months later, the then Tower and Winter Gardens general manager, the late Mr. Harry Hall, invited Reginald to Blackpool for an audition.

It was Easter 1930, the ballroom was packed. The dancers thought he was a showman-for-a-season. But Reginald played, stayed and conquered.

Before the month was out he made the first of over 2,000 broadcasts. Within a few years his records were selling at the rate of 50,000 a year, and fan mail was arriving from all over the world. His signature tune of “I do like to be beside the seaside” was as well known as the Tower itself.

Millions every year danced to the magic of his touch, and beneath the subdued lights of the ballroom many a romance blossomed, just as his own had done,

The war interrupted it all. Reginald went into the R.A.F. He entered the service as an “A.C Plonk”, left it an acting Squadron Leader, and resumed life at the Tower.

The millions came back to applaud him, amongst them the children of those pre-war fans, and while all around organs were disappearing in the so-called march of progress, the demands for Reginald Dixon never wavered. He had become an institution. He meant fun and laughter, music and song, sparkling eyes and dancing feet.

In 1956 Blackpool accorded him one of its brightest accolades. It invited him to switch on the Illuminations, and Eurovision carried the picture of that ceremony beneath the stars into 60 million homes.

Ten years later he was at Buckingham Palace, and now, at the age of 65 and 40 years on from that Easter audition of 1930 he retires from the Tower Ballroom scene.

The most modest of showmen giants is calling it a day.

Reginald Dixon died on May 9, 1985 and was cremated at Carleton Crematorium, Blackpool

Popular culture

The BBC TV series Red Dwarf in episode Quarantine Arnold Rimmer is taunting quarantined crew. "I've got to organise your daily provision of musical entertainment. I think you're going to like it: It's a perpetually-looped tape of "Reggie Dixon's Tango Treats.""