Sacramento County
Biographies
MAURICE K.
SMITH
MAURICE K. SMITH.--A distinguished musical leader, who is famous for his success in imparting instruction in music to others, is Maurice K. Smith, the popular director of the Sacramento Pipe Organ School, at 1609 K Street. He was born at Newport, Ohio, on March 31, 1884, the son of John T. and Sarah C. (Saddler) Smith, the latter a musician, and prominent in Ohio and Kansas musical circles. Both are now deceased, and the memory of their interesting and helpful lives is a heritage to all who knew them.
Maurice started out in life with the advantage of the excellent Kansas schools, and then, beginning with his thirteenth year, played the cornet for two seasons in a circus. After that, he joined a dramatic stock company, and for five years assisted in giving road shows; and during that time, he traveled most of the country. He played and directed vaudeville, and was in moving pictures, and was for some time a musical director in Los Angeles.
In 1917, at San Francisco, he took up the study of the organ under C. Sharpe Minor, one of America’s foremost masters of the organ in movie work. In 1918 the city of Sacramento, which as the capital city had begun to draw the most representative talent, naturally attracted Mr. Smith, who was thereupon given a two years’ engagement as organist at the T and D Theater. In 1920 he played an engagement at the Royal Theater in San Francisco. Returning to Sacramento, he was engaged as organist at the State Theater for the next two years, and he continued to fill engagements as organist in the leading theaters in Sacramento. On August 15, 1922, he established his studio, where he specializes with students ambitious of playing accompaniments to moving pictures, and of rendering other artistic performances in the kinematograph theaters. He uses the Robert Morton organ, and always has a good class undergoing development. When he breaks away from the confining and too absorbing work of the studio, he likes to get out into the open, and generally finds that a turn at the wheel of a car for several hours is a splendid relaxation.
In 1907, Professor Smith was married to Miss Lillian Middleton, of Illinois; she is an indispensable helpmate, assisting our subject in his music school.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 940.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Taylor.