St. Louis ? The one thing a Wurlitzer pipe organ and an 1896 non-electric vacuum cleaner have in common is Stan Kann.

Kann is a vacuum aficionado, professional theater organist and headliner for the Missouri Theatre Organ Golden Gala.

Born in the Central West End of St. Louis, Kann said his interest in music began with a radio and a windowsill.

“I could play anything I’d heard on the radio on the windowsill, but who couldn’t?” the 79-year-old musician joked of using a windowsill as an imaginary keyboard.

His grandmother loved the piano, Kann said, but she didn’t teach him to play.

“She should have practiced more herself,” he said.

While Kann played the windowsill, he also became infatuated with vacuum cleaners. Why?

“Because we didn’t have one.”

Organist and comedian Stan Kann practices on a restored 1928 theater pipe organ at the Missouri Theatre on March 3 in Columbia, Mo. Kann was rehearsing for his performance for the Missouri Theatre Organ Golden Gala on March 4.

His ear is so tuned to the sound of vacuum fan chambers and motors that Kann can identify vacuums by their sound. Kann has a collection of 150 antique vacuums that eventually made him famous.

Kann started playing the piano as a child but switched to classic organ, the style played in churches, when he reached high school.

He majored in organ at Washington University and started working as the music director for Fry Memorial Methodist Church.

In 1950, Kann discovered the St. Louis Fox Theatre had a theater organ that hadn’t been played since the 1930s, he said, when talkies – motion pictures with sound – put theater organs out of business.

The owners of the Fox had Kann play every three hours and 15 minutes, in between the movies they were showing, to see whether the public liked it.

“They liked it so well, I did it for 22 years,” he said.

While playing at the church and theater, Kann also worked as music director for a local TV program, “The Charlotte Peters’ Show.”

After comedian Phyllis Diller appeared on the show, she and Kann developed a friendship, and Kann invited her to see his vacuum collection.

“When she saw my vacuum, she said, ‘I’m going to call the Carson show, ’cause you’re nuts,”‘ Kann said.

Humorous disaster struck when Kann’s vacuums began to fall apart on the Johnny Carson show.

“The stage men put it together, and they’d never seen them before,” Kann said.

Vacuum parts kept falling off at inopportune times, which, Kann said, made Carson very amused.

“I didn’t intend it to be funny,” he said. “It wasn’t funny to me, but it was funny to everyone else.”

Merv Griffin called him to be on his show, and Kann’s comedic career took off, he said.

He appeared 77 times on “The Tonight Show” and 32 times on “The Merv Griffin Show.”

After moving to Los Angeles in 1975, Kann pursued a career in television and landed roles on “Hee Haw” and “Kids Are People, Too,” and even had his own mini-talk show from 1979 to 1981 in Canada.

Kann returned to St. Louis in 1998 and went right back to the Fox Theatre, where he now gives tours and plays the organ at 10:30 a.m. daily.

Kenneth and Jeff Kavanaugh spent two years restoring the organ, which was donated by Glen and Julia Spelman, of California.

“To have one of the country’s foremost theater organ performers … seemed a perfect match,” said David White III, theater executive director.