
Released
IMDb
Organist Korla Pandit was an alluring enigma, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. He never spoke a word on 900 episodes of his groundbreaking 1950s TV program but captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives with his soulful, hypnotic gaze and theatrical performance of popular tunes and East Indian compositions on the newly developed Hammond B3 organ. In the ’90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados and ended up immortalized in the film Ed Wood. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998—one that is finally revealed in KORLA.
Keywords
fake identity
organist
early television
tiki culture
keyboardist
Casts

Korla Pandit
self (archival)

Scott Alexander
self

Harry Edwards
self

Booker T. Jones
self
Marty Pasetta
self

Carlos Santana
self
Ben Fong-Torres
self
Crews
John Turner
Director
Michelle Merker
Associate Producer