For those of you old enough to remember the 50s, two things caught on like wildfire: rock’n roll and accordions. Rock and roll is still with us but the accordion had its few years of unprecedented popularity, mostly among pre-teens, then, faded from the scene.
Rock and roll relied heavily on electric guitar, base, drums and some sax. Keyboards, synthesized music and electronically altered instruments would come later. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets made music a visual, besides an auditory experience as they moved and gyrated to their own music. You couldn’t easily gyrate with a large accordion strapped to your body like a boat anchor.
I can recall scores of young contemporaries, more girls than boys, lugging accordions to and from their weekly lesson. The lessons were most often in mom-and-pop music stores where lessons were given in a back room. You couldn’t mistake the hardshell accordion case: it was large, bulky and usually had a slanted lid or cover. Those music students all walked lopsided trying to counterbalance their accordion.
Perhaps the popular Lawrence Welk Show had a major influence on the accordian’s popularity. Welk himself was an accordionist and he had an accordionist in his band named Myron Floren who would play at least one solo per show. Of course, all those tens of thousands of would-be virtuosos may have thought that the squeezebox would land them a scholarship somewhere, maybe even Juilliard. While the accordion was often seen in small combos at local dances and at Polish, Italian and similar ethnic functions, it never made it to the larger orchestras or gained much acceptance in the recording industry.
I recall that the accordionists’ must-know song of the day was “Lady Of Spain” with the vibrato second chorus. Every accordionist could play it while violinist virtuosos concentrated on “Flight Of The Bumble Bee” and guitarists had to know “Guitar Boogie.” Aside from the Korean War, the Cold War and McCarthyism, the 50s was a great era that’s slowly fading from memory.
As musicians matured, many gave up the accordion and switched over to keyboards such as the electric organ, which was gaining a toehold in contemporary music. Accordions found their way into the attics and garages of America. Just for fun, I checked on ebay and there are several pages of accordions for sale. I suspect that a few million more of them lurk in the American storage bin, waiting to be dusted off and listed on ebay.
I never played the accordion, Instead, I went with the guitar and my heros of the era were Les Paul and Chet Atkins. At the time, I was too young to know about jazz and thus, had never heard of that era’s truly seminal guitar greats like Johnny Smith, Django Reinhardt or Charlie Christian. There were no computers or Youtube upon which you could bring virtually any musician to your desk.
The accordion proved to be a passing fad, the square peg in the round hole. Today, however, the accordion and similar sounding instruments are popular in a genre of music that you can access on Pandora called “French café.” For me, the accordion will always be an integral part of the era that included President Eisenhower, James Dean, the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Rock Around The Clock” and the young Elvis Presley.
I hope you enjoyed this little side-road through the past.
Rock and roll relied heavily on electric guitar, base, drums and some sax. Keyboards, synthesized music and electronically altered instruments would come later. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets made music a visual, besides an auditory experience as they moved and gyrated to their own music. You couldn’t easily gyrate with a large accordion strapped to your body like a boat anchor.
I can recall scores of young contemporaries, more girls than boys, lugging accordions to and from their weekly lesson. The lessons were most often in mom-and-pop music stores where lessons were given in a back room. You couldn’t mistake the hardshell accordion case: it was large, bulky and usually had a slanted lid or cover. Those music students all walked lopsided trying to counterbalance their accordion.
Perhaps the popular Lawrence Welk Show had a major influence on the accordian’s popularity. Welk himself was an accordionist and he had an accordionist in his band named Myron Floren who would play at least one solo per show. Of course, all those tens of thousands of would-be virtuosos may have thought that the squeezebox would land them a scholarship somewhere, maybe even Juilliard. While the accordion was often seen in small combos at local dances and at Polish, Italian and similar ethnic functions, it never made it to the larger orchestras or gained much acceptance in the recording industry.
I recall that the accordionists’ must-know song of the day was “Lady Of Spain” with the vibrato second chorus. Every accordionist could play it while violinist virtuosos concentrated on “Flight Of The Bumble Bee” and guitarists had to know “Guitar Boogie.” Aside from the Korean War, the Cold War and McCarthyism, the 50s was a great era that’s slowly fading from memory.
As musicians matured, many gave up the accordion and switched over to keyboards such as the electric organ, which was gaining a toehold in contemporary music. Accordions found their way into the attics and garages of America. Just for fun, I checked on ebay and there are several pages of accordions for sale. I suspect that a few million more of them lurk in the American storage bin, waiting to be dusted off and listed on ebay.
I never played the accordion, Instead, I went with the guitar and my heros of the era were Les Paul and Chet Atkins. At the time, I was too young to know about jazz and thus, had never heard of that era’s truly seminal guitar greats like Johnny Smith, Django Reinhardt or Charlie Christian. There were no computers or Youtube upon which you could bring virtually any musician to your desk.
The accordion proved to be a passing fad, the square peg in the round hole. Today, however, the accordion and similar sounding instruments are popular in a genre of music that you can access on Pandora called “French café.” For me, the accordion will always be an integral part of the era that included President Eisenhower, James Dean, the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Rock Around The Clock” and the young Elvis Presley.
I hope you enjoyed this little side-road through the past.
I myself went on to play the organ plus various other instruments while in school. No longer play anything but I have a piano sitting in the living room. 
