Accordion musical instrument
Helen Carter was the accordionist for Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. She was a member with Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Bess Lomax Hawes, and Woody Guthrie. Sis Cunningham played the accordion with the alternative folk group, the Almanac Singers. Some Roots musicians already had included the accordion in their bands. Performing with the piano accordion was encouraged and promoted as the key to becoming well rounded and popular. Americans were back at work and musical instruments in the home were signs of success. As many manufacturers of the piano accordion appeared across North America, the instrument became more affordable and a surge in demand fed instrument sales and lessons. The Catholic Church formally deemed the piano accordion respectable in 1947 and allowed its use at Mass. After the war, the working class and returning soldiers became nostalgic for their ancestral homelands and the sound of the accordion they heard while in Europe. 1930ĭuring World War II, the piano accordion was included in many “big bands” that accompanied dances. This horrific crime was heartbreaking, never punished and influenced Creole musicians to withdraw from the diatonic accordion, leaving it to remain the domain of white and Latino musicians until only relatively recently. Ardoin died from injuries received by a white racist mob after being invited to perform at an all white dance in Eunice, LA.
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It was popular in live stage productions in Vaudeville A father and daughters act c.1920’sĪnd heard in early recordings of Gospel, Blues and the Boogie Woogie……… Huddie Ledbetter, known professionally as Lead Belly, with his diatonic “Windjammer” c.1930Īmede Ardoin, a tiny Creole diatonic accordionist beloved in Louisiana, was highly influential in the development of Cajun/Creole music. A second-generation Finnish-American, starting in the 1920’s she played the Finnish dance circuit in the upper mid-west region of Michigan / Wisconsin / Minnesota. ….And played by sons and daughters of immigrants Viola Turpeinen was probably the first woman accordionist to record, and certainly the first female accordion star in America. Both were very influential in the development of the accordion in America, as performers, publishers and behind the scenes. Guido Diero, a virtuoso, studied the accordion in Italy and moved to America, where he worked in a mine in Oregon c.1910 Guido’s younger brother, Pietro Diero, studied the accordion in America. The piano accordion was played by European immigrants….
#Accordion musical instrument portable
The accordion was portable and loud enough to be heard from front porches, at weddings, social gatherings, dances and as entertainment in theaters and taverns. Because of these features, it was easier to master the piano accordion, and sales of the instrument quickly overtook the “button box”. Along with the piano keyboard, the innovative Stradella bass section was added, which used preset chords. The piano accordion is different because one key sounds only one note, whether the bellows is pushing or pulling air through the instrument’s reeds. The piano accordion evolved from the bisonoric, diatonic “button box”, a closer kin to the harmonica, into a unisonoric instrument. 1860 Teen-age girl poses for a portrait with her accordion c.
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The bellows provided the “lung power” and women loved this light weight, expressive musical instrument and would often gather in parlors to make music together. This photograph, taken about 1850, just 21 years after the invention of the accordion, indicates that the instrument was already being mastered by Creole musicians in Louisiana.Ĭreoles were often classically trained musicians who provided entertainment at white “house concerts”, dances and elegant parties in Louisiana.(Ken Burns, “History of Jazz”) This musician from Louisiana is unknown to us, but from his fine clothing, he may have been well known in 1870 Some of the first to become proficient on the accordion were French speaking Creoles in or near New Orleans, Louisiana, shortly after the instrument was invented. For more than 150 years, the accordion was a musical instrument “of the people”, of inclusion and belonging, and brought folks together as they settled an entire continent. Invented in 1829, the accordion came to North America early on, and as westward expansion took place, was heard in the mountains and bayous….in cities, towns and in the country….in the deserts of the West and Mexico…. on the Great Lakes and the Great Plains…in all states, estados and provinces….North to Alaska and West to Hawaii. Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, Photo by Peggy Marsheck