Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Polka Faces: Accordion convention at Plaza puts a squeeze on Vegas

In 1822 a Berliner named Friedrich Buschmann built a hard-to-handle, unpleasant-sounding musical instrument he called the handaoline.

Seven years later it would be refined, patented and named the accordion, then eventually depart on its journey to the New World in the arms of European immigrants.

Its pinnacle in American popular culture would come to fruition in the 1930s, '40s and '50s as radio and television shows ushered the unique sound into living rooms across the United States.

Art Van Damme, Myron Floren and Dick Contino became familiar names. Accordion schools popped up everywhere, and parents lugged the bulky instruments home to their children.

But as rapidly as the accordion ascended, America's love for the instrument would end. Tagged "old school," the accordion was lost among the screaming guitars of rock 'n' roll.

Bellows were stilled. Jokes were merciless. Some players were closeted.

"It was an old-world instrument and the freedoms of the '60s and '70s were to break away from that," said Paul Pasquali, a Salt Lake City accordion manufacturer who founded the Las Vegas International Accordion Convention four years ago.

The mighty held on, however. And when Pasquali's convention rolls into the Plaza hotel Sunday, so too will the players who remain.

Accordion greats Pete Barbutti, Don Lipovac and Kenny Kotwitz will join European champions, classically trained accordionists, country artists and novelty performers.

Legendary jazz accordionist Van Damme will share the spotlight with Contino, the once-touted "Valentino of the Accordion," and Floren of "The Lawrence Welk" show.

The four-day event will also feature accordion seminars, vendors and workshops. (Tickets were available only to those who pre-registered.)

"It's just non-stop accordion music and fun," Pasquali said. "Some of the people who come, they travel from event to event."

Others celebrate their reunion with the instrument after years of raising families and tackling careers.

"People are actually coming back to the instrument and rediscovering it" Pasquali said.

Killjoy

Just why the accordion ever fell out of favor is almost as bizarre as the concept of the bellowed/reed/piano instrument itself.

Some blame the accordion industry for charging exorbitant prices for instruments and conflicts of interest among distributors, who were also teachers pushing students to buy better instruments. Some say the accordion was too difficult to master.

Not widely accepted as a classical instrument, the accordion would be relegated to its own oom-pah-pah niche.

"Unfortunately, in many ways, it's been identified as a polka instrument," said Contino, a Las Vegas resident who will perform Sunday at the convention.

"Back when I started, the kids were just like they are at rock concerts. You'd put your hand to the keyboards, the girls would go bananas. I had about 500 fan clubs. The thing they loved back then was the speed."

Growing up in Fresno, Calif., Contino first picked up the instrument when he was 7, then returned to it at age 12.

After high school he appeared on one of Horace Heidt's radio shows, then soared into accordion stardom by making, he said, 48 appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" and traveling to the former Soviet Union with Sullivan to perform with the Moscow Symphony.

"It caught on so strongly you wouldn't believe it," Contino said. "Everything came together beautifully. And it was with the accordion."

Unfortunately for Contino and his fans, his "balking" at the Korean War would brand him a draft dodger and hurt his career, despite a presidential pardon and 16 months spent in Korea.

Television appearances became scarce. Yet, Contino continued to play. Now, at age 73, he performs festivals and concerts throughout the country. His son, Pete Contino, plays accordion at local venues.

"If I were to get 52 weeks offered, I would take it," Dick Contino said. "I mix it all up. I do polkas, Latin, classical, novelty. Those are all the facets of my life."

But Contino also knows his fans are aging. In recent years, he said, audience response has shifted from, "My mother's a big fan of yours," to, "My grandmother still talks about you."

Button-box enthusiasm

Pasquali also notes that the American accordion population is aging.

"We fortunately, in the dawn of TV, had Myron (Floren), Dick Contino and Art Van Damme," Pasquali said. "Everyone knew who they were. But there was nobody after them on television doing hipper things with the music."

Still, it remained popular in Europe and in zydeco and Mexican-American conjunto circles, players say.

Accordion festivals and competitions flourish throughout the United States. Websites offer links to accordion history, articles, jokes and performers and keep lists of accordions that have appeared in movies, paintings, sculptures, television commercials and literature.

Small mom-and-pop museums dot the country, and online memorials for "Remembering the World's Accordionists" are available for purchase on a website (accordions.com).

Revivals are attempted. In 1989 accordion players named June "National Accordion Awareness Month" as a way to promote the instrument; in the spring of 1999 the Lawrence Welk Resort Center in Branson, Mo., and the New York-based American Accordionists Association featured a "Search for the Hottest Accordionist."

An accordionist since age 8, Pasquali began manufacturing high-end digital acoustic accordions in the mid-1990s and sees a potential interest among today's youth.

'The young people, those under 20, under 30, really have had little exposure to the instrument," Pasquali said. "So it's a new discovery for them."

Return to love

Janet Todd, a "retired concert accordionist" in Salt Lake City, says she returned to the instrument after attending last year's Las Vegas International Accordion Convention.

"I had a very active professional career," Todd said. "I won competitions with violin concertos, piano concertos, studied Bach works for the piano."

Todd signed up for 10 free lessons with a door-to-door salesman when she was 8 years old. She spent her teens and early 20s traveling with a group of Brigham Young University musicians as its lone accordionist, traveling throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She also spent more than five months traveling through the Middle East with the U.S. State Department.

Her accordion was set aside, however, when she married and had five children. With the exception of her playing for Russian dignitaries during the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2000, there had been little action from her bellows.

When she attended last year's accordion convention in Las Vegas, Todd said she wasn't sure what to expect.

But, she said, "There were a lot of excellent musicians coming from all over the world. I came home energized realizing the accordion is not dead. And not only is it not dead, it is thriving."

Todd has since been practicing four and five hours a day. Recently she performed with the Salt Lake Symphony.

Her CD, which features classical music, ethnic folk songs, Broadway, jazz and pop (Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are") will be released at the convention, where she will perform and teach a workshop on playing by ear.

As a classical accordionist, Todd has stayed abreast of the accordion's bad rap.

"In the 20th Century, in the first six decades, the Italians wrote fine pieces of music," Todd said. "It was a very important time. But we're stuck with the idea that we only play 'Beer Barrel Polka' or 'Lady of Spain.' "

She isn't discouraged, however.

"I've just rejoined the Musicians Union. The phone is ringing all the time."