For National Accordion Awareness Month: “Squeeze This: A Cultural History of the Accordion in America”

June is not only Pride Month but it also happens to be National Accordion Awareness Month. This happy coincidence inevitably reminds me that the first person to ever make me understand the romance of the accordion was the genius performer Ethyl Eichelberger. Back in the late ’80s, one could see that already gargantuan creature (stature augmented with wigs and heels) amplify himself even more with that LARGE instrument and somehow evoke the cabarets of Paris and Weimar Berlin (not in terms of specific repertoire, necessarily, just by virtue of his own outre and unlikely existence). When he did that, I felt transported. And his time machine was an accordion.

The accordion has been cool again for decades now, largely through the emergence of devil-may-care artists like Eichelberger. Prior to that, though, in the mid 20th century, the accordion had fallen to a low estate in terms of popular esteem, the stuff of The Lawrence Welk Show, Major Bowes Amateur Hour, and mail-order polka albums. I had the good fortune to have booked numerous accordionistes at my American Vaudeville Theatre, many of them comical performance artists in the vein of Judy Tenuta. My proudest accordion related moment was when I was able to present the Main Squeeze Accordion Orchestra for my 2008 run at Theater for the New City (thanks to an old girlfriend who was a member of the group). See video of that in this post.

As it turns out, another of the veterans of that legendary outfit, Marion Jacobson, wrote a definitive cultural history of this wonderful instrument, a copy of which fell into my hands a few weeks ago. Squeeze This!is playfully titled, but the author (who has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from NYU) has done a most serious job of articulating the accordion’s place in the cultural firmament over the past century-plus. Yes, the accordion is that young. If you just look at one, it’ll dawn on you: it’s a 19th century contraption! It reminds me of a platypus, simultaneously a reed instrument (sounds like woodwinds), a keyboard, and a bellows system of moving air that comes closest to bagpipes. With all these buttons and valves and stops. It looks forbiddingly mysterious to non-initiates, like the cockpit of the space shuttle. I’d suggest that people should wear steampunk goggles when they play one, except, ew, I hate that.

At any rate, the revolution of the accordion (for its time) was that suddenly one musician could sound like an entire band. Its popularity spread like wildfire into the early 20th century. We’ve written about some of the major performers who played the instrument back in the vaudeville days, like Guido Deiro, Pietro Frosini, Ming and Toy, and Phil Baker. Jacobson writes about these and many other players in the accordion-verse through the instruments rise and fall and rise again at the hands of musicians as diverse as They Might Be Giants, Gogol Bordello, and Weird Al Yancovic. And musical styles as divergent as klezmer and zydeco!

At any rate, Jacobson’s book was published eight years ago but it’s not likely to be surpassed any time soon in what it accomplishes, so now’s as good a time as any to plug it. After all, it is ACCORDION AWARENESS MONTH. Get your copy here.