Steve Finney alerted me to the existence of the book below. I got a copy from the library and was sufficiently amused to share some thoughts on it.
Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion in America By Marion Jacobson
An aggressive and mildly vulgar title seemed appropriate for a volume about America's least loved instrument, but made me initially suspicious it would contain only a malodorous cloud of cheap self-promotion. Happily, this is not the case. The author is an ethnomusicologist, a occupation with numerous problems, but inept writing and sloppy research are not usually amoung them. Even more happily (and perhaps, in a first for the field), "hermeneutics" and "Marxist dialectic" are never mentioned. The requisite fellating of collegues whose work is footnoted, but never described, is limited to the introduction allowing the reader to skip it entirely. Otherwise, Jacobson's descriptions and analysis are generally good and the only malodorous cloud here is the subject matter itself.
Starting with a useful technical history of the accordion in Europe (mostly in Italy), we switch to America about 1908. Here vaudeville's love of novelty and glitz provide an attractive festering ground for bad taste of all sorts, piano accordion in particular. The same abominable "light classical" arrangements that would placate idiots and insult good taste for years to come have their origin in this era, as do instruments befouled with rhinestones and faux-Roman bas relief.
The first great accordion "master", Guido Deiro, claims to have married Mae West. Mae West denies this, perhaps for her own reasons, but the impression lingers of a sleazy performer desperate for publicity. One thing we can be sure about Deiro, however, is that he was a lout.
Incidentally, "master" and "virtuoso" appear so frequently in the book, one wonders what the terms can possibly mean, given the trivial, gimmicky music these supposedly outstanding individuals developed. Perhaps the terms are the equivalent of "star" in porn.
By the 1920s, accordion's novelty had worn off, radio was replacing vaudeville and jazz was the rage. Accordiondom responded, in a pattern that would become characteristic, by disdaining the "hot" jazz associated with black people and adopting "sweet" white-people jazz. Through what Jacobson amusingly calls the "accordion industrial complex" (AIC), a self-reinforcing network of accordion performers, manufacturers, teachers and publishers became a profoundly conservative force in American accordiondom. Over the years they fought battle after battle, against "black" music, against "ethnic" music, against free base, against improvisation and playing by ear, against classical outreach.
AIC's exclusive promotion of Stradella base over free base (due to the manufacturers' capital investment) lead to the utter humbling of American accordionists in classical music competions before Europeans who faced no such restriction. Neanderthal vs Cro-Magnon, bronze vs steel, bow and arrow vs rifle: pick your favorite metaphor.
AIC's financial interest in music publishing caused it to discourage both improvisaion and playing by ear, turning out generations of students who couldn't play the simplest of tunes without a score in front of them.
AIC also disdained outreach to Western art music composers of the day, for reasons that appear to be purely chauvanistic. Nevertheless, some attempts were made, most memorably an accordion impressario chasing Igor Stravinsky down a New York street before he escaped into a cab. Classy!
Amazingly, amidst this cavalcade of assholes, there is a lovely chapter (#4) on mid-century ethnic crossover accordionists (like Frankie Yankovic). Finnish-American Viola Terpeinin was new to me. Her recordings are on YouTube. Go listen to them. They're great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWjkRQ3E5aw
By the 1960's, Lawrence Welk's "Geritol Hour" dominated the public view of accordions and the AIC was furiously railing against those dang kids with their rock music. (Jacobsons's analysis of exactly why Lawrence Welk was so bland is quite well done.) With this final idiocy, the whole ugly, bigoted apparatus of the AIC came tumbling down. I found myself cheering as one might for the slasher at a horror movie where the "heroine victim" is particularly clueless and unlikeable.
Jacobson wastes a few final chapters on American accordiana since the 60s. A slow trickle of headlines, once every few years, on the order of "The Accordion Is Cool Again" remind one of a leaky colostomy bag. One recent innovation is rebellion against aspirations to technical competence, and embracing the accordion for its sheer annoyance value (see "Those Darn Accordions"). There were numerous others. Frankly, I lost interest. When everyone's a "rebel", no one is.
In all, one shouldn't be surprised that a book on American accordion playing is riddled with mediocrity. After all, would you buy an Canadian cookbook? As put down Jacobson's volume I found myself wistfully dreaming that the musical legacy it describes could be as easily put down.
Erik Butterworth - 2014