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August 30, 2008

Misunderstood music: Accordion’s sound packs special powers for a small, eclectic

By Mark Bennett

TERRE HAUTE — Marcella Boswell’s accordion isn’t necessarily magical. Yet its music packs special powers.

When she rolls her wheelchair up to the rooms of fellow Southwood Health & Rehabilitation Center in Terre Haute, carrying her Noble accordion, Boswell asks, “Do you want to hear some music?” Invariably, they answer, “Yes.”

Some of her most avid Southwood fans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. “Some of them sing the songs like there’s nothing wrong with them,” says the retired educator.

That includes a woman who moved her finger in a circle while Boswell played, “like she was directing me, so I could see I was communicating to her.”

Boswell and many of her listeners grew up in the accordion’s heyday. During the Great Depression, accordions were as plentiful as electric guitars in the 21st century. Boswell’s accordion instructor even made house calls, charging her parents 30 cents a lesson to teach their 11-year-old daughter to play. Her mother had hoped Marcella would develop a beautiful singing voice, like her first cousin, a regular on ABC and NBC radio shows. “But I didn’t have that,” she said.

Today, taking up the accordion requires some ingenuity. Aaron Wheaton, now pastor at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church, bought his first accordion in 1981 at a rummage sale in Wisconsin, “accordion country” and his wife Cynthia’s home state.

Fortunately, that $35 accordion came with a how-to-play book. The Wheatons have lived the past 16 years in Terre Haute, where accordion sightings are more rare. “I don’t find them much here in Indiana,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re banned, or what.”

Despite that obscurity, graphic designer Christina Blust almost felt a sense of destiny last December when she decided to learn the accordion. “It just kind of made sense to me,” said Blust, who works in the office of advancement at the Sisters of Providence. “I told my friends that this was the instrument I was always supposed to play.” Already, Blust, a lifelong pianist, has begun injecting snippets of her “very basic” accordion playing on an album of original folk-indie songs she is recording, which primarily features her singing and piano work.

The retired teacher, the minister and the graphic designer are part of a small, eclectic, unconnected cluster of Wabash Valley accordionists. Boswell is 82 years old, Wheaton is 55, and Blust 24. The common thread is the smile each wears while playing. One of Blust’s favorite photos shows her standing in front of a window, moving the keys and buttons and bellows, and grinning broadly.

The sound of the instrument can evoke joy, Wheaton explained, with his Fiesta accordion strapped around his shoulder.

“There’s just something about an accordion and a polka,” he said. “It’s happy music.”

Rolled over by rock

Indeed, ethnic festivals, hinged upon polka music, are the most common forum to hear accordions in the Wabash Valley. Squeeze boxes will fill the air at this weekend’s Little Italy Festival in Clinton and the German Oberlanders’ Oktoberfest on Sept. 11-13 in Terre Haute.

Otherwise, the general public typically associates accordions with images of French cafes, Mexican street bands and the long-gone “Lawrence Welk Show.”

Its hipness began waning in the late 1960s and ’70s as rock ’n’ roll saturated American radio stations and record stores. That wave even claimed Jessica Faltot, the runner-up in the 1974 Indiana Accordionist Association state virtuoso contest and a pupil of Indiana accordion legend Gene Van. A few years after that contest, Faltot, then 18, quit playing.

“The stigma that hung over the accordion, and the jokes — it got to be too much,” Faltot, now 51, said from her home near Dallas-Fort Worth.

At age 47, Faltot decided she had to get reacquainted with the instrument she began playing as a little girl. “I knew I was going to lose some of my skills if I didn’t pick it back up soon,” she said. Today, the former Hoosier teaches others in Texas, and performs around the country with a playing partner. In 2005, they won the U.S. accordion duet championship.

Accordion hotbeds can be found in certain parts of the country, Faltot explained, such as the South Bend area in Indiana. “Pockets of groups exist,” she said.

Terre Haute was once on that list, too. As a girl, Boswell placed third out of a field of 100 accordionists competing in a contest sponsored by Paige’s Music downtown. Nearly 70 years later, Boswell is an anomaly. But at Southwood, where she’s been rehabilitating from strokes and hip surgeries, her playing is cherished. Her ability appears unaffected by those physical issues. She gracefully churns and fingers the accordion, and the songs flow fluidly.

After serenading a guest with “Amazing Grace” and “(Give Me That) Old Time Religion,” Boswell wheeled herself out of a closed room and into the busy Southwood hallway. As soon as her fellow residents spotted her toting her accordion, one woman hollered, “Play us a song.” Another playfully urged Boswell to “play it, woman.”

They often want to hear spirituals or patriotic tunes, and Boswell gladly obliges them.

“I like to do the church hymns and the religious songs,” she said, “but I can do a little polka.”

As she spoke, the instrument rested on her lap. Her name, in white block letters, stretches across its compact, black shell. Its brand label proclaims, “A Noble Product: World’s Finest.” Boswell bought this model online. Seven years ago, she was touring the local nursing homes, performing as a “one-woman band,” playing her accordion, a glockenspiel and recorded backing music. These days, the folks at Southwood are Boswell’s audience.

“I can reach a lot of people in here,” she said.

Sound evokes history, smiles

Wheaton has the same objective with the Mount Pleasant congregation, but with a tongue-in-cheek twist. He likes to make his listeners laugh, even if his playing skill is the butt of the jokes.

“Some people give me money,” Wheaton said, pausing as he played in his church office, “to quit.”

His accordion career started dubiously at a church gathering in Patoka, Ind. Wheaton followed a piano player. Just as Wheaton was about to begin playing before the group, sheet music resting on the piano fell, banging noisily onto the keys. The sedate mood was broken. “People started laughing, and that’s when this whole thing was really born,” he recalled.

Today, Wheaton comes ready with one-liners about his unique instrument. “What do you call 10 accordions at the bottom of the ocean?” he asks, slyly. “A good start.” And, “What makes an accordion different from an onion? No one cries when you chop it up.”

He carefully limits his congregants’ accordion exposure. “I’ve only had this in the sanctuary once,” Wheaton said, “and I warned them before I did.”

After running through “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes” inside his office, Wheaton hears chatter out in the church office hallway. He opens the door and excitedly asks the church workers and volunteers, “You guys like it, don’t you?” Down the hall, someone answers with a howl.

That happens at home, too, with the family dog, Wheaton said. “I cannot play this in the house without him howling.”

Sometimes accordionists need space to practice. Blust, a northern Kentucky native and Xavier University graduate, lives in an apartment. “My neighbors probably don’t appreciate it, so it’s hard to find places and moments that are appropriate,” she said.

Occasionally, she’ll drive into the western Vigo County countryside, park her car, pull out her accordion and play.

Misunderstood and dogged by a cheesy “Lady of Spain” reputation, accordions were actually developed in the 1820s in Europe. Its past and its intricacies fascinate Blust. “An accordion is so complex, with the way the chords are done,” she said. The accordionist plays its small keyboard with the right hand, fingers backing chord buttons with the left hand, and pumps the bellows with the left wrist and arm.

The results are worth the effort, Blust discovered.

“You just really feel like you’re part of the sound. When you’re playing, you feel kind of powerful,” she said. “There’s so much history in the sound, depending on what notes you play. There’s France or Italy or Germany.”

The addition of accordion bits on her upcoming album — which she’s recording in the southern Vigo County studios of Don Arney — sets Blust apart from her contemporaries.

“A lot of people my age would think it’s more dated,” she said of the instrument, “but I think it’s more timeless.”



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.



The main squeeze

Accordion pioneers: Cyrillus Damian of Austria crafted the first patented accordion in 1829. But a German, Christian Friedrich Buschmann, created a similar instrument in 1822.

Makers: Today, though some U.S. companies make accordions, 75 percent of the world’s production comes from Italy, followed by China.

Accordions in popular music: David Hidalgo, lead guitarist for Latin rockers Los Lobos, often plays accordion with the band. Buckwheat Zydeco is an accordion icon in zydeco music, which blends blues and dance genres of Louisiana Creoles. Pop songs featuring the instrument include The Who’s sly, double-entendre “Squeeze Box,” “Jenny’s Got A Pony” by Los Lobos, Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” Shania Twain’s “Come On Over” album, and John Mellencamp’s “Cherry Bomb.”

Source: Accordions Worldwide,

American Accordionists Association

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