Word: accordions
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Today the greatest living French artist is 74, silver-haired and slightly stooped. Georges Braque still likes to recall the all-night sessions of talk, drink and accordion playing...
...such versatility is perfectly natural. The son of a Somerville, N.J. pianist-arranger, he started playing the piano at four. When his father died three years later, Don made up his mind to "sort of carry on what my father had done." At eight he was taking accordion lessons, at 13 he was studying the big baritone horn to play in his high-school band. He picked up the trumpet without help, and the mellophone was no trouble at all after that, since it has the same fingering and a similar embouchure. One day he met a fellow...
...What has Welk got? According to the critics, nothing. They think his Champagne Music sounds more like melodic 7-Up. His oleaginous manner and grin have won him some envious labels, including "Liberace of the accordion" and "Cornbelt Guy Lombardo." Replies Welk: "In order to be successful on TV. you have to play what people understand. Our music is always handled crisply. It's rhythmic and has a light beat all the time. Our notes are cut up so they sparkle. And, against the sparkle, we have an undercurrent of smoothness in violin, organ and accordion...
...Real Loud." When Welk and his accordion first came out of Strasburg. N. Dak. (pop. 800), his music was brash and noisy. A farm boy of Alsatian descent (he still has a faint Germanic accent absorbed from his parents), he learned to play "real loud" at barn dances. One of his fellow musicians used to protect himself from the Welk blare by putting cotton in his ears. Welk toured with small combos around Yankton...
...soon stretched her natural talent to songs in seven languages (plus bop talk) and music on seven instruments (piano, accordion, vibraphone, guitar, bass, ukulele, clarinet...