Check out this little chestnut....While visiting my grandmother who was born in the early 1920's, we were looking for photo albums in her utility room so we could pass the time. Well, I see this old boot box with quite a few things stacked on top. I lifted the lid while holding the other stuff on top from falling all over and felt inside and it felt like photo album covers. I go through the trouble to get the box out of the bottom of the stack and I look inside.

Awestruck was I...for inside was my deceased grandfather's Cajun vinyl 45 record collection with the covers in great condition. He was born in the 1910-1920's. Played piano, fiddle, and accordion by the time he was 13 years old. He signed every one that was his, claiming proud ownership it seemed. The Cajun swamp pop and elvis albums in the box he did not sign. For years I wondered who were my grandfather's heroes when it came to accordion players. In this boot box were my answers. And from what I remember of his "HWY 14" style of accordion playing, he was influenced by every one of these accordion players featured on each album. All of the albums that he had his signature on were played to living hell. Scratched very much. Not warped, just scratched pretty bad.

The albums were of Iry Lejeune, Nathan Abshire, Lawrence Walker, Joe Bonsall, Amede Ardoin, Austin Pitre, Sidney Brown, one 78 of Marc Savoy, and a couple others I can't remember. My grandfather was alive when all of these musicians were alive and he was playing accordion in the same time frame as them. He was learning from their recordings! The whole time, I thought he learned solely from his family, and also from a local click of musicians over the years. Compare to Iry Lejeune who obviously learned from his own family members, recordings, and definitely Amede Ardoin's recordings. They learned watching people play dances,from recordings, and from their own memories of having heard another accordion player play one song long ago in their past or even in their present. They tried to re-create what they heard. They didn't have YouToob to slow it down!. I believe that's where these little pockets of style came from. Each individual accordion player hashing these songs out on their own. Nathan Abshire also had a style that was influenced by the earliest recordings and others he may have heard live. As I've said before, Nathan Abshire took a lot from Blind Uncle Gaspard's "Rabbit Stole the Pumpkin". He created his own unique riffs from listening to it, and the similarities are noticeable.

Point being...after an accordion player listens long enough and plays long enough, he begins to see the need to make his style stand out amongst the many. "Parakeeting" directly just won't do anymore. His "special" riffs, thrills, and turns come from combining what he's heard others do and how he interprets it and what his brain, fingers, and muscle memory allow him to do on the accordion. Every once in a while he creates an original riff, thrill, or turn, but not often. For instance, I have in my memory some of my granpaw's and his brother's special turns or B parts, and I can do them at will. These riffs I have not heard any other accordion player do both past and present. I'm sure there are others out there that possess these bits of rare styles, but they are rare in the world of parakeets. Take time to try and tackle the old recordings people. You will find that after a while, you too will begin to develop your own unique styles. You will no longer sound like every other dime a dozen accordion player out there today who jumps up on the stage or makes a CD or you tube video way before he or she has earned their own style.

I was interested and afforded some credibility to your post until:


"Take time to try and tackle the old recordings people. "

The last word in this context ( and any other time some one refers to others as "people" or "you people" )it is disrespectful and a transparent attempt at raising the author's status at the expense of others.

Cheap shot.

And while we're at it..
Some may take offense at "dem black boys".

Oh come one Jeff! Don't go all Liberal bleeding heart on me man. We have about enough of that going on in this country. If I didn't jab and jive at "you people", it just wouldn't be me. LOL Are you saying that Cajuns are uneducated, discourteous rednecks that need to be changed for the better by outside society? Are you saying that our ways and speech patterns are cocky, offensive and worthy of only other cavemen to hear? Well, good, I'm glad. At least I stand out amongst the ever growing heard of politically correct sheep. But hey, thanks for the input. I will store it away in my steel trap for future reference. Maybe it will help me to improve some way in the future. But man!....I sometimes find myself hating change in my life. In the old days, I wouldn't think twice before pointing a pistol or shotgun in someone's face for having threatened me or offended me or mine. Then, later I switched to blasphemous hurtful words and loud tones and physical violence. Now a days, I try to stay quiet and I just stand and stare at these people without saying a word and wait for them to put their own foot in their own mouths. LOL, it never takes very long for them to do just that. In fact, I can usually bet on it 10 to 1 odds.

I never mentioned me or I..

Keep that in mind

I am a little more grounded than to be offended by what you wrote.

I was stroking the snowflakes lest they unglue.

I had an inept ex army lieutenant for a boss..
who pushed his finger into my chest and said "you people".
He never did it again.


You stand there and stare without saying a word.. Am I talkin' to the right guy.

PS nuthin' ****** me off more than to be misquoted or suggest that I said or meant something I did not say or mean

I am anything but politically correct.

Politically correct means lying by omission or being evasive and trying to make everyone "happy"

I do not believe in "happy"
I am not a "happy" guy.

I am matter of fact and truthful. And this seems to offend a lot of people. So be it.

I am not surprised by that.

It might be a bit of an oversimplification, but you can make the case that any type of music that was uniquely created in the US was by black people.

Jazz, blues, R&B. The list goes on and on.

Even other forms of music that you might consider to be lily white, like Blue Grass or Country, if you listen carefully enough, you can detect the significant influence of African Americans.

I would agree with you on this Dave. There was some speculation a while back on who were the first Cajun accordion players. The common thought was Amedee Ardoin, but there were white Cajun players taking up the accordion at the same time as him. Angelas Lejeune for example was born the same year as Amedee Ardoin in 1898. Amedee Breaux and Joe Falcon were born two years later in 1900. But records show that Amedee Ardoin the black man, had to have learned from others coming before him. I believe Canray Fontenot the fiddle player and Amedee Ardoin were tied together to an elder musician that showed them the ropes. I also believe that when the accordion finally came to the Cajun people, both black and white, all the players had to do was follow the Cajun fiddle music that had already been around for a very long time and voila! They could also take that accordion and invent some new tunes depending on what their ears and fingers were willing and able to produce. Perhaps the thought of these non Cajun black men playing accordion to the delta blues gave the early Cajun players the idea to try it against the Cajun fiddle. Maybe there was some cousinship or something like that within Amedee Ardoins family that exposed them to Lead Belly or some other black accordion playing blues brother.?? Or the world was a smaller place back then. Hell, Amedee Ardoin, a young black man went all the way to New York City. I've never even been to New York City and it's the year 2017! I still would say that whitey copied from the black man back then, but whitey sure did a good job with his own style of Cajun accordion music. After all, he sure as hell wasn't going to be out done by no black man! LOL. But it's all relative. Black folks sang in the fields. They gave each other hope with song when there was little hope and the work was mandatory and hard. But get this...Cajun women sang in the fields too back in Nova Scotia I'm told. And they sang when they arrived in Louisiana too. So, whether the chicken or the egg came first, does it really matter? LOL!

Mississippi Delta bluesmen claim they were influenced by white fiddlers' reels! They even call some their own tunes reels. I think there's white fiddler influence on accordion style quite likely!

It's a real mix of black and white. So it irks me when they claim that jazz is the only truly American music form. No it isn't. There's also Cajun music and country music borne out of the mixing of the black and the white. Then there's the Tex-Mex music mixing Mexican and Central European. And what about Hawaiian? The jazz crowd doesn't know what it's talking about! I am on jazz discussion boards and this comes up rather frequently. There are genres of music that could have ONLY happened in America due to our unique mix.

See my reply to Bryan Lafleur.

Tex-Mex music is influenced by the polka. Invented, and brought to Tejas, by BOHEMIANS.

It just so happens my great grandfather was from Salnau, Bohemia, Austria as it says on the ship manifest and his immigration papers. He settled in the Seattle, Wash area. He was a box player. According to my mother, her grandfather played for the Bohemian Hall the Swedish Hall, dances, weddings, parties etc. and played mazurkas, waltzes and of course the Polka. (which is not Polish)

I have, and play, his 2 1/2 row D/G box.

PS Salnau, Bohemia, Austria was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a "kingdom" within the Empire. Many of the Bohemians, such as my great grandfather spoke German with an Austrian inflection. Salnau is now Zalnav and in the Czech Republic. It is six miles east of the German Bavarian border and six miles north of the current Austrian Czech border.
When Hitler invaded... he annexed "Bohemia" and confiscated our family's mill and property. It was Hitler's first conquest.

My great grandfather's birth name was Jakob Josef Bock, his father was Wenzl Bock .

Apparently both played the button accordeon.


PS There were no Cajuns in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland or any of the other island provinces(sp).. They were Acadians.

If I'm not mistaken, the Mrnustik family of Houston was Czech as well. He was a box player that did repairs during the 40s.

With that last name, he could be a Czech speaking Czech.. or, like my GGF spoke both Czech and German.

I heard that Marc Savoy said that during a seance of Marie Laveau a black accordionplayer was playing.
I have to search for the video where he said that.
Is anybody familiar with that or i sthat a rumour ?

Marc talks about it in the documentary of Les Blank titled Jai Ete Au Bal.
It's when he talks about the accordion.

I have the video.. I'll check it out.

This is what I found in the chapter about Marie Laveau in Janet Allured/Judith F. Gentry's Louisiana Women:
"Marie Laveau's front room was filled with altars laden with candles, images of the saints, flowers, fruit, and other offerings. Here she presided over weekly Friday night meetings, which were attended by "more white than colored". A core group of her closest followers was always present to assist her. A chorus of young singers, accompanied by an old man who played the accordion, supplied the music..."