These vintage ads reminded me of my two years in grade school where I took accordion lessons and played with the Modern American School accordion band under the leadership of my music teacher, Miss Anne Pertack. The highlight of that experience was a performance at a concert hall inside the Palace Of Fine Arts In Mexico City.
I never pictured myself as the Mexican Lawrence Welk although I have to admit I enjoyed The Lawrence Welk Show quite a lot, in a guilty pleasure kind of way.
These ads promise hours of joy and pleasure and claim accordions are IN, which of course,
were slight exaggerations. All I can say is that an accordion, played by a talented musician, makes delightful and very happy music.
My accordion was the Hohner Student VII and it was sold for a paltry amount when my mom died, in 2009.
But I still remember with nostalgia those boring hours practicing the instrument in the full knowledge I would never become a skilled musician.
Years later, I took up the clarinet and learned to play it with some proficiency. I even got to play it on an episode of a local TV sitcom and on a nightclub show.
After that, I wisely left the music in the talented hands of professional musicians like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. My real passion is listening to music, not playing it.
