On the 23rd of May, 1829, a Herr Zyril Demian of Vienna received a patent "on the invention of a new instrument, called accordion". Within 20 years tens of thousands of sqeezeboxes were being produced every year and exported to all corners of the world. A new craze was sweeping the world.
Most people will be familiar with the piano accordion with its piano-type keyboard at one end and a mass of little buttons operating the basses and chords at the other, the two being joined by a bellows which pumps air to both ends. There is however a huge number of variations on the theme and while the piano-accordion is a fully chromatic instrument, capable of playing in any key, many squeezeboxes are diatonic instruments which are confined to one or two keys. The instrument seen above is my little darling, a Saltarelle 'Le Bouebe' closed-fingerboard two-row melodeon in D/G, "Sally" for short.
"Sally" is an excellent instrument for pumping out country dance music from England, Scotland, USA and elsewhere. The system requires frequent changes of direction of the bellows which gives a bouncy feel to the music. It's basically the same system as is used on a mouth-organ or harmonica but instead of sucking and blowing with the mouth you use the bellows. "Nothing but a mouth-organ with an iron lung" was how I once heard it described.
The joys of playing the instrument are neatly described by John Kirkpatrick, as finer squeezeboxer as you're ever likely to hear: " These......instruments sometimes take on a vigorous life of their own which can defeat even the most determined practitioner. As well as contributing a varied repertoire of mechanical noises - clicks from the buttons, bumps from the bellows, and sudden rushes of air in tunes which stubbornly refuse to allow an equal quota of pushes and pulls - they can whisk the player off unawares along all kinds of unexpected and uncharted paths. Rather than standing four-square among their limitations, they turn the most predictable tune into a hair-raising adventure!"
Some little known squeezebox facts: - the Zulu people of southern Africa refer to the concertina as a "Squashbox" - the ancestor of these instruments, the Chinese lu sheng, a kind of mouth organ, has been in existence for around two thousand years. - Hitler hated the squeezebox and the Nazi party passed laws to prevent accordion bands from playing classical music. - the blues songster Leadbelly played a simple melodeon. He called it a "windjammer". - the word "squeezebox" is known in Welsh, but because the language is lacking in the letters Q, Z and X it is spelt "scwisbocs". Welsh also lacks the letter J, which is inconvenient for about half the population who bear the surname Jones.
Take care.
PS - This is nothing to do with accordions but I've just been listening to the news on the radio. A spokesman for the Labour party has just accused the Conservative government of "sitting on their hands and twiddling their thumbs"! Must try that!
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