Jeff Kaliss talks with some of the musicians of Texas and Louisiana about the impact of the accordion on the music of the American south and southwest.
To some, the accordion is an object of ridicule, or at least comedy. To others, the loud, reedy-voiced instrument is a matter of pride, and when you're from Texas, you take that pride in double shots.
"There's nothin' in the United States other than Texas that has accordion players," claims Esteban "Steve" Jordan, the eccentric wizard of Tex-Mex squeeze-box masters. Indeed, the Lone Star State boasts a multi-ethnic multiplicity of squeeze-box stylings, from Jordan's electronically enhanced, jazz-and-rock-influenced cumbias and huapangos to the more traditional conjunto approach of Flaco Jimenez (who shares tour billings with Jordan) to the various shades of polkas and waltzes found among the state's German, Czech, and Polish immigrant communities.
But Julius Tupa, who leads a Czech-American band out of Houston on the eastern horn of Texas, has to acknowledge a healthy crop of accordionists in the neighboring state of Louisiana, because they keep on sneaking over the state line. "Between here and the border, there are twenty or thirty dancehalls which will hire not only polka but Cajun bands as well," he admits. And that's not to mention zydeco, whose piano accordions are almost as active in Port Arthur, Texas as in Lake Charles, Louisiana, equidistant from that state line.
How did the instrument make its way to this part of the globe and what keeps it going? "The accordion came from China, man," is Jordan's compact reply. "From there, it went into Europe, and the Europeans came over here to Texas. Then the Chicanos grabbed onto it. Germany didn't know that they were making the accordion for me."
This is more than just typical Jordan braggadocio: there exists a custom Steve Jordan Hohner, a three-row button accordion "exactly like Flaco's, but a little better," with "adjustable straps, my own tuning, octaves, and sounds that are like a saxophone or flute." But Jordan also owes thanks to the Germans (along with the Czechs and Poles) not just for the instrument but also for the musical forms such as the polka, schottische, and waltz which were imported by European immigrants.
"A lot of their stuff is very similar to ours," says Texas Polish-American fiddler and singer Brian Marshall (originally 'Marszalek') about Tex-Mex musics. "One of the songs my uncle taught me was 'Mi Rancho Grande,' and our older people love that stuff. Up North," among the Poles of New York State and the Midwest, "that would be a real fast polka, but down here the Mexican polka is slower, I guess 'cause of the heat."
Marshall, whose Tex-Slavik Playboys have recorded for Arhoolie, also finds regional differences in instrumentation. "One of the things that's always distressed me about the Northern [U.S.] bands is that they're all strictly horn-driven, and they never give the accordion any serious time on the music," he says. "The accordions get these riffs they throw in between the horns, but they never really cut loose and let 'em play."
They get a lot more play in Marshall's group, both on solos and on rhythmic back-up, but although he plays some button accordion himself, he leaves the principal responsibility to Czech- American Mark Halata. "I've heard my uncles say that fifty years ago, the accordion was somehow frowned upon as a 'Czech' instrument," notes Marshall. "Mark has a very full five-finger chord Czech style. The Mexicans will play the buttons and kind of hop around, and the Northern Polish will hop around the same as the Mexicans do, but the traditional Czech player is very melodious, it's not real choppy."
Although the various Central European immigrants came to Texas on the same waves, including those like Marshall's great-grandfather brought in as sharecroppers in the late 19th Century, the Czechs seem to have been more successful than the Poles at holding on to their roots. Czech-American bandleader Julius Tupa credits his ancestors with remaining a long-time cultural force in the Lone Star State and with having implanted the popularity of the button accordion.
"The Czech language used to be the second most spoken language in Texas, after English," claims Tupa, who lives in a suburb of Houston. "The Czechs love to sing, they like harmonious things, and the accordion is a very harmonious instrument: you can make it sound sweet or harsh."
Czech "family bands" began forming at least a century ago in Texas, says Tupa. "Every second week or so they'd meet at somebody's house and have a house dance. Somebody would make some homebrew, two bottles for a nickel. The accordion was the lifeblood, that's what kept the people together and striving for better times. But after a while the bands kind of evolved to where the accordion and the horns got together in five- or six-piece groups." Some early commercial recordings, dating back as far as the late '20s, are available on an Arhoolie compilation, which includes songs linked specifically to Bohemia and Moravia in the Old Country.
Tupa's group, The Sound Connection, will include Polish, German, and "a lot of Slovenian, Cleveland-type stuff" on their set lists, along with a little bit of country-and-western. But Tupa still hears something special in his band and their Czech heritage. "The German stuff, maybe you want to listen to it rather than get involved, the German groups are more sophisticated, with a style that fits in with their orchestras. Whereas the Czechs will pull out an accordion, and that's all they need. Czech music is more folk-type music, where you're playing and singing about a stream, fishing, a cottage under the trees, a ring around the moon, songs about things. They all come from the Old Country, the Czechs brought those songs with them, you pull out that accordion and twenty, thirty people want to sing along."
Like the Czechs, the Mexicans of Texas at first favored the button over the piano accordion because it's less expensive. "My grandfather, Patricio Jimenez, learned on a diatonic [button] accordion and then my dad, Santiago, so I just kept the tradition," notes Flaco Jimenez, who also inherited his nickname (meaning "Skinny") from his father. "Also, the piano is more for sophisticated music, and the button type is drivey sound and it projects more, it's happier."
"My grandfather and my dad, I would say they were the pioneers of Tex-Mex music," Jimenez continues. "Granddaddy played birthdays and anniversaries around the neighborhood; polkas, waltzes, and schottisches, because he learned from the Germans who settled around the San Antonio area, he used to go their dances and he started liking that oom-pah-pah. My dad started recording in 1936, adding music to the lyrics, and when he knew that I could handle the accordion, he took me to his dances at the Gaucho Gordon in San Antonio, and I started playing with his group. Then the years passed, and I started recording in 1954 with Los Caminantes, in San Antonio."
A couple of decades later, aided by recordings and the Les Blank documentary "Chulas Fronteras," Jimenez "started introducing my music to the Anglos," along them Doug Sahm, Ry Cooder, Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, and Bob Dylan. "I started making more perfection in the conjunto and the accordion sound itself," Jimenez reflects. "The diatonic accordion is limited, but being that I've got this three-row model, it gives you the range to go chromatic. On two-row it's very limited."
Jimenez is among the first to admit that Estaban Jordan, his sometime touring partner, is "in an accordion world by himself. I couldn't play the progressions that he plays, because he's real jazzy." What Jordan calls "chicano music" was actually his childhood repertoire on guitar and accordion among the migrant farmworkers of Northern California, before he "went from polka to jazz, meadow rock and acid trips" in San Francisco. He joined Willie Bobo's ensemble and played several international jazz festivals, but in 1966 decided to base himself in Texas, "because I'm a big fish in a small pond there."
However big, Jordan has evolved as a strange fish with few who could or would be classified in his unique species. He continues to record traditional material, mostly on small local labels, but also contributes corridos and rancheras of his own invention on such far-flung subjects as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Jordan's use of Echoplex and other electronic enhancements are decried by some purists, but make for fascinating listening.
Over in Louisiana, Marc Savoy's purism concerning Cajun culture is legendary.
 Photo ©2001 Elemore Morgan Jr |
Virtuoso Paul Daigle traded out work at his body shop for his diatonic instrument, made by Elton Quebodeaux, a former associate of Savoy. He points out that German companies were exporting accordions to this part of the United States (including Texas) more than a century ago, so their presence in Cajun music long predates their local manufacture. The first generation of recorded Cajun players, including Amédé Ardoin, favored the Sterling brand, from Germany, in the '20s and '30s. "But they almost vanished in the late 1930's, the accordion wasn't happening any more," says Daigle. "Then after the War, Iry LeJeune became the man who I guess brought back the accordion. With his success, he also encouraged [legendary players] Joe Falcon and Nathan Abshire to come back."
Savoy's wife Ann points out that back in the 50s, "If anyone had known Marc played the accordion, he would have been the laughing stock of the school." Ann and Marc's teenage son Wilson is quite comfortable taking up the instrument during the current "cultural revival movement." His father is concerned, though, that "unless you have a situation where the oldtimers can come and present their style, it won't be perpetuated in the next generation. There's a lot of guys playing Cajun accordion out there, but not Cajun-style."
Savoy sometimes sees more respect for tradition among his zydeco compatriots than among would-be Cajuns. "I notice that the young black zydeco musicians are very concerned about learning the style of some of the oldtimers like Boozoo Chavis and Clifton Chenier," says Savoy. "I had an experience with one that came to my store, a real good young man, Keith Frank. He picked up a triple-row [diatonic] and played a song by Boozoo, and I said, 'Wow, that's a real neat thing you did right there, show me how you did that'."
Many zydeco players prefer the blue notes and jazzy chordings available to them on the piano accordion, but Geno Delafose, son of one of zydeco's founding fathers, prefers to make his instrument fit the crowd. "I would say it's probably 40 per cent piano, 60 per cent button, and it all depends on where I'm playing," he explains. "One Friday night I played in Baton Rouge at a club called Alligator Bayou, and there were just a lot of Cajun dances and stuff, and I played the button accordion all night. But I got to Tuscaloosa and there was stuff from Prince and Kool & the Gang, blues and rock stuff, and people were in that groove, and I wound up playing my piano accordion that whole set, even though I'd set both up to play 'em. Majority of the time when I'm playing dances, I'll bounce back and forth."
The 30-year-old Delafose is living, bouncing proof that accordions will be pumping around the Gulf well into the millenium. "There's a lot of good young groups coming up, with good accordion players," Steve Jordan assures. "I tell them, 'I'm just opening the doors for you guys. Just sit tight and learn. Get down with what you have to do, because the doors will be open'."
- Jeff Kaliss
Read past RootsWorld interviews with:
Flaco Jimenez
Geno Delafose
Marc Savoy
Eddie LeJeune
Steve Riley
