Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
This is Page 1 of 3

There was a Ferrari on the porch of the Bean Sunday.

And a Davinci. And a Stradovox.

Late Sunday afternoon – June first -- ten people with accordions gathered on the porch of The Bean for Oriental’s First Annual Accordion Blast. This was Oriental’s way of kicking off June’s National Accordion Awareness Month.

Being new at this, no one was quite sure what would happen or that any one would even show up. (Just hours before the event, the emcee was heard to predict that there would be four people there, Six tops.)

There were a couple of surprises.

Surprise # 1: an estimated 50 spectators turned out to willingly expose themselves to accordion music. And they got it. Mary Had A Little Lamb and Lady of Spain. The Chicken Dance and other Polkas from Bayboro’s Norm Czuchra. Cajun and zydeco tunes from half of the Carteret County band, Unknown Tongues. Mary Duffie exuberantly leading several accordions in a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. (Dueling banjos –another much maligned instrument -- had nothing on this.)

Surprise # 2 was that there were that many accordions in and around Pamlico County.

There were full -sized accordions, one red, a couple ivory and of course standard black. County Commissioner Chris Mele brought an accordion used on the vaudeville stage. It almost looked bejeweled. Bryan Blake ferried across the Neuse from Gloucester with not one, but two Cajun accordions in tow, one in the key of C the other in D. Ron Lupton of Oriental coaxed as much sound as humanly possible out of a tiny red-white-and-green toy accordion he’d bought at a Cracker Barrel. And Ken King showed off a concertina made of wood – we think it was not live oak. He didn’t play it, but in a spoken word performance, riffing on the theme of Accordion Awareness, Ken shared the fact that C. Wheatstone, the electrical engineer who invented the English electric telegraph system also invented the concertina.

Accordionists and their weopons on the Town Dock

Some of the accordions – and accordion players -- had been in the closet for years.

State Representative Mike Gorman

State Representative Mike Gorman of New Bern, who represents Oriental in the State House, said it’d been so long since he played his accordion that the leather straps had rotted out. This put him at the double disadvantage of having decades of practice to catch up on AND balancing the keyboard and buttons without a harness as he played “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.”

Madge Davenport Williams meanwhile topped Gorman. She said she last played 47 years ago. That time away from the accordion might have continued uninterrupted but for a knock on her door just an hour earlier. Accordion Pride organizer Mary Duffie had recruited her. Madge gamely played a short version of Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Larry Williams on the squeezebox

Mary Duffie had also recruited Madge’s husband, Larry. He played a brief tune on a squeezebox long enough to show off its vibrant yellow bellows; Larry explained that for several years he had blithely played it upside down.

Accordionists Anonymous

Whether it was the liberation of being out of the closet as accordion players or just being on the Porch/Stage before an adoring crowd, some of the performers seemed moved to share personal details about their accordions. Chris Mele, a French horn player with one accordion lesson under her belt, confessed that she was drawn to the accordion because, unlike the French horn, she could wear lipstick while she played.

Barb Venturi

Barb Venturi meanwhile, said that a few years back she wanted a portable keyboard. She had in mind a contemporary set of keys. Instead, her mother bought her an accordion. Barb was not planning to play Sunday –she’d loaned her portable keyboard to someone else – but the crowd egged her on. She slipped in to the straps – and after darting very quickly in to the Bean to practice and find “c” – she emerged to play a few tunes with increasing confidence and virtuosity.

>>> the story continues on Page 2