Those were the days, my friends!

[Dingo40]

Guys, guys, guys, will we ever see the like again?
A 1957 Miss America semifinalist playing the accordion as her talent !
Just listen to the compere's introduction!?

 

[losthobos]

Miss California has my vote

 

[jozz]

is that host starting to smirk? the degredation already had set in

she lost to someone playing an organ

 

[Cheshire Chris]

How times have changed! I rather suspect that the electric guitar may have replaced the accordion as the instrument that most children would like to have. Rock 'n roll was just becoming a "thing" in 1957 ?.

 

[AccordionUprising]

Yeah, 1957 was right on the tipping point. I've seen numbers that 1952 was the peak for imports, and saw a thing from the Gretch guitar company saying '56 was their peak for sales. After that it was all downhill. As sales of new instruments fell, all the other infrastructure of schools, sheet-music, repair shops fell with it. By 1970s the industry seems to have been marginalized. They didn't seem to have seen what was coming, and didn't adapt to it when challenges arose.

 

[NickC]

I hear guitarists today talking about how turntables and drum machines are taking over the music industry.
I would have to believe that, outside of the US, the accordion is still one of the most popular instruments. Conjunto in Mexico, bal-musette in France, merengue tipico in The Dominican Republic, filuzzi in Italy, cajun, zydeco, Irish traditional, vallenato, baiao, tango, schottische, waltz, tejano, polka, saltarello, etc.
I'm not sure any of those are as universally popular as rock guitar music, but the fans are very much invested in the music. It's almost like a lifestyle.

 

[OldSqueezer]

Yeah, 1957 was right on the tipping point. They didn't seem to have seen what was coming, and didn't adapt to it when challenges arose.

But how would they have adapted? The Roland V-accordion route depended on advances in electronics and miniaturisation yet to come. Probably no way they could have stemmed the tide of preference for the ‘new’ guitar sound and everything that went with rock and roll.

 

[OldSqueezer]

Guys, guys, guys, will we ever see the like again?
A 1957 Miss America semifinalist playing the accordion as her talent !

 

[OldSqueezer]

Oops! Pressed the wrong button (happens on my accordion, too)! I was just going to say it was interesting that when I played this clip, at the end, among the suggestions YouTube came up with was one of the same lady in 2010, by then 71, playing Penny Lane on the same accordion. It didn’t say whether she had succeeded in her Miss California ambition ‘to teach music some day’. Since she remained a musician, I imagine she may well have done.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

A beauty queen and her accordion

Lorna Anderson, who lives in Pinehurst, plays the accordion. It was her musical abilities that helped her achieve the crown of Miss California in 1957 and becoming a top-5 finalist for Miss America.

www.wral.com

Seems this was the band she was in in later years

 

[OldSqueezer]

Seems this was the band she was in in later years.

Thanks for that. From 2009, a year before the Beatles number. I wonder whether she played other genres of music in the thirty or forty years before, or whether she suffered from the guitar takeover, too.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

In a way I am glad for the guitar takeover. The accordion is now such a rare instrument to see being played that I always get people taking an interest in it and stoppingto chat when I play farmer's markets or even just downtown sat on a bench somewhere.

 

[OldSqueezer]

In a way I am glad for the guitar takeover. The accordion is now such a rare instrument to see being played that I always get people taking an interest in it and stoppingto chat when I play farmer's markets or even just downtown sat on a bench somewhere.

Yes, it doesn’t seem to be all that common a busking instrument these days, though a few years ago when I lived in SE London an influx we had at the time of middle Europeans brought some street Klezmer players. One in particular intrigued me because in the cold weather he was able to play very successfully in woollen gloves - yes even the bass side. But perhaps that is a skill you have long since mastered? Myself, I find the hardening of the tips of my fingers from playing guitar, allied to the lessening of sensation that comes with age, make it difficult enough to discern the bass button indentations, without the cushioning that a layer of material would introduce!

 

[stickista]

How times have changed! I rather suspect that the electric guitar may have replaced the accordion as the instrument that most children would like to have. Rock 'n roll was just becoming a "thing" in 1957 ?.

I think Bert was being sarcastic, even then.

 

[boxplayer4000]

Dingo,
Incredible video. Thanks. Beauty Queens have not always been presented in the best intellectual light but this is a bit of exception. She has real musical talent.
There's also one of her on YouTube 53 years later promoting a new album she's made. Incredible lady.
There's endless speculation about the demise of the accordion. Almost overnight the accordion disappeared from view sometime in the fifties,
more so in America. The guitar was king when television got really going. If people don't see it they forget about it.
Anyway thanks to videos such as the one at the head of this thread we might start a revolution.

 

[Chrisrayner]

But, but, but. That’s Dark Eyes, this, from Moscow is Those Were The Days:

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

That’s one of the songs I play but I don’t look that good doing it??

 

[boxplayer4000]

Chrisrayner:
It was quite late in the day I leaned this is in fact a Russian song. It was a dis-appointment to learn that Mary Hopkins had had no part.
The video above looks like a practice session. There's at least one other in 'live venue' with all the lighting effects.
This is one Russian group who could have come closest to making me defect.

 

[stickista]

Chrisrayner:
It was quite late in the day I leaned this is in fact a Russian song. It was a dis-appointment to learn that Mary Hopkins had had no part.
The video above looks like a practice session. There's at least one other in 'live venue' with all the lighting effects.
This is one Russian group who could have come closest to making me defect.

I always enjoy guessing if someone with an accordion is actually an accordionist or a piano player with an accordion strapped on. ?

 

[Chrisrayner]

I always enjoy guessing if someone with an accordion is actually an accordionist or a piano player with an accordion strapped on. ?

Not much left hand going on, is there??