[Stephen Chambers]

Trying to avoid the dreaded "thread creep", I have opened this new topic.

bill_mchale, on Apr 16 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

Well, there were certainly D melodeon players prior to the emergence of the half-step Paolos that (IIRC) established the modern style of Irish box playing in the 1950s.

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I have made reference to some of those single-row melodeon players, and the instruments they preferred, in the Cajun Accordion Or Melodeon? thread, especially in this post, but 2-row semitone-tuned melodeons/button accordions with a D row do not seem to have been generally available before WWII (though I have evidence that 3-row ones in C/C#/D, described as "English scale", were available in the late '20s/early '30s), and most were in the C/C# tuning brought out by George Jones in the early 1880's, perhaps inspired by his having been a performer on the French accordion in the 1840's (the latter being played from the outside-row-in. having the home-key on the outside row, and accidentals on the inside row). It fits in with what we know of Jones' work on making the German concertina more chromatic, he claimed to have added the first semitones to the German system, making a 22-key instrument, for his own use in 1851 and his "chromatic Anglo-German" with 26 keys three years later, and in 1884 he patented his 42-key chromatic "Perfect Anglo-German Concertina".

The earliest player of the B/C system seems to have been Peter Wyper in Scotland, who played a 19-key "International" melodeon, and patented a 21-key version in 1915. His tutor book, Wyper's Melodeon Tutor for 19 keys (from which the photo of the two brothers is taken), shows fingerings for playing both from the "outside-in" and the "inside-out" on the C/C#, in the keys of C, D, F, G, A and Bb major, though commenting that if you play on the inside row "you are really playing on C#, and so on, always playing a half a tone higher than you are actually reading", which seems only a very short step from changing the inside row to C, and hence the outside one to B, to bring the "inside-out" method down to pitch.


Peter and Daniel Wyper with 19-key "International" melodeon


21-key P.Wyper's Patent "International" B/C melodeon

To be continued ...

This post has been edited by Stephen Chambers: 20 August 2009 - 09:23 PM

[aeolina]

Stephen Chambers, on Apr 16 2005, 02:36 PM, said:

To be continued ...

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Stephen, tell us more!

Stuart
Edinburgh

[Stephen Chambers]

aeolina, on Apr 17 2005, 08:30 PM, said:

Stephen Chambers, on Apr 16 2005, 02:36 PM, said:

To be continued ...

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Stephen, tell us more!

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Sorry about that Stuart, I had a meal, and a session waiting for me last night. And better still, I went out walking the cliffs at Kilkee today, something I haven't been able to do since I broke my ankle in November, I needed that !

Now, where was I ?

Chapter 2

Scottish melodeon players seem to have quickly taken to George Jones' "Anglo Chromatic Melodion" (as it was announced), and as early as 1887 (and again in 1888 & 1890) George "Pamby" Dick, from Edinburgh, "won the championship for the 19-keyed accordion" (there is a photograph of him, with his instrument and the three cups that he won, in Accordion Times, Jan. 1936, p. 10). But Jones' name for it seems to have quickly become corrupted, and it was to be known variously as the "English Chromatic ", "English Scale" or even "English System Accordion", eventually becoming best known as the "British Chromatic System".

These instruments were generally made in the keys of C/C#, which is the system shown on Jones' initial "Diagram and Scale of the Anglo Chromatic Melodion or German Accordion", though he did comment that it is "usually tuned in the key of C", suggesting that even then other tunings might be available, and I have examples of the professional-quality "International Accordeon" version (made from the late 1890's up until WWII) in C/C#, G/G#, Ab/A and B/C (the latter marked "P. Wypers' Patent").

The Wyper brothers made lots of recordings, both together and seperately, that were sold widely around the globe, and their playing was very influential. I suspect that in Ireland they had almost as dramatic an effect on accordion playing as the recordings of Michael Coleman did on fiddle playing, certainly some of the Wypers' 78's were still available here as late as the 1950's, probably even into the '60's.

Also, some migrant Irish players brought back styles, and instruments from Scotland, notably Michael Grogan who was in Glasgow as a young man, and met Peter Wyper there. Judging by a 1931 photograph, Grogan played an "International", and judging by his recordings it was in G/G# (played on the inside row), as I find that my G/G# "International" (bought in Dublin, but originally sold by Robert Dunlop & Co. of Glasgow) plays along perfectly with it (I only wish that I could keep up with it/him ). Even the young Paddy O'Brien, from Nenagh, started his accordion career playing a G/G# with the Lough Derg Ceili Band in the early '30's (before he got his first B/C in 1937), and another well-known player of the system was Joe Mills, who played for many years in the legendary Aughrim Slopes Ceili Band.

To be continued ...

This post has been edited by Stephen Chambers: 20 April 2005 - 07:34 AM

[Robin Harrison]

.................interesting, Stephen. Was the two row semi-tone tuned melodeon a direct forbear of the three row semi-tone tuned accordion ,B/C/C#(melodeon) used by Jimmy Shand and Will Starr and seemingly more popular in Scottish music than elsewhere ? Robin

[Stephen Chambers]

Robin Harrison, on Apr 18 2005, 11:43 AM, said:

.................interesting, Stephen. Was the two row semi-tone tuned melodeon a direct forbear of the three row semi-tone tuned accordion ,B/C/C#(melodeon) used by Jimmy Shand and Will Starr and seemingly more popular in Scottish music than elsewhere ?

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Robin,

You could say that it was the great-grandfather of the "Shand Morino", but there were intermediate steps ...

Episode 3

However, even in their lifetime there does seem to have been frustration with the simple German melodeon tonic/dominant basses (for each of the two rows) on the German instruments that the Wypers played, and Scottish melodeon champion James Brown (who died, as a result of having been gassed in WWI, in October 1919) took to an improved Italian Dallapé two-row "Cromatique" model with (seemingly) piano-accordion basses, and even to playing 3 and 4-row Paolo Sopranis (presumably in B/C/C# and B/C/C#/D?) with full basses in his later years. In fact he seems to have been the first of the "big box" players.

James Brown and son. James Brown and trophies, c.1918.

Peter Wyper died in 1920, but his B/C system was taken up by the next generation of players, notably William Hannah, and a hybrid instrument, with a melodeon-style treble end (with exposed pallets) and a 24-button (2 x 12) piano accordion-style bass end was developed and marketed by A.H. Wilkinson & Co. Ltd. of Glasgow, under their "Wilkinson's Excelsior" brand. It is featured in Wilkinson's Accordion Tutor for 19 and 21 key Chromatic Melodeons (Glasgow, 1926), shown being played by "William Hannah, Scotland's premier accordionist" and described as the "Hannah Model": "The outer row of the melody keys contains the tones of "B" major, the inner row those of "C" major; so, all notes of the chromatic scale can be played on these instruments". However, Wilkinson's continued to also sell regular one- and two-row versions with diatonic basses.

William Hannah, with "Hannah Model" B/C, 1926.

Probably the next important step was a visit to Charlie Forbes' music shop in Dundee in the early 1930's; when an impecunious accordion player in his early twenties, called Jimmy Shand, was encouraged by a friend to try out one of the instruments and, on hearing him, Forbes gave him a job and encouraged him to make recordings.

I don't know if Shand had anything to do with the next important step, but Forbes certainly did, because it was at his behest that Hohner started to manufacture the B/C "Double-Ray Black Dot" which became available in April 1934, along with the "New Forbes Tutor". This made the B/C system much more widely available, in an instrument of good quality, and at an affordable price.

Certainly Shand was involved in the development of Hohner's "Organola" 23-key B/C in the mid 1930's, a button accordion with 36 piano accordion basses, and he used this model on 78's for the Beltona label at that time. A 3-voice "De Luxe 1" version of this model (from the late '30's) arrived to me from Ellon, Aberdeenshire only yesterday. The former owner's son assures me that in its life it has been played on stage with Jimmy Shand.

Organola "De Luxe 1" B/C, late 1930's.

In the early 1950's, Shand's collaboration with Hohner resulted in the appearance of a new top-class model, the "Shand Morino", a 3-row "British Chromatic" in B/C/C# with 80 piano accordion basses, built by top Hohner craftsman Morino. It was not the first 3-row accordion in Scottish music, but it came to dominate.

To be continued ...

Edited to add material about James Brown, + photo.

This post has been edited by Stephen Chambers: 21 September 2008 - 01:12 PM

[Peter Brook]

This is great stuff Stephen - thanks for sharing it here. I'm still saving for my B/C/C# with stradella bass so i can do full on JK impressions . (I've got the concertina and melodeon already). Now all I have to do is try and work out how he plays so many notes with just two hands......

[Robin Harrison]

................Sorry Stephen..............I rather jumped the gun with my question.
I'll sit quietly at the back of the room until you've finished.
( I've known that there was always one person in every group who wouldn't shut up, was totally irritating ...........I just never realized it was me !! )
It's just really interesting. Carry on.

[Stephen Chambers]

bill_mchale, on Apr 16 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

I believe Billy McComiskey told me that the late great Paddy O'Brien (As opposed to one great box player of the same name who is still very much alive)  played a large role in the current dominance of the B/C ...

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In Ireland he is commonly referred to as "Paddy O'Brien from Nenagh", to differentiate between the two, and it may be no exageration to say that probably the most important event in Irish accordion history was his fifteenth birthday, on 10th February 1937, for which he was given what he had asked for; one of the new Hohner B/C accordions. He had started to play the fiddle at the age of seven, and three years later took up the G/G# accordion, which he played with the Lough Derg Ceili Band, and on a 1936 radio broadcast joining his father Dinny O'Brien (fiddle, though he too played the accordion) and Bill Fahy (flute).

Paddy O'Brien wasn't the first to play the B/C (and Sonny Brogan made earlier recordings on the instrument), but he perfected the B/C style and the handful of 78rpm recordings he made in 1953, before emigrating to New York in January 1954, were to inspire many to take up a whole new, "modern" style of playing that had more to do with fiddle style and ornamentation than that of the melodeon. Reg Hall has commented on how, in the late 1950's, all the young Irish accordion players in London pubs were playing "The Yellow Tinker" and "The Sally Gardens", as learned from Paddy O'Brien's most famous record.

However, from my own experiences of some of those same players, from the early 1970's onwards, I can add that many of those 1950's "young bucks" of the Irish accordion seem to have also been influenced by the recordings of Jimmy Shand around the same time, and were just as likely to know his chart hit "The Blubell Polka", some even took up, or experimented with, the B/C/C# "Shand Morino", though it would be very rare to see a 3-row in Irish circles today.

bill_mchale, on Apr 16 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

... and that other players like Joe Burke have kept it popular.

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Joe Burke was born in Kilnadeema, Co. Galway in 1939, and both his mother Annie, as well as his uncle Pat, played the accordion. About the age of four, he too started off on a Hohner G/G#, on which his uncle showed him a couple of tunes, and I memorably heard him say that "at that time we thought the second row was in case anything went wrong with the other one; a spare" and "I was even told that one row was for jigs and the other one was for reels !"

That was until a man called Martin Grace, an accomplished accordion player who had an unusual style for the time (playing across the two rows), visited the farm with a threshing machine, and was sitting in the kitchen drinking tea when he saw the accordion under the table. He asked who played and proceeded to knock out a few tunes. Joe had never heard this style of playing before and Martin showed him some of the basic rudiments of his accordion technique. Martin Grace was involved with the renowned Ballinakill Céilí Band with Aggie Whyte in the forties, and he played with that band for many years.


Joe Burke and his first B/C, Gort Feis 1955.

It seems that Joe also got his first B/C around the age of 15 (c.1954), progressing on it at such an amazing rate that he won the Senior All Ireland button accordion competitions both at the 1959 Fleadh Cheoil in Thurles, and 1960 in Boyle, before withdrawing from competition. He acknowledges being inspired by the B/C playing of both Paddy O'Brien ("Those 78's had a huge impact on me, especially The Spike Island Lassies/Dowd's Favourite, it was a revelation") and Kevin Keegan (from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway), and the D/D# player Joe Cooley (from Peterswell, Co. Galway), "because they were the first accordionists I ever heard play like fiddlers", but the biggest inspiration for subsequent generations has been himself...


Paddy O'Brien and Joe Cooley.

bill_mchale, on Apr 16 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

On the flip side players like Jackie Daley are definitely responsible for making the C#/D popular again.

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That is a complex issue, as I said recently :

Stephen Chambers, on Apr 15 2005, 08:32 PM, said:

Ironically, the C#/D style of playing is the older one, but accordions in that tuning seem not to have become available until the mid 1950's, so that prior to that it was played on instruments in D/D#, C/C# or B/C and the fiddlers had to tune up, or down, to suit (indeed, I know of situations where they still have to !).

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The old style never went away, but "concert pitch"* instruments in C#/D were actually quite rare, so its players were usually playing in the "wrong" key. This no doubt helped to discredit the old style, especially with the rise of the new "concert pitch" B/C, but certainly Jackie Daly has been a major influence in promoting C#/D and getting younger players to take up the old style. There are now more C#/D accordions in circulation than ever before, though the B/C is still very much the dominant system in Ireland.


Mid-1950's Paolo Soprani C#/D, one of the first in that tuning.


* In Irish traditional music, "concert pitch" = playing in D.

Edited to add paragraph about Martin Grace.

This post has been edited by Stephen Chambers: 04 September 2005 - 09:27 PM

[Stephen Chambers]

Stephen Chambers, on Apr 22 2005, 05:38 PM, said:

However ... many of those 1950's "young bucks" of the Irish accordion seem to have also been influenced by the recordings of Jimmy Shand around the same time, ... some even took up ... the B/C/C# "Shand Morino", though it would be very rare to see a 3-row in Irish circles today.

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And so (of course ) I was visited tonight by my old friend Brendan Mulhaire, the Galway accordionist and tuner, who tells me that he still performs on a Shand Morino and absolutely swears by it. But he does agree that they are now rare in Ireland.

Stephen Chambers, on Apr 22 2005, 05:38 PM, said:

The old style never went away, but "concert pitch" instruments* in C#/D were actually quite rare, so its players were usually playing in the "wrong" key. This no doubt helped to discredit the old style, especially with the rise of the new "concert pitch" B/C ...

* In Irish terms, "concert pitch" = playing in D.

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I cannot emphasise enough the perceived "Irish pitch problem", and how the "modern" B/C style offered a real solution to it. In the early 1950's there were still big problems playing with accordions, and many key systems being tried. Reg Hall has told me of seeing an accordion, in the window of a South London shop at the time, with a sign reading (something like) "At last, the solution to the Irish key problem : E/E#", and quite a few players, including Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh's father, Pádraig, tried G/C at one stage. And then again, there are still people who play the B/C "on the press", that is to say in the keys of B and C !

Having been supplying Irish musicians with instruments for the past 30-odd years, and running a music shop in Dublin for half that time, I have been amazed by some of the accordion players I have encountered who still haven't solved their personal "pitch problem", not even knowing what key their accordion is in sometimes, or why they can't play with anybody else. On occasion I have had to sit them down and ask them to play for me, so that I can try to work out what system they should best be playing !

As some help in understanding the possibilities of the different systems, here is a chart showing firstly the "press" (or "home") key of a straight row, followed by its first and second "draw" keys :

D - A - G
Eb - Bb - G#
E - B - A
F - C - Bb
F# - C# - B
G - D - C
G# - Eb - C#
A - E - D
Bb - F - Eb
B - F# - E
C - G - F
C# - G# - F#

And similarly, a chart of playing across the rows on different systems, showing some of the keys available :

B/C - D - G - A
C/C# - Eb - G# - Bb
C#/D - E - A - B
D/D# - F - Bb - C
D#/E - F# - B - C#
E/E# - G - C - D
F/F# - G# - C# - Eb
F#/G - A - D - E
G/G# - Bb - Eb - F
G#/A - B - E - F#
A/A# - C - F - G
A#/B - C# - F# - G#

So some of these systems start to make more sense :

For example G/C could thus provide D "on the draw", as well as G on both press and draw, and G/G# could have been very useful for some players who might want both the fiddle keys of G and D (outside row), as well as the flat (Saxophone) keys of Ab, Bb, Eb and F sometimes needed in the 1920's/'30's, though it was more usually played "inside row out" a semitone sharp in Ab and Eb !

Finally, the concept of a C/C# as an Eb box for a B/C player, or a D/D# as the same for C#/D is quite a modern one. I hope that it may now be evident that they were never intended for that purpose.

[Silvio 64]

I play C#D and I would like to try another system with same fingering but lower tone.

What is usual lower tone that is playable in session?

[Theo]

The commonest way to get a lower tone would be to have a C#/D instrument with an additional set of reeds an octave lower.

[ZiziAllaire]

I think Silvio means "key" when he says tone. (He's asked the question on several different forums over the past couple of days. Obviously not happy with the answers he's getting )

Silvio, if you want to play your differently tuned box in a session (you didn't mention this elsewhere), I would suggest getting a B/C, for two reasons:

1) You may come across "C" sessions, particularly where there is a piper with a set of pipes pitched in C. You can then play your B/C using your C#/D fingering and you'll be in tune with everyone else. Well, actually, probably not with the piper...

But how many C sessions are there in your neck of the woods? Probably not many...

2) You can use your B/C in a standard session to make playing in certain keys much easier. For example D minor tunes involve a bit of hand twisting and awkward shifts on a C#/D, but on a B/C you could play them in "Em" fingering - easy as pie. Same goes for tunes in C or F - if anybody plays them in your neck of the woods.

On the other hand this rather defeats the idea of having a "chromatic" box - you end up carrying two. That's for D/G players and other, um, unfortunates

The other possibility would be D/D# - you'll find, or you used to find anyway, some sessions in Eb in Ireland. But most of these are designed to keep strangers out, so this is not a great avenue.

Realistically, I'd suggest you retune your box to a lower key and use it for playing solo and at home, and just enjoy the mellow tone.

Steve