Bridgeport, Usa, 1939

[Daniel Hersh]

As we were ready to leave, we noticed an instrument on the piano, and enquired about it. It was a [

concertina?

]. She took it down. "My husband plays it -- he can play the piano, too. He learnt by himself. I don't know how to play it." She showed us to the door.

Full text here. If you look at the image of the original page here the word is clearly "concertina". Perhaps the person who did the digitization couldn't believe that could be right...

 

Daniel

[Ken_Coles]

My browser won't open the page you linked...are there any pictures? I ask because I once got mixed up in a long correspondence with a woman I met at a music camp. She said her mother had played concertina as a child in maritime Canada in that same era (I imagine), and this lady wanted to get her one. I established that it played different notes on push and pull and explained to her the difficult and expensive market for decent anglos (most of our good entry options had not appeared yet). A year later I saw her at another event. After greeting me, she heads right for my one-row Hohner BA in G and says, "This is it, this is what my mother played." The joke was on me, all the research I had done for this fetching young lady!

 

I don't know if the same varied usage of the word concertina was current in Quebec; I have seen hints of it in Louisiana (the old debate about what "concertina" did Leadbelly play - looks more like a BA in a dim photo I saw).

 

Interesting in any case.

 

Ken

[Daniel Hersh]

No, no pics of the instrument, just one of the typed transcript. The first link turned out to be dynamic and temporary, so it doesn't work anymore. This one may be better:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?amme...(wpa110020206)).

 

Your point is a good one, and didn't occur to me.

 

Daniel

 

My browser won't open the page you linked...are there any pictures? I ask because I once got mixed up in a long correspondence with a woman I met at a music camp. She said her mother had played concertina as a child in maritime Canada in that same era (I imagine), and this lady wanted to get her one. I established that it played different notes on push and pull and explained to her the difficult and expensive market for decent anglos (most of our good entry options had not appeared yet). A year later I saw her at another event. After greeting me, she heads right for my one-row Hohner BA in G and says, "This is it, this is what my mother played." The joke was on me, all the research I had done for this fetching young lady!

 

I don't know if the same varied usage of the word concertina was current in Quebec; I have seen hints of it in Louisiana (the old debate about what "concertina" did Leadbelly play - looks more like a BA in a dim photo I saw).

 

Interesting in any case.

 

Ken

[Stephen Chambers]

Your point is a good one, and didn't occur to me.

Daniel,

 

It occurred to me too, the ten-key melodeon being a more typical French-Canadian instrument, and certainly that is what Leadbelly's "concertina" was...

[Daniel Hersh]

Those are indeed reasons for skepticism about whether this was actually a concertina. The fact that the player was self-taught and living in the US might make a concertina more likely than if he had lived in Quebec and had learned from relatives or neighbors...but I guess we'll never know for sure.

 

Your point is a good one, and didn't occur to me.

Daniel,

 

It occurred to me too, the ten-key melodeon being a more typical French-Canadian instrument, and certainly that is what Leadbelly's "concertina" was...

Edited April 13, 2008 by Daniel Hersh