SMPTE Meets Squeeze Box At Petosa
The Petosa family of Seattle combines old-world manufacuring with cutting-edge electronic MI retailing.

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Vol 153 No 10

Can squeeze boxes coexist with SMPTE? Is Lawrence Welk compatible with Sir Mix-A-Lot? For one Seattle company, the surprising answer is "yes."

The Petosa family has managed to combine two seemingly incompatible pursuits: 1990s' retailing of cutting-edge digital music products and a three-generation love affair with the accordion. Sounds bizarre, but it works. The tale begins with Carl Petosa, founder of the company, who began a love affair with the accordion as a child in Italy. After immigrating to the United States, he served an apprenticeship with the Guerrini Accordion Co. in San Francisco. This led to the establishment of his own basement workshop in Seattle in 1922. Carl's son, Joe, was involved with accordions virtually from birth, first as a gifted player and then as a builder himself. Following World War II, the Petosas established an accordion manufacturing business in Castelfidardo, Italy, where the Petosa-brand accordion models were manufactured to their specifications and shipped to Seattle for final adjustments and tuning.

To this day, all handmade Petosa instruments are made in Castelfidardo with the exception of a few AM-1100's which continue to be crafted in Seattle. In 1955, the Petosa Accordion Co. moved from a small shop to 313 NE 45th Street in Seattle the site of today's 5,000-square-foot operation. Father and son worked together until Carl's death in 1959. The Petosa business may well have stayed strictly accordion - retail, wholesale, import and repair - had it not been for the entry of the third generation of the family. As Joe's three sons joined the company in the early '70s, the popularity of the accordion had waned considerably, while the flourishing of rock 'n' roll was hard to ignore.

Carl Petosa recounts the evolution from Petosa Accordions to Petosa Music: "As my brothers and I got involved, we began to bring in guitars, amplifiers, effects and that sort of product," he recalls. "But over time, our emphasis shifted to keyboards, which was kind of a comfortable area for us given our background with accordions. In fact, we became one of the top Fender Rhodes dealers, and worked on pianos for such artists as Ray Charles and Oscar Peterson. At the same time, we were active with the other popular keyboards of the day, like Clavinet and Arp. We later became the first dealer in Washington to stock E-mu products, beginning with the Emulator in 1979. At one point, we were Emu's top dealer worldwide among one-store businesses."

The early orientation toward keyboards, synthesizers and related gear in the '70s has evolved into the store's current position as a specialist in digital music, recording equipment, music software, computers and other high tech products. It's proved the right place to be, according to Carl. "We still sell guitars and amps, but everyone does that," he comments, "and we realized we can't be everything to everyone. Also, despite what you've heard about the Seattle music scene, the bars, lounges and clubs here are really dead right now in terms of live music. So, we've created our own niche by really getting into digital and reaching the people from Microsoft and Boeing and other professional backgrounds who are developing home studios. In addition, we're authorized to do warranty repair for most of the lines we carry." Just as Petosa Accordions markets on a national basis, Petosa Music also has a far-flung clientele. "We do close to 40 percent of our sales out-of-state," he says. Included among long-distance sales is a recent 16-track digital mobile studio purchased from Petosa by country superstar Clint Black.

It's quite a contrast to walk from one department of the Seattle store to another. Your trip takes you from the Petosa Accordion Museum (with over 100 vintage accordions, including some l9th century models), to a roomful of brand-new digital workstation products, and on to the accordion workshop of Joe Petosa and master accordion builder Giuliano Bugari. Then again, sometimes the contrast between Petosa Accordion and Petosa Music isn't as great as it appears. One of the company's most popular accordion models these days is bellows-sensitive and velocity-sensitive Petosa MIDI Accordion. As Carl Petosa points out, "Just plug it into an E-Max or a Proteus and away you go."

Prominently displayed on the wall at Petosa Music is a signed cartoon by Gary Larsen of "The Far Side" comic-strip fame. It shows a group of people entering the kingdom of Heaven receiving their harps. Those consigned to Hell are given accordions. That about sums up the image problem the accordion has endured in recent years. Comedian Robert Klein suggested the instrument might be fine in a prison or on a pirate ship, but added "there's no place for it in civilized society."

Even an organization of accordion aficionados poke fun at their instrument of choice: the group is called CAPA: Closet Accordion Players of America. This sardonic attitude toward the accordion is beginning to change in the 1990s, as the accordion is finding acceptance with the bands of such high-profile artists as Bruce Hornsby, Billy Joel, John Cougar and even Keith Emerson. "The strange thing is, people still make fun of the accordion, but it's happening at the same time, and in all different directions," points out Petosa Music's Carl Petosa. "You see it on MTV, zydeco bands feature the accordion prominently, and it's used for background music in television commercials quite a bit. A Seattle band, Ranch Romance, which tours with k.d. lang, has an accordion player," he notes. "I went to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and there were accordions everywhere you turned. And, of course, in Europe it never lost any of its popularity". Petosa feels the long hiatus in the accordion's stateside popularity has to do with what he terms "the Lawrence Welk thing." He explains, "It's no knock against Lawrence Welk, but it took a lot of years to get over that image and young players of the last few decades wanted nothing to do with accordions. Kids coming up today don't know anything about all that music history, and they are again embracing it as an instrument for popular music."

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