Accordion Freedom Forum

Sylvia Marie Videos on YouTube

I was born on June 8, 1938 at home in the country outside the small town of Kendallville, Indiana. Dad was a rural milk hauler and mom, of course in those times, stayed at home with me and my older brother, Walter. As near as anyone can figure, except for my Uncle Benny who knew how to play two tunes on his "fiddle" and Dad's mother, Grandma Susan, who knew how to play one song on a concertina, I come from a non-musical family. My brother's ear is so bad, he claims he can't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. So no one seems to know where the musical talent came from.

Mom claims that I started singing at 9 months old to "Oh Johnny" on the radio which was the hit tune of the day done by Wee Bonnie Baker which I don't remember, but I have a vivid memory of wanting very much to play music very early on, I didn't care what instrument ... I just wanted to play something. I even turned empty feed buckets upside down (we kept chickens and a calf) and drummed on them with whatever I could find that looked like a drumstick. When I was three, Mom talked my grandfather out of his parlor piano and Dad somehow managed to get the old behemoth home. I started playing by ear right away. I started lessons with a friend of my mother's who agreed to teach me as soon as I learned the alphabet. Piano lessons started right after my fourth birthday. They cost 50 cents per lesson.

I loved piano and made very rapid progress, but Dad wanted me to play accordion. He told me later that he had made up his mind before I was born that he was going to have an accordion player in the family and-he wanted it to be a daughter. So when I was barely five, he found an accordion teacher who was on his milk route and in spite of loud protests from my mother, I gave up piano and took up accordion. After I got over my initial fear of the "big black loud monster" the new teacher demonstrated during that first lesson, I made myself fight at home with it and it felt very natural to play. It was almost as if I was born with it on.

At six, I started playing for local gatherings, and continued, progressing beyond the local churches and the Women's Club to formal little shows for whatever they wanted to give me. Sometimes they even gave me money instead of bubble bath and dolls! The Moose. Eagles, Oddfellows and Elks Lodges in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan sponsored talent shows weekly back then, and the same kids ended up competing week after week in town after town. Of course, I always showed up too. In addition, first prize money was always pretty good! I kept winning first prize in all of them, and I was about nine when the other kids and their parents had a meeting with the judging officials at one of the shows and said that if I competed, they were going home ... there wouldn't be any show. Well, the officials told my folks that they would pay me first prize money for playing, but I couldn't compete. That night we agreed that it was time to turn professional since this was my first real paying job. After that I charged to perform and was busy every weekend and some week nights too. As time went on I made appearances on Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, a year and a half (two tours) with the Horace Heidt Show, Grand Old Oprey show at Buck Lake Ranch, Angola, Indiana and the Lawrence Welk Show for a summer.

In the meantime, I had progressed through two more teachers and my Dad found an excellent "teacher's teacher" who agreed to work with me only if I could learn a really song that was above my then current level of training, within 4 weeks, to his satisfaction. To his suprise, I made it and Jim Dumato became my last "formal" teacher as a kid. He was a wonderful teacher and I miss him. As an aside ... it took the poor man -1/2 years of teaching me many difficult selections including Flight of the Bumble Bee with Bumble Boogie and Carnival of Venice with Variations, to discover I couldn't read a note of music He always played it for me first, my ear would Dick up most of it, and he'd correct what I didn't hear correctly each week when I brought the song back for lesson. Needless to say, Jim made- sure I could read as well as hear the music in short order!

Through the years, I've studied with, picked the brains of and stolen from, a number of fine performers and teachers with different specialties in my attempt to grow as a musician and performer. All of you will never know how grateful I am for your help. Thanks!

In addition to personal appearances, I did live local radio for our Kendallville station with an organist and as a guest on his radio program broadcast from radio station WOWO in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He and I had a program on our local TV station and when he left after a couple of months, I continued on with it for a year. I was 16 at the time. We also did a "Music and Magic" show but I always loaded the tricks wrong and it became a comedy act since no one could take us seriously.

As an adult, for about 5 years, I didn't play at all. I joined United Air Lines as a stewardess, then married and had a son, Scott. Needing to work, I found that office jobs took me away from Scott during the day when he most needed me, so I pulled the accordion out of the closet and started to practice again hard two hours every night after work so I would be able to work in a club when his dad was home and be home with Scott during the day.

As soon as Scott was in school, I opened a music studio in my home and continued to work clubs at night. We lived in the San Francisco Bay area at the time, but then moved to the Los Angeles/Orange County area for seven years. There I entertained in San Juan Capistrano at the El Adobe restaurant for three years, strolling, and I had a small group that played for dancing during the early part of the evening for 6 months or so. I also worked at Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel as well as playing casuals with members of the main Disneyland Band and the Disneyland's entertainment director during those seven years in addition to other club jobs.

We moved back to the San Francisco East Bay Area and I continued to play in clubs and do casuals, and, of course, teach, filling in between gigs with temporary office jobs. Then in 1984, my husband Bob and I whom I had married in 1974, moved north to the Redding, California area to be where it was more rural and peaceful. Here in Redding, I worked at Nello's Place, a fine Italian dinner house, for two years, and DeMercurio's Restaurant, serving elegant Continental cuisine, for 1-1/2 years. I also worked in the Mt. Shasta Mall, selling organs and pianos for the Lowry Factory store, demonstrating and teaching their classes.

Until 1990, 1 worked full time as a professional musician, teacher and salesman. Then I found a "legitimate" (that's one that's steady with a predictable paycheck) -job with our local phone company calling customers, working with their talking phone book system called Tele-Tips, programming, writing and voicing ads for our business customers. This job has grown by leaps and bounds and has demanded nearly all my time. However, I take an accordion on business trips occasionally and entertain everyone at our meetings, much to their amazement and my amusement. I still play casuals and I teach one student who has been coming to me for 10 years ... she started with me at age five.

I'm now looking forward to making some time to record a few more albums. I've decided that no matter what I decide to do in the future, it will have to include the accordion somewhere. I won't retire. I'll just "retread".