Accordion Players of the world...unite
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:35 amFound this in the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/ ... 617.column
Rick Kogan
DENNIS DEYOUNG AND OTHER FAMOUS ACCORDION PLAYERS
Published September 18, 2005
There were times when the accordion was in fashion and during one of them a 7-year-old boy named Dennis DeYoung began seven years of accordion lessons. He quit music altogether at 14. But a year or two later he was walking down the streets of his Roseland neighborhood on the South Side and heard the Panozzo brothers, Chuck on guitar and John on drums, playing music with another kid on accordion.
DeYoung soon replaced the accordion player and later switched to piano, and these three teenagers formed the nucleus of what would become the band Styx. With DeYoung as leader and principal songwriter-he penned such tunes as "Babe," "Lady" and "Come Sail Away"-the band went on to sell more than 30 million records.
Not many former accordion players did as well (John Lennon did a little better), but many famous people played the accordion, including politicos Richard Nixon and H. Ross Perot; actors James Stewart, Drew Carey and Charlie Chaplin; novelists Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy; baseball pitcher John Smoltz; and Mahatma Gandhi.
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/ ... 617.column
Rick Kogan
DENNIS DEYOUNG AND OTHER FAMOUS ACCORDION PLAYERS
Published September 18, 2005
There were times when the accordion was in fashion and during one of them a 7-year-old boy named Dennis DeYoung began seven years of accordion lessons. He quit music altogether at 14. But a year or two later he was walking down the streets of his Roseland neighborhood on the South Side and heard the Panozzo brothers, Chuck on guitar and John on drums, playing music with another kid on accordion.
DeYoung soon replaced the accordion player and later switched to piano, and these three teenagers formed the nucleus of what would become the band Styx. With DeYoung as leader and principal songwriter-he penned such tunes as "Babe," "Lady" and "Come Sail Away"-the band went on to sell more than 30 million records.
Not many former accordion players did as well (John Lennon did a little better), but many famous people played the accordion, including politicos Richard Nixon and H. Ross Perot; actors James Stewart, Drew Carey and Charlie Chaplin; novelists Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy; baseball pitcher John Smoltz; and Mahatma Gandhi.
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
