​A-ONE AND A-TWO

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.   Variously attributed.
 
I dedicate these words to the estimable Rabbi Reuven Taff (aka Bobby) whom I subjected to continual disdain for his virtuosity on the squeezebox.  I meant no harm, except maybe to the accordion. (Also, I exempt Randy Stein who limits himself to the English Concertina, which I find more tolerable.)
 
Lots of people have said some version of this quotation. Mark Twain allegedly said it about the banjo. Oscar Wilde may have said it about the cornet. The piano, saxophone, and bagpipes have also been so derided. But Steve Martin, Ralph Kramden, and others have at least momentarily redeemed previously reviled instruments. Yet, as Robert Klein once said, the only excuse for an accordion is in a prisoner of war camp.
 
Please allow me a very important distinction here. Some very fine people play the accordion. In addition to Rabbi Taff, I know other rabbis, educators, childhood friends, Weird Al Yankovic, and Myron Floren to be people of stellar reputations, compassion, and delightful company. But for whatever reason, they were drawn to the accordion, on which every song ever played sounds like “Variations on Lady of Spain.”
 
The polka, a joyous cultural icon, relies on the accordion for its recognizable rhythm and bounce, which I find tolerable only when almost drowned out by the woodwinds and vocals that enhance it. Folk dancing at summer camp, a favorite of those who attend (actually, more usually the hard-core staff), might not exist if it weren’t for the portable music box that was necessary before the availability of battery-powered playback devices.
 
Why is the accordion the source of such disdain? Perhaps it is the way it makes its sounds – air squeezed through a sort of bellows, like its thoroughly intolerable cousin, the bagpipes (which makes every song sound like “Variations on Loch Lomond”).  Maybe it is because the person straps one of these beauties on their chest suddenly looks like the guy you call the bomb squad about. Maybe because when the air is let out it goes flaccid with a discordant sigh of disappointment (make of that what you will).  I don’t know.
 
Victor Borge similarly dismissed the viola, claiming its only advantage is that its size made it burn longer than a violin. But you can chalk up viola jokes to snooty violinists who nonetheless rely on the viola to enhance their own performances – maybe a little jealousy there. No pianist, however, envies the accordion, except perhaps for its portability. Still, they mostly would rather just do without.
 
So this pithy observation, rooted in the decidedly antiquated notion of what it means to be a gentleman, will reinforce the bias of those who agree with it (like me) and insult those who do not, especially if they play what Walter Kuerth called “the happiest instrument in the world.” There will almost certainly be some reader who will take such umbrage that I will receive a nastygram far more vituperative than when I have blasphemed or deconstructed a cultural icon.  Maybe it will outdo even some of the response I got years ago when quoting John F. Kennedy’s claim about our nation’s capital ("Somebody once said that Washington was a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency,").
 
But, in the end, I myself will continue to admire the consideration of the person who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t.