July 2009 Archives

The Duluth Accordionaires – Music To Eat Pizza By (1967)

  • Posted on July 26, 2009 at 10:34 am
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I recently took my wife (or as I like to call her, “Little Patty Spendalot”) to a nearby town that was having an “all village” garage sale.  We spend several hours sifting through the usual assortment of over-priced items that people seem to think are priceless heirlooms, and decided to call it a day.  On the way home we stopped by a local business that seems to change weekly.  One week it’s a giant garage sale, the next it’s a fireworks stand.  This time it was mostly fireworks but I couldn’t help but notice today’s selection sitting behind the counter.  The fine gent running the shop gave me a reasonable price and I handed over the cash without bothering to haggle.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story of Jeno’s pizza, the company was once one of the largest employers in the city of Duluth, Minnesota.  The owner, Luigino (Jeno) F. Paulucci, founded the company in 1967.   Mr. Paulucci relocated his company in 1981 to a town in Ohio.  At the time, Duluth already had an unemployment rate hovering around 20% so this didn’t help Paulucci’s popularity.  The company was sold to Pillsbury in 1986 and despite the fact that Paulucci later returned to Duluth to form Luigino’s, he’s still vilified by many people in these parts for bailing out of Duluth during the severe recession of the early 1980′s.

This album comes from a happier time in the company’s history.  I’m not sure how many of these were given away but while researching the background of the Duluth Accordionaires, I noticed that this album is fairly popular with other album blog sites.  The pizza on the cover looks like very cheap frozen pizza which is exactly what Jeno’s was. (Author’s opinion, please don’t sue me).

I didn’t want to spend a tremendous amount of time researching the history of the Duluth Accordionaires so here’s the quick version.  Founded in 1949 by John Copiskey, the group was comprised mainly of Copikey’s 14 to 19-year-old accordion students.  In 1950, the ensemble began competing regularly in regional and national music contests.  After winning the American Accordion Association’s First Place Trophy for Virtuoso Ensemble Competition, the group was invited to tour Italy and eventually appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1967.  There isn’t much info on what happened to the group after this 1967 recording so if anyone would like to comment with any additional info, I’d be happy to post it.

(Updated 5/6/10) The heartless weasels at YouTube continue to suck the fun out of life by removing any remotely interesting videos leaving behind only those make by teenage boys on skateboards. I originally had a link to a video of the Duluth Accordionaires 1967 Tonight Show appearance but apparently we can’t be sharing that kind of wholesome fun.

Ok….. now the critical comments and snide remarks.  When you see an album that looks this cheesey (pizza pun intended), you really don’t expect it to be very good and I was ready for the worst.   The truth is, the Duluth Accordionaires are a pretty tight group of musicians.  The selections are arranged flawlessly and these folks can play.  At no point in the album could I tell that there were 23 accordions.  Now I’m not sure why I expected this to sound like my 1976 8th grade band album (truly awful, please don’t ask me to post it) but I didn’t think that it was possible for this many accordions to all be on the same page.  Make fun of the accordion all you want but before you do, listen to Flaco Jimenez and tell me that he isn’t an incredible musician.

(On a side note, I once saw Leo Kottke who told a story about meeting a friend of his for lunch.  Leo’s friend was nervous because his prized accordion was in the back seat of the car.  Leo convinced his friend not to worry and they went off for lunch.  Upon returning to his friend’s car, sure enough, the rear window of the car had been broken and someone had left two more accordions in the back seat.)

One last point.  I’ve seen other sites that completely ripped this album.  My question to them would be, what’s wrong with being open to different types of music?  I’m not a huge fan of classical music but I can still sit down and listen to a classical CD and appreciate the complexity of the music and the talent of the musicians.  I’m not going to tell you that classical music sucks just because I don’t happen to enjoy it.  But that’s the great thing about living in the United States, we all have the freedom to express our opinions just as I’m doing now.

So fire up the oven, toss in a Jeno’s pizza (apparently you can still buy them), and chow down to the sounds of the Duluth Accordionaires.  There’s no need to worry about heartburn here……unless of course, you actually eat the pizza.

Tracks:

Side One

Side Two

(Updated 12/17/09) A huge thanks to AccordianGirl who made my day with this really cool response:

You wondered what happened to the Accordionaires after 1967….well, a LOT happened.  John Copiskey formed a total of 7 bands – starting with the Beginner band, they increased in skill and difficulty until finally reaching the top – The Duluth Accordionaires.  John and his bands produced 2 public concerts every year.  Every other year, there was a big “Spectacular Concert” held at the Duluth Arena, with guest performer, Myron Floren.  Johnny’s bands also competed in State and National competitions every year, quickly becoming the groups that no one wanted to compete against, for they knew that Johnny’s bands were sure to beat them.  John expected each student to memorize and be in command of their music for competitions, which was uncommon among the bands from other studios.  The Accordionaires went on good-will tours overseas every two years.  They were the first group to ever play in the schools of Russia in 1974.  In ’78, they did the same thing in Yugoslavia.  In 1982 they traveled to Romania and again played in numerous schools.  Johnny’s goal was to play for as many school children as possible in order to show them what we had in common before age taught them to see only our differences.  John Copiskey had a lasting and sometimes life changing impact on hundreds of kids – those who were his students and those who heard his bands.  We lost John to cancer in 1987 and no one could fill his shoes, so The Duluth Accordionaires is now alive in the memories of all who passed through John’s life.  Thank you so much for featuring one of the group’s albums.  They made several, but Music to Eat Pizza By was the first.

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