Pietro Deiro

Pietro Deiro (1888 – 1950) was one of the most influential accordionists of the first half of the 20th century.

Born on August 28, 1888 in Salto Canavese, Italy, the younger brother of Guido Deiro, he emigrated to the United States as a steerage passenger on the S/S La Savoie in 1907 and went to live with his Uncle Frederico and work in the coal mines of Cle Elum, Washington.

Pietro began playing Diatonic button accordion professionally in a tavern in Seattle in 1908. Within a few short months, his brother Guido (already an accomplished piano-accordionist in Europe) arrived in Seattle, and taught his brother how to play the piano accordion. Both brothers became minor celebrities on the vaudeville circuit; Guido in 1910 and Pietro at least by 1912.

Pietro recorded dozens of records for the Victor Talking Machine Company. After the demise of vaudeville during the Great Depression, he opened a successful accordion studio in Greenwich Village, New York City and established an accordion music publishing company: Accordion Music Publishing Company (AMPCO), later simply known as Pietro Deiro Publications.

He was the first president of the American Accordionists Association (1938) and promoted himself as "The Daddy of the Accordion," much to his brother Guido's chagrin. Pietro died in 1954.

There has been a recent resurge of interest in the music of Pietro Deiro. In 1991 and 1992, composer/accordionist William Schimmel and his wife, dancer/choreographer/director Micki Goodman presented one of their major artistic collaborations: Opera Fisarmonica, a realization of the life and works of Pietro Deiro in extended opera form.

It is a four-act opera devised and performed by Schimmel and Goodman, who did all of the singing, playing, movement, sets and lighting. It utilized the works of Pietro Deiro in a highly dramatized manner along with Schimmel's own music and continuity combined with Goodman's highly physicalized direction of movement. It was performed at the Sofian Theatre in New York and received praise and endorsement from Pietro Deiro Jr. (who attended the opening night) as well as a highly favorable review in the New York Times by Bernard Holland, which opened with the heading: "Accordionists' Patron Saint."

...
Wikipedia