Because we haven’t been able to meet in person we have no meeting to write up again, for this reason we are continuing our series of writeups from the club from 22 years ago! This is the write up from the Fourth meeting of the club on the 11^th February 1998.

“They say that the definition of a Gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t, well if that is the case then there were no gentlemen at our February meeting, I was struggling to fit everyone in, there were so many of you wanting to play that three hours was not long enough, we must have some talent in the area that is all I can say. Our night opened with Jay and Jeff in their keyboard and accordion duet mode, I get the distinct feeling that they have played together before - they make it look so easy. Richard Eastam played a Fats Waller medley:- My Very Good Friend The Milkman / When Somebody Thinks You Are Wonderful / Aint Misbehaving, followed by Tom Bennett with the first version of American Patrol of the night. Malcolm Milner played next - Malcolm is the leader of Houghton Country Dance Band. This was followed by Geoff Warwick on his melodeon - I had no idea that you could get so much music out of a box with only eight buttons on the left hand, Geoff told me that he is normally used to playing in a group to a few hundred dancers, and found it was a new and daunting experience playing on his own to an audience seated only a few feet away and watching only him, if he was nervous then I certainly did not spot it. Basil Berry who lives at Lytham played a few tunes from earlier years such as Chattanooga Choo Choo, Basil bought his first accordion in 1940, it was a 120 bass Paola Soprani and it cost him only £15 - I have just bought some new straps for my accordion which cost me more than that! I have seen some accordions at car boot sales for that price but I was playing spot the note when I pumped the bellows - I think a note did come out of one of them but it was a H#. Next we went electronic with George Hicks playing the Maigret Theme, Beautiful Days and Star of Love on his MIDI accordion. Ian Carter played next followed by myself and Tom Bennett playing a version of Plaisir D’Amour written for two accordions, this was an arrangement by Steve Roxton - I played first accordion and the twiddly bits on the left hand side while Tom played second accordion and fancy bits on the right hand, we even finished at the same time! that was it - our confidence was such that we decided to do another one just to show that it was not a fluke. We played another of Steve’s arrangements, this time it was Now Is The Hour with the right hand consisting of all chords. We were closely followed by another duet, this time from Helen Berta and Betty playing Charness Waltz. I decided to have a go on my own and played the second version of American Patrol of the night and my own arrangement of Dueling Banjos; this involved an arrangement of Dueling Banjos tune from the film Deliverance (you know the one where two banjo and guitar players are competing against each other) with the two parts played on the left and right hand sides of the accordion. I hope this made a few of you think about the kind of tunes that you can play on the accordion, we can have a go at anything rather than sticking to ‘standard’ accordion pieces; the Beverly Hillbillies theme tune, sixties popular hits and the Wurzels hit ‘Combine Harvester’ are on my “have a go” list at the moment. Trudy showed us some more of her morris dancing tunes followed by Richard and Bill on the Accordion and Bones. They were right it was the first time that the accordion and bones had appeared at the club and they went down very well with everyone. The night ended with Jay and Jeff playing us up to just after 11pm.”

We had a request to see some early pictures of the club so we have included a few below, they are from the first meeting of the club.