Well said, boxplayer. I am a bit of an accordion lone wolf as I'll try and explain.
In the small village in North Lanarkshire where I was brought up just about every other household had a PA accordion in the 50s/60s. You'll be aware the main reason for that was the preponderance of sectarian marching accordion bands in the area. The vast majority of us were descended from Irish coalminers of both mainstream religions who had come to the area about the time of the Famine in 1847, although some were later arrivals. You may already be aware that the Protestants (including my father's family) who came back were originally of Scottish descent, but fled to Ireland during the "Killing Times" in the late 17th century. The majority, however, were native Irish Roman Catholics, like my mother's lot. Consequently, I am about 85% Irish, although have never really listened to music of any description from the Emerald Isle.
In my youth the young hopefuls who began learning accordion hammered out the various sectarian orientated tunes in accordance (no pun intended) with their religious beliefs. Scottish Country Dance music was there as a sort of "neutral" style, which was played at functions attended by all religions. However, it had to be played "by the book" to the hypercritical audience, or the player was damned as incompetent. A very few individuals undertook playing "Continental" stuff, and it was those tunes that tended to inspire me. Being the product of a "mixed marriage" I hated having to commit myself to the orange or the green. Had I been "pedigree" I may well have started playing accordion at a younger age. The local village hero accordionist was Duncan McLean, a grocer, who went on holiday to Germany and came back with a big Hohner CBA. He impressed everybody who, in the land of the PA, thought playing a CBA was "really clever".
Had my upbringing been in another area of Scotland then things might have been different, but when I moved away from the area I resolved to leave all the religious stuff behind. Then when I took a notion to start playing years later I hankered after the old continental tunes my grandfather loved. I eventually chose French musette, which came about as a result of the fact that the late Jimmy Clinkscale held an albeit limited stock of suitable instruments at his shop in Melrose. I got almost no encouragement from the staff there, who could not understand why I didn't want to play Scottish on a PA. As is my want, I flew in the face of their advice and went my own way.
Years later I found myself still battling to play an instrument that was almost unknown in Scotland with its 3 voice, 4 row, mushroom bass button configuration, and the "wee French" treble buttons. As I got more daring and played in front of family and friends they wrote me off as some kind of nutcase who didn't know much about accordion at all. "It's alright, but we're no really intae that stuff!" was the usual comment. Through time I realised that I was only playing for my own enjoyment, and various life events eventually caused me to stop playing. Recently I took an interest in Italian players, but regardless of my choice of music I could only self teach to reach an amateur standard. Most of the little knowledge I have has been obtained from articles written in French accordion magazines and press articles. I have little or no experience of hearing the French accordion being played in France, or anywhere else, and things like You Tube are a godsend. I was able to find a lot of missing jigsaw puzzle pieces by watching the videos.
Hope the above novelette will put you in the picture as to why I made the choices I did.
Keep posting the tunes. They are very good listening!
P.S. I couldn't find a clip of Emile Vacher playing the tune Plaisance Fox. The player is Emile Prud'homme, who seems to have made most of his recordings in the years between about 1930 and 1950.
