jozz post_id=61005 time=1531215665 user_id=2600 said:
lovely
totally didnt appreciate this guy when I grew up with him with the dutch TV show for children Ome Willem, where he was portraited as this grumpy old musician
Hi jozz,
He never got that old. I seem to remember reading that he died when he was 68.
We used to have an ancient radio, about the size of a modern commercial sized microwave, and my grandfather knew how to get Radio Lyon, Hilversum, Luxembourg, and various other French, Belgian, and Dutch radio stations on it. Thats what drew me to the accordion, as we would regularly listen in to any accordion focused radio stations he could manage to tune into. They were transmitted on what were known as long wave frequencies, and quite often wed lose the transmission after a few minutes, but it was great fun. That was in the 50s and early 60s.
The name Harry Mooten sort of stuck in my mind, as an ace Dutch player. Johnny Meijer was obviously another, as well as Wim Rijkhoff and Jaap Valkhoff. John Woodhouse (that was the English stage name he used) was another. He played an early electronic type of accordion, that we werent too keen on, but he was a great player. I had forgotten most of the Dutch players names until I put a post on the forum about Dutch accordions a few years ago, and a member refreshed my memory.
I also got to know the names of a lot of the older French and Belgian musette players at that time, but thats another story.
Those were the days when the popularity of the accordion was maybe at its peak, and my only regret is I left it so long before I took an interest in playing. By the time I finally got going, about 1983, the number of accordion shops in Scotland had declined dramatically, and I almost changed my mind. Im glad I didnt.
