Guido Deiro - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Count Guido Pietro Deiro (September 1, 1886 - July 26, 1950) was a famous vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

star, international recording artist, composer and teacher. He was the first piano-accordionist to appear on big-time vaudeville, records, radio and the screen. Guido usually performed under the stage-name "Deiro". Guido and his younger brother Pietro Deiro

Pietro Deiro

Pietro Deiro was one of the most influential accordionists of the first half of the 20th century. Born in Salto Canavese, Italy, the younger brother of Guido Deiro, he emigrated to the United States in 1907 to live with his Uncle Frederico and work in the coal mines of Cle Elum, Washington.Pietro...

(known as "Pietro") were among the highest paid musicians on the vaudeville circuit, and they both did much to introduce and popularize the piano accordion

Piano accordion

A piano accordion is an accordion equipped with a right-hand keyboard similar to a piano or organ. Its acoustic mechanism is more similar to that of an organ than a piano, as they are both wind instruments, but the term "piano accordion"—coined by Guido Deiro in 1910—has remained the popular...

in the early 20th century.

Early life

Born Guido Pietro Deiro in the village of Salto Canavese, in the fraction of Deiro, near Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, Italy. He was born into a family of rural Italian nobility that were involved in raising dairy cattle, growing wine grapes, tending fruit orchards, and operating general stores to sell their produce. While a young boy, Guido entertained himself by playing the ocarina

Ocarina

The ocarina is an ancient flute-like wind instrument. Variations do exist, but a typical ocarina is an enclosed space with four to twelve finger holes and a mouthpiece that projects from the body...

, an ancient flute-like wind instrument usually made from ceramic or wood. His uncle Fred noticed Guido’s unusual musical ability on the ocarina, and decided to get him a more sophisticated instrument, a diatonic button accordion

Diatonic button accordion

A diatonic button accordion or melodeon is a type of button accordion where the melody-side keyboard is limited to the notes of diatonic scales in a small number of keys...

. Guido started to play the accordion when nine years old. His father allowed Guido to play this two-row accordion in the street outside his stores because Guido’s playing would draw a crowd and attract potential customers. Deiro became a student of the famous Italian accordionist-composer Giovanni Gagliardi.

Career

Guido left his home to avoid an arranged marriage, and defying his father's wishes that he manage the family businesses, he became a professional entertainer and took engagements in France and Germany playing the chromatic accordion. His success as a performer led the Ronco-Vercelli accordion company in Italy to ask him to demonstrate their new piano-accordions at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition was a world's fair held in Seattle in 1909, publicizing the development of the Pacific Northwest.It was originally planned for 1907, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, but the organizers found out about the Jamestown Exposition being held...

in 1908. This world's fair was held in Seattle

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

from June to October 1909. After the fair, he stayed on in Seattle working as a musician in saloons. By this time, he had become a virtuoso at playing a piano accordion

Piano accordion

. In 1910 he was discovered by an agent for the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit. His opening debut was at the American Theatre in San Francisco (managed by Sid Grauman

Sid Grauman

Sidney Patrick Grauman was an American showman who created one of Southern California's most recognizable and visited landmarks, Grauman's Chinese Theater. He was the son of David Grauman who died in 1921 in Los Angeles, California and Rosa Goldsmith...

) on June 15, 1910. He became an immediate sensation, and began traveling the vaudeville circuit routinely back and forth across the United States and Canada (and other countries as well) as a headliner. During his travels, he met and became friends with another famous Italian accordionist: Pietro Frosini

Pietro Frosini

Pietro Frosini was one of the first famous "stars of the accordion." He was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1885 and began to play the chromatic button accordion at the age of six...

.

In addition to playing the popular hits of the day and light classical and operatic fare, Guido composed his own original compositions. In 1911, Guido Deiro wrote the hit song Kismet. Kismet

Kismet (1930 film)

Kismet was a 1930 costume drama photographed entirely in an early widescreen process using 65mm film that Warner Bros. called Vitascope. The film was based on Edward Knoblock's play Kismet, and was previously filmed as a silent film in 1920 which also starred Otis Skinner.-Production:Warner Bros....

became the theme song of a successful Broadway musical (1911) and was also featured in two Hollywood movies (1921, 1930). During his lifetime, he recorded more than 110 songs (primarily for Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

, and occasionally for Edison

Edison Records

Edison Records was one of the earliest record labels which pioneered recorded sound and was an important player in the early recording industry.- Early phonographs before commercial mass produced records :...

phonograph cylinders). The records were enormously popular, and, along with his vaudeville stardom, helped to propel Deiro to the status of a minor celebrity in American culture.

Throughout the teens and well into the 1920s, Guido Deiro was a dominant voice of accordion. As Guido Deiro showcased the piano accordion through his vaudeville performances across the United States, more and more people were introduced to the instrument, the popularity of the accordion increased. In 1928, Guido was featured in an early sound film, Vitaphone

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...

#2968, titled GUIDO DEIRO: The World's Foremost Piano-Accordionist. He appeared as an accordionist in several other motion pictures, such as the musical Shine on Harvest Moon and the Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...

comedy The Other Man.

Marriages

Guido was married four times. His second marriage, in 1914, was to a young vaudeville star and sex symbol, Mae West

Mae West

Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....

(later to become a film star). For unknown reasons (possibly disapproval from her family or because she was legally married to another man), she did not publicly announce her marriage to Guido. Throughout 1914 and several years thereafter, Mae and Guido traveled together and appeared all over the country on the same vaudeville stages. They officially divorced in 1920. His other marriages were to Julia Tatro (1913), Ruby Lang (1920-1927?), and Yvonne Teresa Le Baron de Forrest (1937–1941).

Final years

Deiro continued to play vaudeville shows until at least 1935 and performed on two world tours, although after 1929, he traveled less and focused his career on the west coast of the United States. During the 1930s, he opened a number of accordion studios and taught and sold accordions. He also gave musical coaching to a young virtuoso accordionist-entertainer from Fresno, California

Fresno, California

Fresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...

: Dick Contino

Dick Contino

Dick Contino is an American accordionist and singer.Contino studied accordion primarily with San Francisco-based Angelo Cognazzo, and occasionally with Los Angeles-based Guido Deiro. Early on he exhibited great virtuosity on the instrument...

. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he lost most of his studios. He became ill in 1947, and died of congestive heart failure in 1950.

Guido Deiro Revival

Although Guido's substantial musical contributions were forgotten in no small part due to his brother's unscrupulous promotional claims and the passage of time, beginning in 2001 there has been a revival of interest in the music of Guido Deiro, primarily due to the efforts of Guido Deiro's son, Count Guido Roberto Deiro, and his collaboration with American concert accordionist, historian and author Henry Doktorski

Henry Doktorski

Henry Doktorski III is one of America's premier concert accordionists. He has performed on accordion with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, violinists Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman during concerts and recording sessions with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under conductors Lorin Maazel, John...

. The two have worked together to (1) create a website dedicated to Guido Deiro which went online in 2001, (2) record the complete works of Guido Deiro: Vaudeville Accordion Classics, Bridge Records 9138 A/B (2003), (3) release The Complete Recorded Works of Guido Deiro, Vols. 1, 2, 3 and 4, Archeophone Records

Archeophone Records

Archeophone Records, LLC, based in Champaign, Illinois, specializes in preserving recordings of the acoustic era of the recording industry by remastering phonograph cylinders and gramophone records from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and releasing them on compact disc...

5012, 5014, 5018
and 5019) (2007-2010), and (4) edit and publish The Complete Works of Guido Deiro Printed Music Anthology, Mel Bay Publications

Mel Bay Publications

Mel Bay was a musician best known for his series of music education books. His Encyclopedia of Guitar Chords remains a bestseller.-Childhood and early life:...

(2008). (See external links below.)

In addition, Doktorski has written a biography of the two Deiro brothers: The Brothers Deiro and Their Accordions (The Classical Free-Reed, Inc., Oakdale, Pennsylvania: 2005). In 2001 Guido Deiro's son donated the Guido Deiro Archives to The Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

External links

Other sources

The Brothers Deiro and Their Accordions (Oakdale, Pennsylvania: The Classical Free-Reed, Inc., 2005) by Henry Doktorski
Henry Doktorski
Henry Doktorski III is one of America's premier concert accordionists. He has performed on accordion with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, violinists Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman during concerts and recording sessions with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under conductors Lorin Maazel, John...
The Golden Age of the Accordion (Schertz, Texas, Flynn Publications: 1992) by Ronald Flynn, Edwin Davison, Edward Chavez

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