E - / E - Both sides play very well with minimum of surface noise. You don't see Standards come up very often ... don't miss this one.
This from an Archeophone release of his collected works:
Though almost forgotten today, Italian-American accordionist Guido Deiro was a major vaudeville star in his own time. He played a piano accordion and even coined the term. His popularity is attested to by the large number of recordings he made in the 1910s; the Archeophone label's series of these recordings runs to four discs, of which this is the second. The genre proportions here are consistent with those of Deiro's repertoire in general: he played about 20 to 25 percent classical and operatic tunes, dividing the rest among an assortment of popular genres. Those included up-to-the-minute styles such as ragtime, tango, and contemporary popular songs, but he also played waltzes, marches, and sentimental tunes of an earlier day. There are a few universally known favorites like The Stars and Stripes Forever, but Deiro's repertoire also contains lots of odd items of great interest to song hounds. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (track 6) was based on a comic strip. The excitement of Deiro's playing comes through on these remarkably clean recordings, with the peak of virtuosity occurring perhaps in the Hungarian Rag (track 14), an arrangement of the themes from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 into ragtime form. The booklet sketch of Deiro is as interesting as the music, with a good deal of space given over to Deiro's relationship with the young Mae West, then a second-rank vaudevillian. To see the actress, Deiro traveled between cities in a modified Cadillac roadster supposedly capable of speeds of 120 mph. (West's own comment on the matter: "The sex thing was terrific with this guy. I wanted to do it morning, noon, and night, and that's all I wanted to do.") A delightful historical reissue shedding light on a sorely neglected figure.
STANDARD DISC RECORD A1003 GUIDRO DETRO Variety Polka/My Treasure Waltz
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