58 20th century accordionists

Nathan Abshire was an American Cajun accordion player who, along with Iry LeJeune, was responsible for the renaissance of the accordion in Cajun music in the 1940s.

Victor Henry Anderson was an American priest and poet. He was a founding member of the Feri Tradition, a form of the modern Pagan new religious movement which was established in California during the 1960s. Much of his poetry was religious in nature, being devoted to Feri deities.

Fernest Arceneaux was a French speaking Creole Zydeco accordionist and singer from Louisiana.

Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin was a Creole accordionist who specialized in the Creole music called "la la music" or "la musique Creole" and was influential in what became zydeco music.

Amédé Ardoin was an American Louisiana Creole musician, known for his high singing voice and virtuosity on the Cajun accordion. He is credited by Louisiana music scholars with laying the groundwork for Creole music in the early 20th century, and wrote several songs now regarded as zydeco standards.

Blaž Arnič was a Slovenian symphonic composer.

Phil Baker was an American comedian and emcee on radio. Baker was also a vaudeville actor, composer, songwriter, accordionist and author.

Patrick Joseph "Sonny" Brogan was an Irish accordion player from the 1930s to the 1960s, and was one of Ireland's most popular traditional musicians. He was one of the earliest advocates of the two-row B/C button accordion in traditional music, and popularised it the 1950s and 60s. He originally played on a single-keyed Hohner melodeon, and later the two-row Paolo Soprani (pictured) which he used until he died. Sonny's Paolo Soprani was one of the rarest, the grey model, made in 1948, when the company still made them by hand. Offaly-born button box player Paddy O'Brien currently has Sonny's accordion.

Joseph Raymond "Ray" Butts was an American inventor and engineer best known for designing several devices that influenced the evolution of electrified music, in particular those used with the electric guitar. Most notably, Butts is the inventor of the EchoSonic, a guitar amplifier with a built-in tape echo, and the FilterTron, the first humbucker guitar pickup. He was active in other fields from studio equipment maintenance to sound engineering, and had intimate working relationships with people such as Sam Phillips at Sun Studios and Chet Atkins.

Wilson Anthony "Boozoo" Chavis was an American accordion player, singer, songwriter and bandleader. He was one of the pioneers of zydeco, the fusion of Cajun and blues music developed in southwest Louisiana.

Clifton Chenier, a Louisiana French-speaking native of Leonville, Louisiana, near Opelousas, was an eminent performer and recording artist of zydeco, which arose from Cajun and Creole music, with R&B, jazz, and blues influences. He played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983.

Larry Chesky, born Lawrence J. Ciszewski, was an American accordion player, Polka band leader, inductee in the International Polka Hall of Fame, and manager of the Rex Records label.

Ann-Kristin "Kikki" Danielsson is a Swedish country, dansband and pop singer. Sometimes, she also plays the accordion and she has also written some lyrics. She is also famous for yodeling in some songs. Danielsson gained her largest popularity in the Nordic region from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. She also gained popularity at the US country stage during the 1980s. In 1986, she had the "Kikki i Nashville" TV show.

Count Guido Pietro Deiro was a famous vaudeville star, international recording artist, composer and teacher. He was the first piano-accordionist to appear on big-time vaudeville, records, radio and the screen. he usually performed under the stage-name "Deiro". Guido and his younger brother Pietro Deiro were among the highest-paid musicians on the vaudeville circuit, and they both did much to introduce and popularize the piano accordion in the early 20th century.

Pietro Deiro was one of the most influential accordionists of the first half of the 20th century.

John Irvin Delafose was an American French-speaking Creole Zydeco accordionist from Louisiana.

"Big Eye" Louis Nelson Delisle was an early twentieth-century Dixieland jazz clarinetist in New Orleans, Louisiana. He also played double bass, banjo, and accordion.

Alton Jay Rubin, who performed as Rockin' Dopsie, was an American zydeco singer and accordion player who enjoyed popular success first in Europe and later in the United States.

Einar Fagstad was a Norwegian-Swedish accordionist, singer, actor and composer.

Joseph Falcon was a Cajun accordion player in southwest Louisiana, best known for the first recording of a Cajun song; "Allons à Lafayette" in 1928. He and his wife Cléoma Breaux left for New Orleans to record the first Cajun record and went on to perform across southern Louisiana and Texas.

Daniel Paul Federici was an American musician, best known as the organ, glockenspiel, and accordion player and a founding member for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. In 2014, Federici was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the E Street Band.

Myron Floren was an American musician best known as the accordionist on The Lawrence Welk Show between 1950 and 1980. Floren came to prominence primarily from his regular appearances on the weekly television series in which Lawrence Welk dubbed him as "the happy Norwegian", which was also attributed to Peter Friello.

Arvid Franzen (1899-1961) was a Swedish-born accordionist and bandleader, whose live performances and numerous recordings made him a household name in Scandinavian communities throughout the United States.

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 1905 he emigrated to San Francisco and was discovered by a talent scout for the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit.

Serge Gainsbourg was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor and director. Regarded as the most important figure in French pop whilst alive, he was renowned for often provocative and scandalous releases which caused uproar in France, dividing its public opinion, as well as his diverse artistic output, which ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock, funk, reggae, and electronica. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.

Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento, Sr. was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, musician and poet and one of the most influential figures of Brazilian popular music in the twentieth century. He has been credited for having presented the rich universe of Northeastern musical genres to all of Brazil, having created the musical genre baião and has been called a "revolutionary" by Antônio Carlos Jobim. According to Caetano Veloso, he was the first significant cultural event with mass appeal in Brazil. Luiz Gonzaga received the Shell prize for Brazilian Popular Music in 1984 and was only the fourth artist to receive this prize after Pixinguinha, Antônio Carlos Jobim and Dorival Caymmi. The Luiz Gonzaga Dam was named in his honor.

John Andrew Grande was a member of Bill Haley's backing band, The Comets.

Herbert Jabez Green (1907–1980) was an English professional musician and virtuoso of the 81 key Wheatstone Duet Concertina and accomplished player of many different concertinas, the accordion and the piano.

Yvette Horner was a French accordionist, pianist and composer known for performing with the Tour de France during the 1950s and 1960s. During her 70-year long career, she gave more than two thousand concerts and released around 150 records, selling a total of 30 million copies.

Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau, Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben.

Beau Jocque was a Louisiana French Creole zydeco musician and songwriter active in the 1990s.

Carl Jularbo, well known as Calle Jularbo and born as Karl Karlsson was the most famous Swedish accordionist of his time. He had a very distinct personal style, that has played a significant part in forming the Swedish accordion tradition. He was extremely productive, recording 1577 tunes and he won 158 accordion competitions. He maintained a large repertoire without being able to read music. His best known tune is Livet i Finnskogarna, recorded in 1915. This song was the basis for the Les Paul and Mary Ford hit of 1951, "Mockin' Bird Hill".

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and musician best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime films, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop, Darker than Black, Macross Plus, Turn A Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Kids on the Slope, Genesis of Aquarion and Terror in Resonance, and has worked with the directors Hirokazu Kore-eda, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shinichirō Watanabe and Shōji Kawamori. Kanno has also composed music for pop artists Maaya Sakamoto and Kyōko Koizumi. She is also a keyboardist, and is the frontwoman for the Seatbelts, who perform many of Kanno's compositions and soundtracks.

Michael J. Kennedy (1900–1978) was an Irish player of the melodeon.

Amy Kohn is an American composer, lyricist, singer, pianist and accordionist.

Anthony Lavelli, Jr. was an American professional basketball player and musician. He averaged 6.9 points per game during his two-year National Basketball Association (NBA) career (1949–1951) while also providing half-time entertainment with his accordion performances.

Huddie William Ledbetter, better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer, musician and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".

Leroy "Happy Fats" Leblanc was a Cajun swing musician that recorded with RCA Records in the 1930s and 1940s. He is known for his recordings with Harry Choates and his broadcasts on KVOL. Next to the Hackberry Ramblers, the Rayne-Bo Ramblers were the most popular and innovative of the Cajun string bands.

Julia Lennon was the mother of English musician John Lennon, who was born during her marriage to Alfred Lennon. After complaints to Liverpool's Social Services by her eldest sister, Mimi Smith, she handed over the care of her son to her sister. She later had one daughter after an affair with a Welsh soldier, but the baby was given up for adoption after pressure from her family. She then had two daughters, Julia and Jackie, with John 'Bobby' Dykins. She never divorced her husband, preferring to live as the common-law wife of Dykins for the rest of her life.

Narciso Martínez, whose nickname was El Huracan del Valle, began recording in 1935 and is the father of conjunto music. The Spanish word conjunto means 'group' and in El Valle de Tejas that means accordion, bajo sexto, and contrabajo. The same year, he and Santiago Almeida recorded their first 78 rpm record containing the polka "La Chicharronera" and the schottishche "El Tronconal" for Bluebird Records, which quickly became a success.

Johnny Meijer was an accordionist who played classical, folk, and swing.

Joe Mooney was an American jazz and pop accordionist, organist, and vocalist.

Dermot O'Brien was an Irish céilí and showband musician and singer, as well as a Gaelic footballer who played as a centre-forward at senior level for the Louth senior football team. His children also sang and performed instruments. His accordions are now kept in his son's house in Ardee, Louth.

Cory Pesaturo is an American musician from Cumberland, Rhode Island. Pesaturo is an accordion player, who also plays the piano, clarinet, and saxophone. He began playing at the age of nine, and in 2002, became the youngest person to win the National Accordion Championship. He most recently won the 2011 Primus Ikaalinen World Championship and was the first ever American contestant. Additionally, Pesaturo won the Coupe Mondiale World Digital Accordion Championship in Auckland, New Zealand, and became the first American to win a World Accordion Championship since Peter Soave 25 years earlier. In 2017, he broke the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous playing of the accordion, which was sponsored by Red Bull. In June 2009, Pesaturo won the Leavenworth International Championship, and International Jazz Championship, along with performing in 5 different continents which included the countries of Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Tunisia and Japan. Cory is one of only four accordionists in history to win a World Championship on both acoustic and electronic accordion, and is the only person to also win a world championship in jazz.

Austin Pitre was born in Ville Platte, Louisiana. A Cajun music pioneer, Pitre claimed to be the first musician to play the accordion standing up, rather than sitting down. Along with his band, the Evangeline Playboys, Pitre recorded Cajun dancehall hits such as the Opelousas Waltz.

Patsy Dan Rodgers was a painter, musician, and the King of Tory from the 1990s until his death in 2018.

Leon Robert Sash, was an American jazz accordionist.

Tom Senier was an Irish melodeon player and later band leader in Boston. Senier ran away from home as a teenager, joining the Connaught Rangers and serving in the British Army in India and Iraq during World War I. After a rifle bullet damaged his left hand, Senier gave up his early pastimes of mandolin and fiddle, and switched to the melodeon, which relies largely on the right hand.

John Serry Sr. was an American concert accordionist, arranger, composer, organist, and educator. He performed on the CBS Radio and Television networks and contributed to Voice of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives during the Golden Age of Radio. He also concertized on the accordion as a member of several orchestras and jazz ensembles for nearly forty years between the 1930s and 1960s.

Sir James Shand was a Scottish musician who played traditional Scottish dance music on the accordion. His signature tune was "The Bluebell Polka".

Severino Dias de Oliveira, known professionally as Sivuca, was a Brazilian accordionist, guitarist and singer. In addition to his home state of Paraíba, and cities Recife and Rio de Janeiro, he worked and lived in Paris, Lisbon, and New York City intermittently.

Ragnar "Raggie" Sundquist was a popular Swedish accordionist and composer in the first half of the 1900s. He was born and died in Stockholm.

Émile Vacher was a French accordionist associated with, and often deemed the creator of, the bal-musette genre.

Viljo "Vili" Vesterinen was a Finnish accordionist and composer.

Lawrence Walker was a Cajun accordionist. He is known for his original songs, including Reno Waltz, Evangeline Waltz, Bosco Stomp, and Mamou Two Step.

Lawrence Welk was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted the television program The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large audience of radio, television, and live-performance fans as "champagne music".

Frank John "Frankie" Yankovic was an American accordion player and polka musician. Known as "America's Polka King," Yankovic was considered the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during his long career. He was not related to fellow accordionist "Weird Al" Yankovic, although the two collaborated.

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, satirist, actor, music video director, and author who is known for humorous songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, as well as polka medleys of several popular songs, most of which feature his trademark accordion.