Accordion maker works to keep family tradition alive

Making accordions and knowing how to play an accordion should go hand in hand, according to accordion-maker Larry Miller.
“There are accordion builders who don’t play, and it shows in their products,” Miller said. “My dad was an accordion player, and my older brother played, too. I was the youngest child, and I would play the triangle and the spoons.”
“My dad played house dances when I was a baby, the real fais-do-dos. He played while people cooked gumbo and sat on the porch on Sundays.”
Miller tried to learn the accordion as a child, but his father eventually quit playing and sold his accordion.
“I missed out, and I longed to play,” Miller said. “When my oldest brother came back from the Korea, he bought one. He later found out he was terminally ill, and my older twin brothers were not interested in playing. I didn’t want it to die out.”
That’s when Miller went to visit Lawrence “Shine” Mouton, an accordion maker in Crowley, to order his very first accordion.
“I watched him work on mine and decided I was going to learn to build them, too,” Miller said. “It takes lots of work and time, but I’m a night owl anyway. I knocked the dust off my table saw, and visited six different builders in the first year. I learned to build and play at the same time.”
Miller counts Geno Delafose, Sheryl Cormier and Lee Benoit among the musicians who have purchased his accordions, and he estimates he has made more than 1,200 accordions. Miller also made spoons, scrub boards and triangles for a time after learning to make accordions, but he sticks to accordion making these days.
If Miller made one accordion at a time, he estimated it would take about 175 hours to complete the instrument, but instead he makes anywhere from 10 to 30 accordions at a time.
“There’s lots of parts in an accordion,” he said. “If I make them in multiples, it ends up taking about 65 hours.”
In addition to just teaching his 15th full apprenticeship, Miller will also demonstrate his accordion making skills at the Experience Louisiana Festival Oct. 17-18 at the LSU-Eunice campus.
“I am proud to bring our culture to visitors, and it’s almost more important for locals who don’t know much about who they are,” Miller said of the importance of the festival. “This is part of who we are as a people.”
“I look forward to showing what it means to be a Cajun, to tell our story. There is a satisfaction to doing my part and passing it on.”
Contact Claudette Olivier at claudette.olivier@eunicetoday.com.