Pietro Deiro

Italian-born American accordionist (born August 28, 1888 in Salto Canavese, Italy – died November 3, 1954 in New York, NY, USA). The younger brother of Guido Deiro, Pietro Deiro emigrated in 1907, one year before Guido, to the United States. After briefly working as a coal miner in Washington State, he began to play his diatonic button accordion professionally in Seattle, where his brother soon joined him and taught him to play the piano accordion. Both relocated to San Francisco where they worked as vaudeville artists and where Pietro married his wife Bianca in 1911. In 1931, Pietro Deiro became a naturalized American citizen. Between 1911 and 1937, Pietro Deiro recorded almost 200 titles mostly for Victor and Columbia; in 1937, he recorded a final ten titles for Decca. He also ran his own accordion studio in Greenwich Village in New York City and founded a music publishing company, the Accordion Music Publishing Company (AMPCO), later known as Pietro Deiro Publications. In 1938, he became the founding president of the American Accordionists Association.