Dick Contino was born of Italian parentage on January 17,1930, in Fresno, California. He attended Fresno High and played fullback on the football team until his father found out and forced him to stop. As another activity, Dick played his accordion in the school assemblies and at special functions. His accordion playing popularized him so well that he easily won the class presidency at election time. He was very popular with the young teenage ladies due to his very large male organ. And I'm not talking about his accordion.Dick's father played the accordion and it was he who gave Dick his first instructions. Later, Dick traveled to San Francisco every Friday for six years to take lessons. After school and on weekends Dick worked as a delivery boy in his father's butcher shop, but he always had his accordion handy and would practice many hours each day, striving for perfection and waiting for the break that would carry him up the ladder of success to stardom.After-graduating from high school in 1947, Dick entered Fresno State to study an Arts course. However, Dick's first and last love was his accordion and music, so after the first semester he left college and went to work as a delivery boy in his father's butcher shop, devoting all his spare time to practice on the accordion.Dick was interested in getting on a national broadcast and his ambition was to gain popularity and recognition as an accordion soloist and to make popular an instrument that had not been too successful in the entertainment world. But jobs were not easy to-find. His family decided finally that they would move to Los Angeles because they thought there were greater musical opportunities there for this gifted boy. Dick's mother sent him to the local musician's union to get his transfer to the Los Angeles local.Luck was with Dick Contino, the handsome, talented,unknown accordion player who thus far had been denied the opportunity to demonstrate his ability before the American public.Horace Heidt, the master showman and an old friend of many years standing with audiences everywhere, was coming out of retirement to go back on the air with his "Original Youth Opportunity Program". The show was dedicated to bringing before the American people not only the finest in entertainment, but also to giving talented young people everywhere an opportunity to display their talents arid win recognition in their chosen fields.Horace felt the only way possible to achieve this would be to take his show to the people, so that those who could not leave the security of their homes to take a chance in Hollywood or New York, would have an equal opportunity to pass through the "door of opportunity".Instead of a typical Hollywood premier of his new show with much fanfare, Horace scheduled his first broadcast for a typical American city, Fresno, California. An advance-man was sent to Fresno to search for talent to represent that cry and compete for fame and fortune with the American public acting as judge.When Dick Contino walked into the Fresno Musicians' Union to get his transfer to Los Angeles, one secretary of the union introduced him to Heidt's talent scout, who asked him to audition for him the following day. Dick was filled with such hope and excitement that he did not tell his folks about the audition, not wanting to build up their hopes and then have them become disappointed if his audition was not successful.The advance man was greatly impressed with Dick's ability, and arranged for him to audition for Horace Heidt. Horace was equally impressed, and at long last Dick's dream of appearing on a national broadcast came true when Horace selected him as one of four contestants to appear on the initial Phillip Morris broadcast to compete for the weekly prize of $250, the quarterly prize of $750 and the Grand prize of $5000.00It was on the otherwise calm night of December 7, 1946 Dick made his appearance on the first Horace Heidt - Phillip Morris broadcast. Dick gave his rendition of "Lady of Spain" and the bobby-sox audience stomped, clapped, and yelled with frenzy, declaring him the winner by a margin of a full 30 points on the electric applause meter, thereby awarding him first prize of $250.Thirteen straight weeks of competition later with overpowering results on the applause meter from California to Broadway, Contino stood up to a microphone at Manhattan's radio station WNBC and slapped out "Bumble Boogie" romping away with the first Horace Heidt Quarter Finals and a prize of $750.He became a permanent member of the Musical Knights and toured theaters and auditoriums from coast to coast.He went on to win the 1948 GRAND FINALS and the first prize money of $5,000. With the Horace Heidt show as his launching pad, Dick went on to become the most famous accordionist in history.* Born 17 January 1930, Fresno, CaliforniaDick Contino is an icon of cool. Dick Contino plays the accordion. These are not contradictory statements.It helps that he is probably the best-looking guy to ever play the accordion for a living, handsome enough to have had his own groupies back when hardly anyone except Sinatra had groupies, handsome enough to have appeared in a few movies--and without an accordion. It also helps that he had enough scandals and brush-ups in his career to earn his tough guy merit badge. And it helped to have crime writer James Ellroy come along and mythologize Contino just about the time when he might otherwise have become a forgotten nostalgic act.Contino's father bought him his first accordion when he was seven, but he didn't really take it seriously until he was 12. Within a few years, he had become so proficient, he was travelling to San Francisco, 180 miles away, for regular lessons. His big break came in 1946, when he competed on bandleader Horace Heidt's "Youth Opportunity Talent Show." Contino gyrated around while his fingers flew through "Lady of Spain" (condemning that song to accordion hell forever after) and won the night's show. He returned to win the show's grand prize for the season, and soon, he was a star in his own right, with his own string of fan clubs around the country.Unfortunately, a couple of years later as his career was hitting full-stride, he received notice that he was being drafted to serve in the Korean War. For reasons he's never fully explained, he ignored the notice and wound up being jailed for six months. Although he did eventually enlist and serve honorably in Korea, the "draft dodger" label hung over him for years and knocked him out of the ranks of the top stars for good. It also later provided Ellroy with the raw material for his story, "Dick Contino's Blues," which appears in the collection, Hollywood Nocturnes.Contino lost his movie and recording contracts with Paramount and RCA Victor, and although he was picked up by Mercury within a year or so, his movie career dropped down to the realm of B-movies. Ironically, this raised his tough guy status significantly, for one of the few roles he got after his discharge was the cult B-movie, "Daddy-O." Playing a badass rock 'n' roller and part time drug smuggler, Contino did his own driving for one of the earliest showcase car chases, doing a little Evel Knievel number to get past a roadblock. "Daddy-O" is certainly not great cinema ("That thing was like a class Z picture," Contino said), but it ranks up there with "The Wild One" as piece of 50s rebel iconography.Contino also cut a swath through his share of Hollywood starlets before settling down with actress Leigh Snowden. Contino had three children with Snowden, as well as two from her previous marriage, and the couple were together for 26 years before she died in 1982. Today, Contino still tours and he's not shy about showing off a tanned and buffed chest and a girlfriend half his age. "After you've paid a few dues, y'know, sometimes you do build up a sense of invincibility. Like, c'mon, I gave you all this time to destroy me, man, and you didn't destroy me. So c'mon. Let's have some fun."Contino's records don't show quite the same sense of adventure as his life. The best are his Mercury albums, most of them made with David Carroll, and of these, the best are the trio of "holiday" albums. Hawaiian Holiday, in particular, is worth looking for just for that special space age pop thrill of hearing "Quiet Village" on the accordion. It may not be first-rate exotica, but it's certainly not "Lady of Spain"-sville, man.More on Dick Contino can be found at his Web Page. His 1999 interview with Las Vegas Life and The Astounding B Monster's excellent profile of Contino and "Daddy O" are both well worth reading.
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