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http://www.accordions.com/news.aspx?d=09-Jan-2015&lang=ru&s=9795
http://www.accordions.com/news.aspx?d=09-Jan-2015&lang=ru&s=9795
09-Jan-2015
by Harley Jones
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 ‘Main Squeeze’, the accordion shop on Essex Street, West Side, New York, has closed following the death of its longtime owner German-born Walter Kuehr on January 2nd. Marianne De Marco, a former student who helped him run the store when he was away, commented “He was so generous and he was so in love with music”. Walter Kuehr, who been battling lymphoma for the past seven years, was 59 years old. Kuehr opened the shop in 1996, where he sold new and used accordions, repaired instruments and gave lessons, becoming became known as “the accordion guru of the Lower East Side,” according to his ex-wife and close friend Claire Connors. The shop drew accordion enthusiasts, curious passersby, and famous musicians like Weird Al Yankovic, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris and Sean Lennon, who stopped in about nine months ago. “Of course Walter didn’t know who he was because he didn’t care about celebrities,” Connors said. During the store’s 19-year run, Kuehr also started a nine-piece Latin jazz and lounge act called The Last of the International Playboys and an 18-piece, all-female accordion group called the Main Squeeze Orchestra (picture below), which appeared on ‘America’s Got Talent’ in 2010. Walter Kuehr began playing accordion when he was 6 years old in Germany. He grew up to be a musician and moved to the USA after he received a scholarship to study at Harlem’s Jazzmobile in 1988. DeMarco and Connors remembered Kuehr as a funny, kind and generous man. “When you met him, he made you feel like you were the only person in the room and the most special person in the room,” Connors said. They called his passing and the store’s closure as “devastating”. DeMarco said the store will hold one last sale before it is cleared out on January 15th. While accordions will not be for sale, customers can stop by on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm to purchase other items inside Main Squeeze, like vinyl records, display cases and little accordion figurines from a collection Kuehr built up over the years, she said. Prices will range anywhere from 25 cents to about $30. "We're not trying to make big bucks, it's more about folks stopping by who want a tiny memento of Main Squeeze," DeMarco said. Friends and family will also remember Kuehr at a private memorial ceremony in NoHo, DeMarco said, but are planning to publicly celebrate his life in an event next month. Connors said they hoped to have it on Valentine’s Day. “It was his favorite holiday,” Connors said. “He was a huge romantic.” |
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