Music
The Volga Germans brought both religous and secular music with them to North America and Portland.
Edward Hilderman was a professional musician and played the accordion in the Kelso/Longview area. (information supplied by Linda Hilderman Reed, niece of Edward Hilderman)
The Starkel's
Henry and Billy Starkel - This father and son were some of the most prominent Volga German musicians in Portland. Billy Starkel was an active participant in American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) - Portland Chapter activities.
Billy's father, Henry Starkel, was born about 1890 in the colony of Grimm, Russia. Henry's mother was Christine Strecker born February 23, 1894 and was also born in Grimm. They married in Portland, Oregon on November 1, 1913. Henry was an accordion player who performed at weekend dances in a hall above Weimer's Hardware store on Union Avenue (to the dismay of the religious community).
William (Billy) Vincent Starkel was born November 3, 1914 and died January 19, 1988. A memorial service was held at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Portland, Oregon on Friday, January 22, 1988.
Click here to hear a sample from Billy Starkel's "The Beach Polka" (4.47 MB .wav file)
Gun-music trade pleases Starkel
The Oregonian, Wednesday, February 5, 1975
By Early Deane
of The Oregonian staff
Music was Billy Starkel’s business, not invading Japanese-held islands.
And he says that's the reason he got down on his knees and bowed deeply when Marine Col. Mike Edson told Sgt. Starkel to pack up his battle-scarred accordion and report back to Lt. Bob Crosby in Honolulu.
“The colonel told me I didn’t really have to bow,” Starkel said. “But that’s the way I felt at the time.”
Although he was a gung-ho Marine with three invasions under his belt -- Guam, Saipan and Tinian -- Starkel said he looked forward to the easier entertainment duty with Crosby.
“The only reason I got overseas is the first place,” he said, “was because we had a commanding general back in San Diego who kept telling us that there were only two kinds of Marines -- those who were going over, and those who were coming back.”
World War II was only a brief interruption in Starkel’s 50-year music career. But he managed to entertain, as well as fight, during the interruption, and music still is his business when the Billy Starkel Band plays every night but Sunday at the Hilton Hotel’s International Club.
“We sort of straddle the times,” Starkel said. “We play the easy dinner music, the kind that has endured, and we play some rock -- soft rock but rock anyway.”
Born Nov. 3, 1914, in Portland, Starkel discovered music was a tradition with the family when he was 8.
“It's a good thing I had already become interested in music,” he said, “because I found out that, as the first son, I was expected to follow my father in music.
Starkel's father, Henry came to Portland in 1910 from the Russian Ukraine, where his German forebears had lived since emigrating in 1763.
“My father was an ‘old country’ accordionist,” Starkel said, “and he started me out on the old button row accordion.”
The senior Starkel was full-time railroad machinist and a part-time musician but he kept his son busy with music.
“We’d sometimes play in grange halls,” Starkel said, “and they’d only heat these halls up once while. The old piano would sit there in the cold for weeks and then they’d light up the big-potbellied stove and piano would swell up.”
“Then,” Starkel said, “my father would have to get bailing wire to help tune the piano so my mother could play it.”
Starkel first gained public attention in Portland as the youngest - and only - boy accordionist when he was 10.
A graduate of Benson Polytechnic High School, Starkel studied accordion in Portland under Jack Enzler and, in 1933, went to San Francisco to continue studies under Gallarini.
He teamed up later with banjoist Georgie Baker, and the two toured the Keith vaudeville circuit before the war.
After his discharge from the Marine Corps, Starkel altered his last name to Starr so he could join with violinist Morris King in an act called The Star Kings.
They played the Flamingo and Last Frontier hotels in Las Vegas and ex-Marine Starkel got back to Honolulu, this time as a professional entertainer at the Surfrider, Moana, Princess Kaulania and Royal Hawaiian hotels.
For the past 11 years Billy Starkel’s Band -- Clifford Waits, saxophone; Claude Sprigg, guitar; Hal Kye, piano; and Starkel, electric organ -- has played at the International Club, and he’s beginning to think it’s a steady job.
“The people who go there like our style,” Starkel said. “It seems to go down easy.”
Married to the former Colleen Bryan, Starkel, the father of three daughters and a son, has departed from tradition.
His son works for Western Electric.