Accordion King

The year was 1933 and Prohibition was ending. The owner of a Ventura nightclub called the Italian Village decided to celebrate the legal flow of booze with a party no one would forget.

More than 100 people turned out for their first legal taste of alcohol in more than a decade, and the headliner was a 21-year-old accordion player named Frank Umbro.

“The place was packed,” Umbro said. “They were so happy. I just think everybody went crazy drinking because drinking was back again.”

The audience that night was not the biggest in Umbro’s career, but it might have been the happiest in his 60-plus years of performing in and around Ventura County.

Since 1931, Umbro has been the premiere local accordion man, somewhat of an icon in swing dance circles.

He has hauled the instrument to the top of the Ventura Holiday Inn for country western nights. He has played for a president and tutored a star. He has donned a crisp tuxedo for champagne brunches and trade clubs too numerous to count.

His style has changed little since he started playing professionally, and to this day his favorite tunes have a swing jazz feel. Although he turns 84 in December, Umbro is showing no sign of letting up.

“The doctor said I can live to be 90 at least, no problem. I still feel good, so what would I do if I’m feeling good? Sit and watch TV? As long as they want me and I can cut it, I’ll do it,” he said.

Umbro was born Dec. 3, 1912, in San Jose. His parents divorced when he was just 4, and his father, Joseph, raised him. Life without a mother was difficult, but in many ways growing up with his father made Umbro a strong person.

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Joseph Umbro built racing motorcycles, and his son dreamed of being a race car driver. But it was not to be, and he decided to focus his attention on music and the instrument he knew best--the accordion.

Umbro moved to Ojai at the age of 18 to perform with the Hank Walker Band in Ventura. It was scary being all alone in a new town.

“But within two weeks I felt like I was one of the gang,” he said.

To this newcomer, the city began at the Ventura River and ended at about Five Points, where Thompson Boulevard, Main Street and Telegraph Road intersect. “From Five Points to the east it was just fields,” he said. “All there was at Five Points was a service station and a restaurant.”

Before the end of Prohibition, bathtub gin was a popular homemade drink in Ventura, and there were stories about people making the stuff and getting quite sick. If the town had a speak-easy, Umbro wasn’t aware of it.

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Ventura was jumping. People flocked to several popular dance halls, including the Green Mill Ballroom, the ballroom at Seaside Park (now the Ventura County Fairgrounds), the Italian Village (now the Ban-Dar club) and the ballroom at the public bathhouse at the beach end of California Street, near the site of the Holiday Inn Beach Resort.

Members of Walker’s band were regulars at the Green Mill, at the west end of Main Street near the Ortega Adobe.

In those days people dressed nicely for a night on the town, whether they came from money or worked in the oil fields. Big-name performers such as Benny Goodman would perform in town, and the dance steps of the day were the fox trot, waltz and jitterbug.

“We were not too much into rumbas and cha-chas, just good old dance beats,” Umbro said. “If you could have a good jazz beat and got it going, that’s what they liked.”

Umbro played three shows per week and earned $4 per show. “Nobody had the money like they do today. Sometimes you had a lunchtime gig and your pay was a meal,” he said.

Accordions were popular at the time because many people had them at home. You could buy one for about $200--much less than a piano--and play it standing still, sitting down or marching in a parade, which really appealed to Umbro.

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Among the young women who were regulars at Umbro’s performances was an 18-year-old Los Alamos native by the name of Margaret Foxen. They began dating in 1932 and have been together ever since. In December, they will celebrate 60 years of marriage. Clutching a publicity photo Umbro used in his early days in Ventura, Umbro’s wife said: “Frank was so good-looking when he first came to town. Everybody wanted to date him. But I won out.”

From 1934 to 1941, Umbro taught at the Bennett Music Co. on Thompson Boulevard. When the war started and gasoline was rationed, the shop closed down because people could not make it to town.

In 1944 Umbro began touring with the USO, sharing the stage from Boston to Bermuda with such big names as Bob Hope, Kate Smith and Frank Sinatra. He returned to the States in 1946 and has led his own bands ever since.

“It was after World War II that everything really started to expand in Ventura,” he said. Most noticeable was the growth east of Five Points.

Expansion of the city meant the closure of some older venues, including the bathhouse and the Green Mill Ballroom. But for each one that closed, it seemed a new opportunity presented itself. Umbro opened his own music studio on Thompson Boulevard and kept it open until 1978.

He was a regular performer for 22 years at Las Posas Country Club in Camarillo, and he performed in several Rose Parades. As part of the 50th anniversary Point Mugu Air Show earlier this month, Umbro’s six-piece swing jazz band played at the base as well as an invitation-only party at the Holiday Inn.

Umbro’s audiences have included celebrity and political leaders alike. He counts among his famous fans President Reagan, who first hired Umbro to perform at a private party in 1970. “The neat thing about Reagan is that he’s down to earth. I never talked about politics with him. We talked about show business,” Umbro said.

Umbro was thrilled when actress and fellow Ojai resident Mary Steenburgen hired him to teach her how to play the accordion for her role as Sister Ida in “The Grass Harp,” the film version of Truman Capote’s novel.

“Our lessons were hilarious and so inspirational that I became a little obsessed with the accordion. OK, more than a little obsessed,” Steenburgen said.

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Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the accordion, and Umbro admits that the crowds don’t flock to shows the way they did in the old days.

“The only people who hire you now are the ones who grew up with the music,” he said. These days the instrument seems to be a little heavier each time he picks it up, but his fingers are as good as ever.

As long as fans of Umbro’s music keep calling, he will deliver.

“What a life I was given,” he said. “Starting out real rough and then meeting all these wonderful people. If I had to do it all over again, I would.”