Jim Gilman

Jim Gilman was seemingly fated to play the accordion. At the age of seven, a local Chicago accordion school called his parents and offered six weeks of free accordion lessons because they had heard their son “had talent.” After resisting a high-pressure accordion salesman, private lessons were arranged.

A move to California during Jim’s high-school years seemed to halt his accordion career, but fate stepped in once more. Jim’s father actually saw in the Long Beach paper, “Wanted: Accordion player.” I ask you… how many times have you ever seen that? Jim earned his way through college playing at Knott’s Berry Farm as a street musician. During the summer, it meant playing eight hours a day, five days a week for the princely sum of $1.85 per hour.

A college loan bought Jim his first Cordovox and he was on his way. In 1972 he met up with (by chance?) a saxophone player by way of a 3x5 card posted on a bulletin board and they went “on the road” playing at Holiday Inns all over the mid-west. After over 35 years, they’re still together along with a guitarist and a drummer that were added in 1975.

Along the way, that Cordovox was upgraded time and time again to where his accordion now controls, via MIDI, 2 keyboards, 2 computers, a module, and a vocalizer. Jim’s not a one-man band; he’s a one-man orchestra. “It’s truly amazing what electronics, computers and MIDI have done for the accordion. Acoustic purists may turn their noses up at all this stuff but the audiences love it,” says Jim.

Jim plays all over Southern California from small dinner parties to large charitable events, one time sharing the stage with John Denver. He’s performed from the heights, playing music for a wedding in a small plane flying above Los Angeles; and to the depths, playing in a “sewer” for a KFI radio stunt and all kinds of engagements in between. Come hear the possibilities! You can contact Jim at 714-777-6667 or jimgilman@bigfoot.com.