Creole fiddler Edward Poullard stopped playing accordion when his right ring finger was injured making a delivery for UPS.
“That shut my accordion-playing down for good, for a long time, for at least 12 years,” Poullard says.
Instead, he learned to play the fiddle as a gentler alternative for his fingers, and with it he blazed a trail of zydeco musicianship for more than 40 years, performing around the country and abroad with such notable Creole, Cajun and Gulf-based musicians as Canray Fontenot, Preston Frank, Cedric Watson, Jesse Lege, and Lawrence “Black” Ardoin, kin to the Creole music legend Amédé Ardoin.
“I wasn’t going to quit playing, not at that time. If I had to, I was going to turn the strings over and play with my other hand,” he says.
But later in his career, he established himself as something more rare: an accordion builder. In his workshop a mile away from the Spindletop oil well in Beaumont, Texas, he’s keeping the torch lit, but it’s unclear who will carry it in the future.
The shop is composed of two buildings in his backyard, one for accordion assembly and the other specially designed for woodworking, where he once built cabinetry.
He builds multiple accordions at once while also repairing other musicians’ instruments. His workspace features a rotating display of accordions prepared for a variety of clients, including zydeco musicians. There is always something new in the works.
Poullard decided to build accordions in 2000, when his children expressed an interest in learning how to play. He commissioned his long-time friend Jude Moreau in Groves, Texas, to build one, and Moreau accepted under the condition that Poullard help him build it.
He formally apprenticed under Moreau in 2001 through Texas Folklife, a nonprofit cultural heritage organization which provided a grant for his materials. Since then, he has built at least 75 accordions from scratch and has repaired many more. It takes Poullard roughly 100 hours of work to build one accordion from an estimated 600 individual parts. For his work, Poullard was awarded a fellowship with the National Endowment of the Arts in 2025.
The diatonic button accordion is a compact squeezebox operated with buttons instead of piano keys. Each button produces two notes instead of one — one reed catches the air breathing in and the other takes the air going out, like a harmonica. The alternating notes naturally produce a rhythmic effect complementary to dance that conveniently allows for a build half the size and weight of a chromatic accordion, where each key produces only one note, whether the bellows inhale or exhale. The word “diatonic” refers to the key an accordion is tuned in.
South Louisiana and South Texas have been relative hotbeds for the craft of building diatonic accordions for generations. Poullard estimates there were once roughly 42 builders in southern Louisiana alone — between Lafayette and Lake Charles, where the bulk of the demand was — but hardly more than a handful of craftsmen practice today.
In Lafayette, Andre Michot, an accordion builder and Grammy-winning accordionist for Lost Bayou Ramblers, says the instrument has become more accessible to young musicians than ever before, in contrast to his upbringing.
He points to a program in Vermilion Parish that has a couple dozen accordions available for kids to learn on.
“That’s a rare thing,” he says. “You think about that, a $3,000 or $4,000 accordion, not everyone can afford one of those. Most people can’t.”
Growing interest hasn’t translated into more builders, however.
Cajun musician and producer Joel Savoy grew up watching his own father Marc build accordions at his family’s music shop near Eunice. He says the sheer intensity of the craft is enough to discourage younger people to learn it.
“It’s tedious work,” says Savoy. “I’m raising two children right now…and thinking about the way that modern society and TV…does not reward patience, I feel like that is something that is being lost.”
For his part, Poullard, has passed down his years of experience to three apprentices, the most recent being Craig Jones, a musician and welder from Houston.
Historically, builders have had backgrounds in skilled trades. The Texas Oil Boom rapidly industrialized much of East Texas, beginning in the early 20th century. Poullard himself was born in Louisiana in 1952 and moved west when the growing family prompted his father to seek an improved source of income in southeast Texas’ thriving oil industry as an alternative to sharecropping. Oil was still booming in those days, and Louisiana’s own oil industry had yet to blossom.
The apprenticeship program has since developed into an ongoing collaboration between Poullard and Texas Folklife.
Poullard says the apprenticeship is reciprocal, highlighting what he has learned from Jones’ eye for style and skills with metal. “Craig is an excellent person for designing face plates and doing engraving, and stuff like that. We found each other’s niche,” he says.
Prospective builders have approached the pair for apprenticeships, but most inquiries never come to fruition. Poullard’s shop is too distant and the cost of materials — not to mention fuel, meals and other personal expenses — creates yet another hurdle, despite grant funding available from Texas Folklife.
Still, Poullard insists the craft will live on as long as the music does. Jones, an avid zydeco fan, has recently completed his second hand-built accordion.
“They’ll need to find accordions somewhere,” Poullard says. “If the music is popular, there will be a demand for builders.”
