Like Fran, (and Dnj, and others here) I also started out playing accordion (in the mid-fifties if you were going to play a keyboard instrument in a band it just about HAD to be accordion for portability, and the fact that club owners etc. NEVER kept a piano in tune !!! ... no synths or arrangers back then ...) ... I (and I believe Fran) played chromatic accordion ... my grandfather played a diatonic, and WOW !!! I never knew (or gave it a thought) that it may have only played in one key ... I was just always amazed that he was able to play an instrument that if you hit a key and pulled the bellows out, it sounded different than if you hit the same key and pushed the bellows in !!! ...
t.