Tony, I was referring to their ability to play an arranger keyboard - not play piano or accordion. Now, Joe Ayala was a great piano player, and he played one hell of a keyboard as well. Ray Bastianolli was a fantastic accordion player, and was also an incredible arranger keyboard player, as is the case with you, DNJ,Eddie Shoemaker, Don Mason, Steve, and and lots of others on this forum and those that I know personally in the Baltimore Metro area. Not too many piano players around anymore, but there are a lot of ex accordion players that are still out there (in the trenches as Donny would say) and working as much or as little as they wish. Jerry Burns was a great, Peabody trained pianist, but he was a lousy keyboard player. It wasn't that he could not play, but he never learned the intricacies of the OS of any arranger keyboard he ever owned. Consequently, his dead time between songs was horrendous and he was unable to transition through a song using the variations and associated voices. However, when he used his PSR-3000 as a piano, he sounded fantastic.

Gary