Jerry Minar
Inducted 2012
Jerry Minar started taking accordion lessons at the age of seven and by the age of 15 he was teaching the accordion at four separate locations. In 1965 Jerry started playing professionally with The Village Concertina Band. Five years later, Jerry joined the Ivan Kahle Band and was a regular for 32 years. During that time six albums were recorded with Jerry playing concertina, piano, and button-box accordion. In 1978 Jerry started a Sunday afternoon show on KTMF radio featuring students and concertina bands on multi-track recordings. This led to his JBM Sound Productions, a recording studio and record label in New Prague, Minnesota where over 400 albums have been recorded. Since 1996 Jerry has been the official Hengel concertina builder. Rights were aquired to build the highest-quality instruments using original maker Christy Hengel’s guidelines, and to date more than 100 New Prague Hengel Concertinas have been produced by Jerry and his associates.
