One day in 1949, fate knocked on the door of an 8-year-old California girl's home. By then, little Janet Cutrer already knew she had a gift for music.

Born in Spanish Fork, she and her family had moved to Southern California a couple of years earlier. She had grown up around music. She could play the piano. But she wanted something more.

"I would have studied whatever happened to come along," she said.

What happened to come along on that particular day was a door-to-door accordion salesman.

Ten lessons came with a little accordion. If the student did well, she could upgrade. Janet did well — so well that she hooked up with a major studio and became the star pupil. She remembers that the owner of the studio had a new Cadillac, "and he told me, 'Janet, if you practice, one day you will be driving one of these.' "

In the 1930s, '40s and '50s, more people were studying accordion than any other instrument, she said.

That's hard for us to understand now, when accordions have become underappreciated and overridiculed in this country. "They are still the most popular instrument in the world. A lot of cultures don't relate to the piano, but they love the accordion," said the woman who grew up to become Janet Todd (she met her husband at Brigham Young University) — and one of the leading accordion players in the country.

A slight 4-feet,11-inches tall, Todd does not appear to be the most likely person to be an accordianist. She is practically dwarfed by the new electronic digital Concerto she has started to play. Although she still plays her acoustic accordions, "the electronics mean I can be a one-person orchestra."

It is physically demanding to hold and work the bellows — consider that it weighs 30 lbs. and she weighs in at 104. "Plus, my style has always been to play standing up."

Her ability has taken her more than 250,000 miles to 22 countries and 26 states for conventions and shows. While at BYU, she participated in U.S. Defense and State Department tours of Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

After her marriage, she continued to play, among other things opening for such acts as Glen Campbell, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Vinton, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. She also loved the "domestic" side of life, cooking, gardening, being a mother to five children. "So I would get up at 4 a.m. to practice, so I could still play and travel."

In the early 1980s, however, serious health challenges put Todd's performance career on hold, permanently she feared. Playing the accordion is a lot like training for athletics, she said. "If you don't use it, you lose it. Rest is the enemy to a musician. You lose all your technique."