In early 2010, when word began getting around that Roger and Rosita Lee LaTulippe were considering dimming the lights on their 40-year-old Showstoppers song and dance troupe, a bunch of accordion-
teacher friends from Massachusetts called and said “no way” – not with the New England Music Festival’s 50th anniversary celebration just two years away.

The 50th would go on anyway, festival organizers said. But it wouldn’t be the same without the Showstoppers.

The LaTulippes, a kinetic, ageless couple who have molded generations of fledgling musicians into topnotch performers at their Hudson-based Rosita Lee Music & Dance Centers, told the festival people what they wanted to hear, then graciously refueled for another two years.

It made sense, after all – the LaTulippe family made up half the 50th anniversary committee and a quarter of the board of directors of the festival sponsor, the Accordion Teachers Association of Massachusetts. And Roger LaTulippe has chaired the contest committee almost since the beginning. And Rosita Lee is an ATAM charter member.

Thanks to the association’s successful 2010 appeal, scores of teenagers and young adults in the giant Showstoppers family and their legions of appreciative fans had two bonus years to look forward to.

Now, with April’s 50th anniversary festival in the books and the farewell cake cut and eaten, the time has come for the grand and final finale, which will take the stage at 7 p.m. Sunday at the new and improved Hampton Beach Seashell Complex.

“It’s going to be a bittersweet night,” Rosita “Deedee” LaTulippe said this week, giving a slight hint that the evening’s emotions may just render speechless the gregarious woman who’s rarely at a loss for words.

This summer marks another significant milestone for the Rosita Lee Music & Dance Centers. Daughter Shelly LaTulippe-Klimas has just sold the dance-instruction part of the business, which she founded as a college kid some 23 years ago. The studio, on Central Street in Hudson, will carry on, however; one of LaTulippe-Klimas’ longtime instructors bought it.

The Showstoppers and Hampton Beach, meanwhile, go back a long way together. The LaTulippes began annual pilgrimages
to the old bandshell 35 years ago, and it wasn’t long before vacationers started asking, “You’re coming back next year, right?”

What’s more appropriate, they figured, than to coincide their farewell with the brand new gray and white musical pavilion in the heart of Ocean Boulevard?

Neither Deedee nor Roger are eager, to say the least, to ease into life after the Showstoppers. But it’s time, they agree. Naturally, people have asked if the next generation had considered taking over the Showstoppers, but things just don’t work that way for an entity – a community, actually – as unique as the Showstoppers.

“You just can’t,” Lee said, shaking her head.

Indeed, while perpetuating the generational family diner or keeping the construction business in the family forever is a common, usually successful business model, the Showstoppers are a one-of-a-kind original that can only be imitated, never duplicated.

The premise was simple: The LaTulippes, who met as music majors in college and in 1960 took over Deedee Lee’s parents’ Lowell, Mass.-based music school, were turning out scads of well-polished musicians; what was lacking, though, was the next step.

“We started (the Showstoppers) to give them the opportunity to perform, to travel and experience the world of music,” Lee said.

From a rented basement on Marshall Street to another rented space on Allds Street in Nashua and finally to a much smaller version of their current 136 Lowell Road campus, the couple nurtured the Showstoppers from their 12-member infancy to the maturity as a world-class music and dance troupe.

When Rosita Lee Music & Dance came to Hudson around 1980, there was no Fox Hollow, no T-Bones, no Valentino’s and no convenience stores or gas stations. What there was plenty of, though, was farmland, the Jettes and Kashulineses among them, the couple remembers.

They also recall, rather sheepishly but laughingly, the very first time the Showstoppers performed outside their two-car garage band room. It was the summer of 1970. The kids were invited to play at the annual Nashua Artists Association’s Greeley Park Art Show.

“I think we had 12 kids there – one was sick and couldn’t make it – no uniforms, no stage, no sound system,” Lee said.

The kids played their hearts out, and Lee heard something in the music and saw something in the kids that assured her that with ample parts guidance, instruction and the proverbial practice, practice, practice, this fledgling little band would one day be something to behold.

When they founded the Showstoppers with “travel” in mind, the LaTulippes weren’t thinking small. Sure, touring dozens of U.S. venues big and small was great, especially when the itinerary included Kennedy Center, Disney World, the storied accordion hotbed Bavarian Inn in Michigan, Nashville, Philly and the former “Good Day” TV show – on which they performed with Lawrence Welk Orchestra legend Myron Floren.

They’re also popular in Quebec and the Sainte-Foy annual festival. But how’s this for travel with a capital T: Just two years after their Greeley Park debut, the Showstoppers jetted off on a 12-day tour of Italy, central to which was staying and performing in the little Mediterranean coastal town of Castelfidardo – known as the Accordion Capital of the World. They also performed in Rome, Florence and San Marino.

Then there’s Ireland, a 1999 trip of nine days. And cruise-ship gigs on the way to Bermuda and back.

Showstoppers alumni still routinely visit. They’re doctors, lawyers, a molecular physicist, professional musicians, moms, dads, grandparents and – best of all, the LaTulippes say –
lifelong friends who fluently speak “the universal language.”

“They’re so happy to be here,” Deedee Lee said. “And we’re so happy to have them here.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (@Telegraph_DeanS).