American Polka Ames Iowa 2006

American
Polka
Lori Runkle and Friends
American
Polka
American
Polka
Lori Runkle
One Big Happy Family Productions
Ames, Iowa
2006
...They talked about the power of music over men.
You’ve got to think a musical instrument is alive...
The accordion; we have here an instrument that
breathes. It breathes.
Lungs it has got.
The keys are fingers answering your fingers.
E. Annie Proulx, “Accordion Crimes”
Table of Contents
Dutchmen Style Bands in the Midwest p. 5
Barefoot Becky
p. 6
The Bruce Bradley Band
p. 15
Karl Hartwich
p. 20
Memories from My Childhood
p. 28
Profiles Donna Rogers
p. 36
Profiles Raymond Delfs
p. 38
Profiles Corey Miller
p. 40
Profiles Jim Lombard
p. 42
The Wendinger Band
p. 44
Credits and The End
p. 46
Innovation and Tradition:
Dutchmen Style Bands in the Midwest
The Dutchmen style of polka music plays an important musical role in communities
throughout Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This musical tradition has been influential
in my own life, and this book will highlight its contribution to Midwestern life. Polka
music is family, heritage, history, dance- but most importantly- pure fun!
This style of polka music, which originated in the hearts and minds of musicians in New
Ulm, Minnesota in the early 1900s, is still alive today; however, it is being played and
interpreted differently by accordion and concertina bandleaders in the states of Iowa,
Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen and the Bruce Bradley Band are evolving in order to
meet the needs of an ever-changing musical audience. Karl Hartwich, Adam Sandhurst
and Corey Miller- three bandleaders who play the concertina- are preserving the musical
tradition of the Dutchmen style of polka music.
Barefoot Becky
and The Ivanhoe Dutchmen
The Accordion Bands:
When Becky Livermore was a little girl, her parents took her to polka dances in Swisher,
Iowa. I learned how to dance and fell asleep on the tables,” she recalls. Livermore would
watch the musicians at these dances, and she would constantly ask her aunt- who played
the accordion- to let her play too. Swisher had a population of about 800 people in 2002.
Many residents who live in the town have ancestral ties to Germany and the Czech
Republic.
Livermore started playing her own accordion, often wearing no shoes, when she was 10
years old, and Barefoot Becky remembers her music teacher, Esther Zvacek, as a mentor
and friend. “It was one dollar for a lesson, but the lessons never lasted just one hour.
They usually went longer than that, but we didn’t watch the clock.” Livermore would
often sit outside in a swing on the farm where she grew up on Ivanhoe Road outside of
Mount Vernon, Iowa.
Becky Livermore
started playing her
accordion, often
wearing no shoes,
when she was 10
years old.
Today, dancers can
still see her playing
and singing on stages
in Iowa, Minnesota,
Wisconsin and around
the country with her
toes tapping to the
beat of the music.
In 2003, Becky
organized her first
polka festival, fittingly
called the Beckster
Fest, in Amana, Iowa.
“I’d swing and play my accordion so my brother and sister could watch TV in peace. I
loved to practice.”
None of Livermore’s friends played the accordion in high school. “Some of the other
kids called me ‘polka queen’ and said I was going to play for the old folks, but I loved
the music.”
Livermore started to play with Ed Ulch and his Jolly Bohemians from Solon, Iowa when
she was 12 years old. At the age of 17, Ulch retired, and Livermore started her own
band. Livermore bought Ulch’s library of music and asked musicians from his band to
join her in 1988. As the new bandleader, she renamed her band Becky and the Ivanhoe
Dutchmen. “My dad helped me buy an old hippy van and a crappy sound system,” she
said with a smile. One side of the white van sported an image of the grim reaper. Orange
shag carpet decorated the van’s interior. Complete with a wine rack inside their hippy
van, Becky and her band members were now ready to roll.
“When I started, I was 17. It was harder than heck to be taken seriously. The ballroom
owners took some time to accept me. They wanted to talk to my dad. When I gave them
demo tapes, they didn’t believe the music was from my band.”
On Livermore’s Web site, Barefootbecky.com, she describes her band’s music as “three
cups of German-style polka music with one cup of Czech music, and a half-cup of
country, Dixie, and big band...”
“Becky stays in the [Dutchmen] tradition, but places an emphasis on vocals,” said
Wisconsin Arts Board folklorist Richard March. “Pop music places an emphasis on
vocals too, but vocals aren’t a priority in [traditional] Dutchmen style polka music.”
“This variety is what people are looking for in a polka band,” Livermore commented.
“I don’t see polka dying; it’s just changing. We’re playing less and less of typical
ballroom and wedding dances. We’re playing more restaurants, festivals, state fairs
and Oktoberfests.” Livermore and her fiancé and fellow band member, Terry Ard, have
plans to become full-time musicians. “Terry has his own business that we run out of the
home, but it’s getting to be less and less of the regular job and more and more polka!...
many other bands run them as a hobby or for fun. I run [my band] as a business to make
money.”
The band’s monthly schedule is often hectic. In a single month, Becky and the Ivanhoe
Dutchmen typically find themselves on the road bound for an American Legion in
Holyrood, Kansas; a Moose Lodge in Prescott Valley, Arizona; the International
Springs Polka Club in Colorado Springs, Colorado; or the Gasthof zur Gemütlichkeit
restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Livermore stressed the importance of meeting her
audiences’ expectations. “If younger kids want the music louder and faster, then we play
it for them.”
When Livermore and her band played for a younger crowd at Des Moines, Iowa’s
second annual Oktoberfest, the lyrics to the song “Happy Wanderer” changed slightly
from their formal ballroom context.
The Happy Wanderer
I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.
for an Oktoberfest environment:
I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to drink,
A six pack on my back.
At a celebration like the Oktoberfest in Des Moines, or when playing at a bar like the
Essen Haus in Madison, Wisconsin, the band may take a break every 45 minutes. Polka
music helps create an atmosphere or a holiday mood. Theses events are not usually for
serious dancers who have mastered the etiquette of the ballroom, so the band can take
longer breaks. At a ballroom dance or polka festival, the bands take fewer and shorter
breaks because people want to keep dance.
“People go nuts on the dance floor and elbows and legs are flying” folklorist Richard
March said about the younger crowd at the Essen Haus in Madison. “The audience
knows next to nothing about polka dancing.”
Dancers enjoy the Oktoberfest atmosphere at the Hessen Haus 2005 celebration in
Des Moines, Iowa. Sharp elbows and beer can be two hazards on the dance floor at an
Oktoberfest celebration like this one.
Welcome to the Polka Festival
The crowd at a more time-honored festival is typically older, more serious about
dancing, and less intoxicated. Polite ballroom etiquette is the norm on the wooden
floors. Dancers gracefully spin in an orderly fashion around the room executing smooth
waltz and elegant foxtrot footwork. Sweat and delight permeate the room as the tempo
of the music moves couples on a rythmatic journey through space and time. Many of
these dancers are proud to be members of various polka organizations like The Big Sky
Polka Club, the Midwest Polka Association, or the New Prague, Minnesota Chapter of
the Polka Lovers Klub Of America.
Bands play for two hours and then take a short break because dancers want to dance. “At
a traditional festival, 3 tunes are polkas, 3 tunes are waltzes, and 3 tunes are fox trots.
You will often hear a bandleader say, ‘It’s waltz time.’ One band that plays a 4-hour set
may only take a short break for a sip of beer,” March explained. The emphasis is on
dancing, not drinking as the publication “Music and Dance News” illustrates.
The September/October 2005 issue of “Music and Dance News” published in Winsted,
Minnesota has a “Meet a Friend and a Dance Partner at No Risk” single’s section of
the newspaper. “Music and Dance News” keeps polka fans informed about where their
favorite bands will be playing, and two profiles of female polka festival dancers looking
for male partners read like this:
Divorced-White-Female, 66 years old, 5’7’ Active, honest, trustworthy, excellent
dancer wants to meet an honest gentlemen for dancing, travel, dining out, nonsmoker for weekend activities.
Single-White-Female, 65, 5’4’, seeking Christian gentleman, 60-70, caring, sharp
dresser, positive, good sense of humor, non-smoker, honest. Enjoys dancing...and
getting to know YOU! South Central MN
10
Wooden dance floors aren’t a necessity for people who will re-fill their plastic cups full
of beer over and over again. Uncoordinated dancers do a wobbly chicken dance under
the beer tent and step heavily on each other’s toes during polka and big band numbers.
Flailing arms and feet become lethal weapons as the tempo increases. “When we play an
Oktoberfest,” Ard said, “we ask ourselves: How crazy are the people? Are they having a
good time?” On the other hand, “When we play a festival, we’re concerned about tempo
and cadence to keep the dancers dancing all night.”
Ard is noticing a decrease in the number of traditional ballroom dances across
the Midwest. “Things are driven more toward venue-driven performances like
Oktoberfests,” and Ard says the band is ready to “jump in when this occurs.” Peter Wendinger, bandleader of the Peter and Paul Wendinger Band for more than
40 years, agrees with Livermore and Ard. Wendinger said his band is playing more
company functions and employee parties. “We go dressed in our lederhosen. They want
the German Oktoberfest atmosphere.” Peter and his brother Paul branched out into the
musical travel business in 1976. Today, they escort travelers on as many as 15 trips
a year to locations such as Germany, Ireland, the Canadian Rockies, California and
Branson, Missouri.
Wendinger, who spent his childhood working on the family’s farm, remembers when
“You could make it on 160 acres. I never dreamed we would be subsidizing our farm
by traveling. When I was growing up, there were towns in Minnesota like New Prague
that were united as German, Polish or Czech. But now things are becoming more of a
melting pot. I love that feeling of culture. I don’t want to lose it.”
Peter Wendinger
and his brother
Paul have been
playing their twin
Hengel concertinas
together in a polka
band since they
were teenagers.
Both men were
born and still live
in St. George, a
small town outside
of New Ulm,
Minnesota. They
grew up speaking
German and
working on their
family farm.
11
Livermore, who is now 35 years old and making her home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
wants to keep the polka music tradition alive. “I’m one of the last of the generation
whose parents took them polka dancing. There are so many other things that parents
do with their kids today. Now, any young kids who get involved [in polka bands], we
are all excited about it. And we help them in whatever way we can. They will carry on
the tradition. To me, culture is everything that makes you into you. I don’t know if it’s
important to what we do as polka musicians, but if what we do sticks with someone and
they like it, I’m happy.”
Technology and marketing are additional components for modern-day polka bands’
success. Up-to-date Web sites announce Barefoot Becky and Peter and Paul Wendinger’s
dance schedules, informing fans where and when they will be playing. Barefoot Becky
sells compact disks and cassettes of her music on her site, in addition to t-shirts and hand
towels. “We always have some recording in the works or something new to sell. Selling
product is important” Livermore said.
This illustration plays on the back of Becky Livermore’s t-shirts, which are for
sale on her web site.
12
Mature and accomplished dancers at traditional festivals differ drastically from the
younger and rowdier crowds at typical Oktoberfests. Experienced dancers waltz across
the floor at the 2005 Humboldt Polka Festival in Humboldt, Iowa.
Becky Livermore has been the
band leader of Becky and the
Ivanhoe Dutchmen since the age
of 17.
13
Blue Skirt Waltz
Mitchell Parish wrote the lyrics to the famous “Blue Skirt
Waltz” and Vaclav Blaha composed the music. Frank Yankovic
recorded this old Bohemian melody in 1949.
I dream of that night with you,
lady when first we met.
We danced in a world of blue
how can my heart forget.
Blue were the skies and blue were your eyes
just like the blue skirt you wore.
Come back, blue lady come back.
Don’t be blue anymore.
I wandered alone one night
‘til I heard an orchestra play
I met you where lights were bright
and people were carefree & gay.
You were the beautiful lady in blue,
I was in heaven just waltzing with you.
You filled me with strange delight
then softly you stole away.
14
The Bruce Bradley Band
From Las Vegas to Brownton, Minnesota
Bradley, who spent 12 years working as a musician in Las Vegas,
returned to Minnesota when his mother died in 1978. “I was an only
child and it was time to come home.”
Bruce Bradley, a 59 year-old polka bandleader from Brownton, Minnesota, has been
working in the music industry for 48 years. When he started playing the piano and
accordion, he was too young to get a driver’s license, so his father drove him to and
from various jobs.
Bradley, at his mother’s request, endured a piano teacher who rapped him on the
knuckles with a wooden ruler and his classmates’ taunts of “Steinway stomach” because
his accordion keys resembled the keys of a Steinway piano. Because of his mother’s
determination and iron will, Bradley continued playing the accordion as a teenager, and
he attributes his musical discipline and professionalism partly to her.
When Bradley turned 16, he bought a station wagon.
“I was 16, and the guys playing with me were in their 60s, but it was all right. I had a
big time cash flow. For graduation, I bought myself a new Cadillac.”
Bradley, who spent 12 years working as a musician in Las Vegas, returned to Minnesota
when his mother died in 1978. “I was an only child and it was time to come home.”
Bradley formed the Bruce Bradley Band after returning to his home state, but the lessons
he learned about the music industry while working in Las Vegas stayed with him.
“If you’re playing strictly polka, you’re done,” he said. “People want variety.”
Bruce attributes the success of his band to giving the audience what they want and
keeping the music new and interesting. “I learned different styles from watching other
people play. I like key changes and different rhythms in the piece. Playing in the same
key is boring. You can do anything with an accordion that you want to do. It’s versatile
like an upright piano.”
15
Bruce Bradley and Jerry
Kadlec play Yakety Yak
on the accordion and the
sax.
One of the Humboldt
Polka Festival
organizers, LaVon
Runkle, joins the Bradley
Band on stage. Runkle
described the bands as
playing happy music!
“Our festival is the fest
with the personal touch,”
she said.
16
Polka bands spend a great deal of time on the road traveling from dance to dance.
Trailers for their musical instruments- and vans for members of each band- become
incredibly important.
Bradley shared the stage with Cuban musician Pupi Campo and Hawaiian singer Ernie
Menehune while he was working in Las Vegas. Watching Campo play is how Bradley
learned to turn big band numbers into Latin numbers by changing the rhythm and style
of the music.
Bradley’s band caters to the Czech members of his audience and his band members sing
songs in Italian as well as German. Jerry Kadlec, the clarinet and saxophone player in
the band is “from a Czech community. He has some older women in town give him the
correct pronunciation, somebody who still speaks the language,” Bradley explained.
If a lot of people in the audience are in their 70s or 80s, “every third set is a foxtrot,”
said Bradley. “People are tired and they need something slower.”
17
The Bradley band members are always listening to, and looking for, new music that their
audiences might like. “Our crowd is our guinea pig. If they like it [the new music], it
stays. If they don’t, it goes out the window at 70 miles per hour. We’re always listening
to new and different kinds of music to get ideas.” Bradley and his band members usually
play “a minimum of two times a week to stay in shape, four or five times to do our best.
Any less and you lose your speed and get sloppy.”
Another important reason for Bruce Bradley’s success as a bandleader is hiring the right
people, and banjo player Dick Ginn is the right man for his band. Ginn, who has been
the host of Mankato, Minnesota’s KEYC television station’s “Bandwagon” program
since 1995, “knows everyone and he likes people,” said Bradley. “You have to like
people.”
“Bandwagon may well be one of the longest running local entertainment programs in
the history of Minnesota Television. KEYC’s first music show aired Monday, November
21, 1960, at 8:30 PM, but this series was not officially named Bandwagon until March
30, 1961,” according to the KEYC Web site. The format of the show includes dancing,
anniversary greetings and music featuring bands from KEYC’s viewing area of New
Ulm and Mankato, Minnesota.
Bradley’s loyalty and respect for his band members is clear. “My guys go on every job,
everywhere, every time,” he said.
Bruce said Barefoot Becky Livermore’s band “does it correctly; does it nicely; and
markets it right.” He gave this advice to Becky and her fiancé Terry Ard about working
full-time in the music industry: “Go for it! They’re young. They can travel. Maybe if I
were younger, but I can’t beat the road anymore. Four nights a week is a killer for me
today.”
18
Polka Music
is Their
Roots
Becky Livermore has been seeing more 40 and 50 year-old people
take a renewed interest in polka music as part of their ethnic
heritage. “My philosophy is that kids get exposed to polka music.
Polka music is their roots. As more people get older, they return to
polka: move back to their roots. Hard rock doesn’t sound as good at
age 50.”
19
Karl Hartwich
And the Country Dutchmen
The Concertinas Look to the Past
There are very few jobs in the 9 to 5 working world that include drinking beer and
mingling with friends in the job description. According to Karl Hartwich, bandleader
of Karl and the Country Dutchmen, “a little fun, a little socializing” and a little beer are
three perks of playing in and managing a polka band.
Hartwich, who spent his youth on a farm outside of the town of Orion, Illinois, began
his musical odyssey in the fifth grade. “We had a black and white TV with two channels
and a phone with a party line. Our neighbors were always on the line,” he remarked
about growing up on a Midwest farm in the 1960s. As a child in that decade, music was
his recreational equivalent of television, computer chat rooms, video games, iPods and
movies that are popular with kids today.
In fifth grade, he started playing the trumpet at the C.R. Hanna Elementary School in
Orion. “I was first chair,” he said- but because he couldn’t read music at that time, he
would ask the second chair to play the music for him. After he heard something played
once, he remembered it, and played it himself. “That’s how I learned,” he explained.
Since the time he was 5 years old, Karl remembers driving 209 miles from Orion,
Illinois to La Crosse, Wisconsin to listen to his distant cousin Sylvester Liebl and the
Jolly Swiss Boys Band twice every month. The people at the dances behaved as if they
were “one big family, and if you didn’t show up [to a dance], they’d call and ask where
you were.”
Hartwich said that he would sit on the bandstand and watch the Jolly Swiss Boys play.
Sylvester Liebl Senior, who died in 2003, was a concertina player in the band. Liebl
was the musician who he watched closely throughout his childhood. “One of the things
about Sy Liebl and his band is that they played in an aural tradition. Their music had
a freedom that the music of a band that plays by arrangement doesn’t have. Sy Liebl
improvised. It was natural because family members were in the band who could read
each other’s minds,” said folklorist Richard March.
Around the time Hartwich turned 7 or 8, he started asking his parents to buy him a
concertina. “I kept bugging them for a few years,” he said, and on his 12th birthday, he
finally received a combination birthday/Christmas present: a $200 Silberhorn concertina.
20
Today, he plays a Hengel concertina. “Hengel concertinas are the easiest to play,” and in
great demand Hartwich said. In fact, this brand of concertina is so widely sought after
that he knows players who have been waiting for more than seven years to receive one.
Christy Hengel, who made his first concertina in 1955 in New Ulm, Minnesota,
introduced innovations into the concertina’s design. The changes he made resulted in an
instrument that was lighter, easier to play, yet still capable of producing a full and rich
sound.
Jerry Minar, who has now taken over Hengel’s business, said in a September 6, 2005
“Minneapolis Star Tribune” article by Robert Franklin that Hengel concertinas represent
“all the qualities all the players are looking for- beauty, ease of playing, fast response,
volume and tone. We refer to it as having Corvette performance. You can express
yourself.”
Karl Hartwich and his band members travel in style in a recently purchased
ambulance. Karl joked that they are the Polka Paramedics, ready for any
emergency. Dial 922 for their assistance!
21
The German concertina has a large and square shape with two-notes-to-a-button that
are played on the push and pull of the instrument. “Finally, the reeds of the German
concertina are not organized sequentially as tonal steps in musical scales; rather they are
scattered about like letters on a typewriter’s keyboard, in accordance of their frequency
of use” according to James P. Leary in his article “The German Concertina in the Upper
Midwest.”
Hartwich did not know anyone in the Orion community who knew about concertinas, so
he was a musical loner as a teenager. He played his concertina along with records, tapes
and the radio- spending three to five hours each day practicing. “My parents had to tell
me to stop.” Six months after receiving the instrument, at the age of 12, he started his
own band. His band members at that time comprised a musical family tree with branches
grafted on in later years through friendships and marriage. “My ma played the tuba, and
my friend Doug Ihlefeld played the drums,” he recalls.
By the time Karl was in high school, he was playing three nights a week in a German
restaurant in Geneseo, Illinois. “It didn’t pay a lot, but we got free beer,” he said. Karl
strolled in the restaurant, walking from table to table, taking musical requests. He also
played jobs with his high school shop teacher. The shop teacher played the banjo, and
after late nights of playing in a bar or at a dance, his teacher would let him catch up on
his sleep in the high school shop class. “I hold the record for skipping school in Orion,
Illinois,” Karl commented.
Today Hartwich is 45 years old and his duties as a full-time bandleader keep him busy
during a 60 to 63 hour workweek. A typical week includes driving to jobs, playing at
festivals and other events, and spending time recording in the studio. As the bandleader,
Karl is responsible for making phone calls to set up play dates, buying and maintaining
the trucks and trailers the band uses to transport equipment and the musicians, handling
as many as 45 people on the payroll, and finding substitutes when musicians don’t show
up for jobs.
Karl remembers when the band’s van broke down while they were traveling through
the Southwestern United States. “Because I was the bandleader, I had to fly the band
members home and get the van fixed,” he said. Karl’s play dates include venues in Iowa,
Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as traveling musical tours to Canada, Mexico, the
Caribbean, and the October Festival in Munich, Germany. He said that he and his band
members spend 150 to 200 days of the year on the road.
Karl’s band members are ready for any emergency, traveling to and from jobs in an
ambulance that once belonged to the Northern Onondaga Volunteer Ambulance, Inc.
(NOVA) in Liverpool, New York. Karl located the ambulance online at the AmbuNet.
com Web site.
22
The bells and whistles on the ambulance all work. “It has three different sirens. The
lights all work. It saves a lot of time driving. It will do 104 miles per hour with the
trailer behind it,” Hartwich reports.
Because the polka crowd is getting older, he jokes that dancers on the floor can call the
Polka Paramedics in case of a medical emergency; “Call 922 for the last responders.”
Hartwich became serious when speculating on the future of polka music in the Midwest.
“A lot of live music in general is dying. TV, computers, movies are the end of the world
for live music.” He did; however, mention younger musicians who are carrying on the
concertina tradition such as Adam Sandhurst and the Jolly Jammers band, Dain Moldan
and Dain’s Dutchmen and Corey Miller. “There are younger bands out there,” he said.
Adam Sandhurst started to play the trumpet in third grade and had already taken piano
lessons for seven years before his great uncle Vince gave him his first concertina at the
age of 12. “I picked it up to see if I could make it work. It seemed to be clicking for me.
The base side and the melody side were easy for me to pick up. I would play through a
song and learn it in about 15 minutes. If they put a piece of sheet music in front of me, I
could read that too.”
Sandhurst, who is related to concertina players Peter and Paul Wendinger and Donnie
Klossner, has additional musical family connections to his great uncle Vince Sandhurst and his grandfather, Delmar ‘Boots’ Muehlbauer. It is interesting to note that both
Hartwich and Sandhurst started their musical careers on the trumpet. Victor Greene in
his book “A Passion for Polka” writes that Germans and Bohemians were preeminent in
brass-band music because of their religious, folk and military traditions. “Any [American] geographic region with a sizable German population seemed to develop brass bands
almost automatically.”
Today, Adam is 22 years old, working in Waite Park, Minnesota and leader of the Jolly
Jammers Band. He is a part-time musician who plays his concertina in the band and
works full time for a glass company in Waite Park. “I play two to three times a month.
I like to play what I respect. Karl Hartwich and I play the same German, Czech, Dutchmen style. I appreciate this style, and I wouldn’t change. I’ve pretty much played for
older people. I don’t know what I would do if I played for a younger audience.”
“For a polka emergency, don’t
forget to CALL 922.”
23
One thing that all polka musicians and dancers have in common is the feeling that
everyone is part of one big and extended family. Karl Hartwich, tuba player Tony
Kaminski, Becky Livermore and Terry Ard enjoy a moment to relax at the Humboldt Polka
Festival in September 2005.
The Dutchmen style of music that both Hartwich and Sandhurst play derives its name
from the word Deutsch meaning German in the German language. According to the
article “Polka: The Changes and Developments Through the Years,” by Mollie Busta,
“The style began in New Ulm, Minnesota, where many of the settlers were Germanspeaking Bohemians...” Germans living in a part of Czechoslovakia referred to as
Sudetenland retained their German identity, but they were also familiar with the Czech
musical traditions of their Czech neighbors in the region.
When Germans from this area of Czechoslovakia arrived in the United States in the mid
to late 1800s, they brought their musical traditions with them. Whoopee John Wilfahrt
started playing this style of music in Minnesota around 1918 according to Richard
March. Another famous band to use the Dutchmen name was the Six Fat Dutchmen
from New Ulm, Minnesota, a popular band in the late 1920s.
24
Sandhurst described the Dutchmen style of concertina playing as smooth and slower
than the Polish style. “We try to hold notes to create harmony. We don’t hop all over the
place and do a lot of runs like the Polish style.”
Karl Hartwich added that the Dutchmen style of playing hasn’t changed much since its
inception in New Ulm in the early 1900s. Concertina bands are “still playing the same
stuff that came out of New Ulm in 1910” he said.
One reason for the lack of musical modification within the Dutchmen style of concertina
playing may be the way the musicians learn to play the instrument and the design of the
instrument itself. Frank Melmar, musician and music teacher pointed out that “There
aren’t that many people around who play concertinas. Many concertina players play by
ear. A lot of them can’t read music. They learn to play by watching other players and
playing along with them.”
There are two ways of handing music down from one generation to the next according
to Terry Ard. The first is the “watch and learn” method. One musician observes and
learns songs from another. “You physically meet someone and learn the nuances of the
song. It’s not obvious how they are creating a particular run or passage on a concertina.
It’s like jazz guitar. You have to physically be there to see how they do it.” The second
way of keeping music alive is through musical notations and sheet music. “Written sheet
music allows you to pass music along after a person is dead and gone. Musical notations
allow you to create a new style” and alter the original sound Ard explained.
Sheet music can be difficult to find, time-consuming to arrange and painstaking to write
for the concertina. Innovations in the Dutchmen style may be stifled because the original
sound of the music is not altered on paper and passed down to the next generation of
players. Since many concertina players play by ear, rather than from sheet music, young
players like Adam Sandhurst say that they must look to more accomplished players like
Karl Hartwich or Brian Brueggan “for complicated help.”
“Karl and Brian Brueggan made it into a head music. Karl will play a note and tell the
musicians what he wants. He will call out the key changes- B flat- and the band is in B
flat,” March explained.
“If you learn songs by watching the musicians, or if you are related to the musicians,
and want to carry on their traditions,” maybe you feel more of a connection to the past
Ard remarked.
Another reason for the lack of changes in the Dutchmen musical style could be the
design of the concertina itself. Whereas the accordion is similar to a piano in design,
with one key representing one note making it easy to play; “They laid the buttons [on a
concertina] out in a very strange order.
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When a chromatic scale is played, your fingers are dancing all over the place. You ask
yourself, ‘What in the world was that?’ It’s easy for an accordion player to transition
over to something new,” but the same is not always true for a concertina player Ard
continued.
Frank Melmar added that “You get a different note if you push or pull on the bellows.
One button on the concertina is two notes depending upon a push or pull of the bellows.
The concertina is more limited [than the piano accordion] because of the way it’s built.
It’s more complicated to play and harder to find sheet music.”
Robbin Becker, banjo player for Karl Hartwich’s band, said that Karl has “stayed
consistent with what he’s doing for the last 30 years. We do some foxtrots with a 4/4
tempo. That’s the closest we get to anything new. You have to put more thought into it to
learn new tunes on a concertina.”
Becker, whose grandmother taught him to read music and play the piano when he was in
third grade, plays the banjo by ear in Hartwich’s band. “I play the banjo by ear and try
to follow [Karl’s] key changes. It’s a hard way of making a living. The money just isn’t
there. Polka bands are on the lower end of the pay scale, but I love what I’m doing.”
Without musical advancement in the Dutchmen style of music, the future for this type of
music appears bleak. Becker summed the situation up when he said; “It’s going to keep
getting worse until it’s a dead art. More of the senior citizens are passing on, and there
probably will be little call for it. You don’t see many young people coming to polka
fests. The Dutchmen style is on its way out.”
Richard March described a typical date for his mother and father’s generation as going
dancing. “To be socially suave, you had to dance. Now, you aren’t marginalized at
all if you can’t dance. You don’t see Arthur Murray’s School of Dance in downtowns
anymore.” But March is confident that ballroom dances will continue to include polka
tunes in between the foxtrots and tangos.
When asked why he endures the 60-63 hour workweeks and countless miles on the road,
Karl Hartwich said, “Seeing the people. “Sitting around, drinking beer and seeing the
people. If you have fun with the people, they will have fun with you!”
Karl Hartwich was inducted into the World Concertina Hall of Fame in New Prague,
Minnesota on Friday, September 16, 2005. The purpose of the World Concertina
Congress, which was established in 1975 and selects the inductees into the Hall of Fame,
is to elevate the image of the concertina as a musical instrument and to honor musicians
who have contributed unselfishly to the production, promotion and preservation of the
concertina.
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Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen reach out to crowds of all ages and musical
tastes. Terry Ard combines the old and the new with his traditional lederhosen
and modern guitar. The band was playing at an Oktoberfest celebration in Des
Moines, Iowa in 2005, and their traditonal German dress adds to the ethnic flavor
of the event.
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Happy Music for Happy People
Lori Runkle’s Memories from Childhood
I remember counting out the rhythm to a polka or waltz tune when
I was a child. My mother taught my sister and me how to clap our
hands to the beat of a song when we were about 3 or 4 years old.
“My mother gave me the gift of music.” Lori Runkle
My mother sits in her brown Lazy Boy chair with the leg rest fully extended. She is
playing Solitaire, her cards spread out in a horizontal line and singing, “I’ve Got a Never
Ending Love for You” off key. “Hey, hey,” she says after the song ends. Polka is happy
music for happy people.
We are watching the Big Joe Polka Show on the Rural Free Delivery Network. RFD
claims to be rural America’s most important network, and Big Joe’s show is sandwiched
in among Classic Tractor Specials, Dutch Oven Cooking, Horse Sense, The Cattle Show,
Love of Quilting, Ag Ph.D., and Gospel Sampler.
I ask my mother what RFD means, and she explains that, “Rural Free Delivery (RFD) is
what I wrote on my letters to friends in the country when I was growing up. That’s how
the post office knew the letter was for someone in the country.”
In the days before an extensive county road system existed in Iowa, when my mother
was a young girl, the problem for farm families was that their mail had to be picked up
from not-so-nearby post offices. Picking up mail in town often involved time consuming
travel for people living in the country, time that could better be spent doing chores or
working in the field. Rural Free Delivery brought the mail to the farmer’s door. In this
way, RFD became an important lifeline between rural and urban America.
“All the way from South Dakota, we’ve got the Dakota Band Wagon,” Big Joe
announces on the RFD network from his Saturday night time-slot. “Does anybody know
the Lichtensteiner Polka?” he booms on.
Lichtenstein is a small nation that’s often overlooked due to its diminutive size and
unfortunate geographical location. This petite country is situated between the two
overbearing nations of Austria and Switzerland; therefore, many Americans are
oblivious to its existence.
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What am I doing on a Saturday night at 9:20 p.m. watching Big Joe’s rather large tummy
jiggle around to the beat of drums, a concertina and a clarinet? I suppose the answer
is that I grew up with the OOM-pa-pa sound of Americanized polka music filling my
day-to-day activities. My mother loves the music, so here we both sit in matching brown
Lazy Boy chairs with our leg rests extended!
I do a polka step out to the kitchen and pour some coffee into the smiley-face mugs,
spinning dramatically with an invisible partner after one of the mugs is safely in my
mother’s hands.
My mother taught my sister and me to beat out musical rhythm, our hands slapping our
knees, when we were toddlers. We were dancing by the age of four, so these steps are as
familiar to me as my own feet, and the two combine intuitively to move me across the
TV room.
“We’ve got another tune that will blow your mind out. Hot dang, it’s good. Make way
for the Schmilski Band,” Big Joe bellows because the volume of our television set is
quite loud.
The violin player in the Schmilski band is playing his violin while standing on his head.
The tuba player grabs his shoes and pumps the violinist’s legs together and apart to the
beat of the song, the Clarinet Polka. I am startled when my mother hollers over the volume of the television, “There you are.”
AKSARBEN, Nebraska spelled backwards, is the site of the racetrack where my mother’s favorite Big Joe Polka Show episode was filmed. My sister Louise and I dance
across the television screen. Louise is leading because she always leads when we dance.
“That’s you and your sister,” she says for the twelfth or thirteenth time because that’s
how many times we have both seen this extra-special episode, the Runkle Girls/Her
Girls Big Joe Polka Show episode.
My sister and I make a fine pair with our matching bushy hair, a popular perm style in
the 1980s, and faces that radiate teenage angst. AKSARBEN isn’t the only episode of a
polka celebration in my mother’s life. Labor Day weekend is truly her time to shine.
My mother’s love of polka music makes Labor Day a unique holiday in my family.
Labor Day weekend is not a passive experience like the experience of watching Big Joe
from the comfort of our Lazy Boy chairs. It’s a weekend of dance.
Labor Day may not be a holiday that rivals Christmas Eve or Superbowl Sunday for
many Americans, but for my family, Labor Day weekend is Christmas cookies, touchdowns, and ho-ho-ho bellowed from the rooftops.
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About 12 years ago, in the out-of-the-way Iowa town of Humboldt, population 5,000,
my mother decided to assemble a polka festival committee so that the members could
organize a beer-drinking, foot-stomping fest. The committee members were a small
group of my mother’s civic-minded, polka-dancing friends.
There was Marge Martin, whose beehive hairstyle endured the decades, even if her
original hair color and intensity did not. There was Fred Myers, whose wife died
recently, after forgetting her husband’s identity due to cobwebs and plaque coating her
brain. There was Mary Mulligan, the procrastinating head of the group who drove my
mother to chain-smoke cigarettes with her mellow approach to paying the bills.
Mary would wait to pay polka fest bills until the very last minute causing my mother’s
face to glow red when she simultaneously smoked and said, “I gave her that bill 3 weeks
ago. Why did she wait so long to pay it?”
And lastly, there were Paul and Sandy Wright, who owned a recreational vehicle the size
of small house, which eventually became the control center of the fest’s activities. The
control center was where the behind-the-scenes action happened at the fest. My mother
and Sandy Wright counted festival profits in the house-on-wheel’s shag carpet interior.
The committee members sipped Pepsi or Budweiser around the faux-wooden kitchen
table when Labor Day weekend temperatures hit 92 degrees. And, Mary Mulligan issued
directives to underlings through the mesh of the RV’s screen door. “Fred, the Polka
Queen and King told me that we need to put more wax on the dance floor in the 4-H
Building. Can you take care of that?”
Fred would dutifully, though slowly, shuffle his arthritic knees over to the 4-H building
and sprinkle the magic wax into the corners of the dance floor. Waxing the wooden floor
was something an elderly man like Fred had to negotiate prudently. The dancers may be
spinning in brisk polka circles or waltzing in delicate ballroom boxes when he entered
the building with the slippery substance.
“If they want more wax, they can tap their toes in the pile I made in the corner,” Fred
probably thought as he shuffled away. And, that is exactly what some of the couples
did- the leading man expertly guiding his female partner to the corner of the floor- then
dancing away at twice the speed.
Wax on the soles of a dancer’s shoes is like water between the treads of a car’s tires.
Wax makes human hydroplaning possible. The slippery film causes the dancer to
glide over the surface of the dance floor like a hydroplaning car disconnecting from
the certainty of an asphalt highway. It’s a bit of a risk either way, but that risk is what
separates the polka king and queen from amateur ballroom dancers, or NASCAR great
Kasey Kahne from Sunday drivers like the conservative middle-aged couple who live
down the block.
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It is rather easy, when you grow up with polka music, to discuss it seriously with other
polka dancers. After all, there is a Grammy Award category for the best polka album of
the year. In 2001, this award went to Jimmy Sturr for his album Gone Polka. Sturr also
won in 2002 for his Top of the World album, and then again in 2003 for Let’s Polka
‘Round. But, to the uninitiated, whenever the word “polka” is mentioned, it usually
elicits an uneasy laugh and comments like, “Is Lawrence Welk dead yet?”
For the record, he is dead. Lawrence Welk- born March 11, 1903 in Strasburg, North
Dakota- died May 17, 1992 in Santa Monica, California. But, his legacy lives on
through his son, Larry, at the Welk Theater in Branson, Missouri.
Henry Cuesta, whom my sister and I remember from our shared childhood of Saturday
night Lawrence Welk Show television viewings, is still alive. He blows his clarinet
hard enough to disturb his jet-black hairpiece on the Branson, Missouri stage of the
Welk Theater. We were thrilled to see him in a live performance at the Welk Theater on
the July 4th weekend in 2003. The other members of the Lawrence Welk Show re-run
repeatedly on Iowa Public Television every Sunday night. They continue to entertain and
delight in that special Welk family style, growing neither older nor less innocent in the
square box of the television screen. Perhaps Lawrence Welk is watching the Humboldt
festivities with a smile on his face, bestowing his champagne blessing on the overheated
dancers.
Every Labor Day for the past 12 years, polka aficionados have been arriving in
Humboldt, Iowa to flood the Cozy Corner and Super 8 motels to overbooked and
blinking “NO VACANCY” signs. Recreational vehicles that guzzle 8 miles-to-thegallon of gas roll in from Texas, Arizona, Minnesota, and of course Iowa, to connect
their hungry electrical cables to the main power supply at the Humboldt County
Fairgrounds. Old friendships are reunited even before the bands arrive. Campers relax in
their lawn chairs and share a nightcap with gin or vodka while the mosquitoes cruise the
air for slightly tipsy blood.
The bands begin to waltz in, each in their own style and time. The Lyle Beaver Band
arrives with the bandleader’s born-again Christian assurance of salvation beating a
steady rhythm. Karl and the Country Dutchmen, a band whose name my friend Greg
McElwain said sounds like a porn movie, arrive in an ambulance. Becky and Terry stoll
the grounds chatting with friends, confident in their roles of soon-to-be husband and
wife and professional muscians. Near the beer tent, Bruce Bradley cracks a joke and his
laughter floats in my direction.
I look around and think to myself; “I am a part of this big family.”
Friends who are my age look at me strangely when I mention that there is a polka
dancing tradition in my family. This type of music does not resonate well in mainstream
American culture and leads me to wonder what will happen to the German-American
31
musical tradition of concertinas and lederhosen in the next decade. MTV is all about
current musical trends, sensual dance moves, and hip-hop beats that bump and grind out
of the television screen.
Sex sells.
Polka music is Roll out the Barrel; Apple, Peaches Pumpkin Pie; the Blue Skirt Waltz;
and the time-honored etiquette of ballroom rules.
Every year over Labor Day at the Humboldt Polka Festival in Humboldt, Iowa, the
crowd is a little thinner and the hair is a little grayer. Old friends at the festival discuss
the deaths of even older friends, and I wonder if this musical tradition can survive when
my mother’s generation is no longer around to nurture it.
My mother remembers her childhood Friday nights when her Uncle Mark would play
the squeeze box and neighbors would gather to dance late into the night. “The kids
would sleep on the pile of coats,” she said, while the adults danced until midnight or two
in the morning.
On the Polkacatalog.com web site, there is a quote from Big Joe Beno himself, host of
the Big Joe Polka Show.
“Polka Tots, Make Polka Teens,
and Polka Teens,
Make Adult Human Beings.”
Dad - “Big Joe”
I don’t know if I consider myself a Polka Adult Human Being, but I do hope that the
music lives on at festivals across the United States. Polka is happy music for happy
people, so get up out of your Lazy Boy and dance.
A HUGE thank you is expressed to all of the bandleaders and the band members who
took the time to talk with me about their love of music. I learned so much about my
heritage while I was working on this project with these fantastic musicians. THANK
YOU!
Lori Runkle - February 27, 2006
32
She photographs… to take control of her own history. She
said it was the fear that she was losing her memories of
her sister that led her to photography, so that she might
never lose a relationship so completely again.
Interview with Nan Goldin in “Aperture” Fall 2004
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Profiles
Polka Festival C ommittee Members
LaVon Runkle and Mary Mulligan take a much-deserved break after working at the 2005
Humboldt Polka Festival. In addition to being my mother, which is a demanding job,
Runkle is the founder of the festival in Humboldt and a member of the Polka Festival
Committee. Mary Mulligan is an active member of the Friendship Force in addition to
being an accomplished dancer. This organization is active around the globe and works to
build international understanding by arranging one to two week intercultural travel and
home stay vacations for its members. Mulligan looks forward to traveling to New Zealand
in 2006 on the Friendship Force program.
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Profiles of the People:
Polka People in the Midwest
35
Donna Rogers
The Tyndall Accordion Band
Donna Rogers travels to polka festivals around the
Midwest selling music and clothing for J & P Czech
Records Sales based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Rogers also
plays an accordion in the Tyndall Accordion Band.
According to Rogers, the band started 30 years ago in
Tyndall, South Dakota, and took its name from that
location. “There are 6 to 8 members in our band, but we
lost 2 members in 2004.”
Rogers is noticing smaller crowds at some of the festivals.
“Older people have health problems or they lose their
spouse, and young people don’t come for this happy
music.”
Rogers said that to attract more dancers to the Tyndall
Accordion Band’s performances, “We’ve added country
western and two-steps. [We play] 2 polkas, 2 waltzes, a
fox trot and country western for variety.”
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37
Raymond Delfs
“You better meet that guy.”
Raymond Delfs attended the Midwest Polka Festival in Humboldt, Iowa over the 2005
Labor Day weekend. “I don’t hate one thing about this fest,” he said while relaxing in
his lawn chair outside of his camper. “There are a lot of nice people; like family.”
The flowers on the table are in honor of Raymond and his wife Janice’s 50th wedding
anniversary. Janice remembers meeting Raymond in 1949 when her father went down to
help Raymond’s brother pick corn. Janice recalls her father saying, “You better meet that
guy,” however “I didn’t know I was going to marry him,” she added. The Delfs were
married in 1955 after Raymond finished his service in the U.S. Navy.
38
The couple’s courtship
included roller skating and
dancing, and they have been
dancing together ever since they
first met.
Janice described polka festivals
as “one big and happy family,”
but Raymond commented that
many of the friends he used to
see at dances “are gone now.
Even musicians die,” he said.
39
Corey Miller
“...the reason that they play the concertina is because they
fell in love with the traditional sound.”
Corey Miller, a 20-year old bandleader and concertina player from Minnesota, listened
to the Dutchmen style of polka music when he was a child. Miller comes from a musical
family, so when he picked up a concertina at the age of 14, he said that the music was all
ready in his head.
“I do think that an accordion is more versatile than a concertina. As you may know, a
piano accordion is laid out like a keyboard and a concertina has no real order to it. I
think the layout of the buttons on the concertina has some impact on what can be played,
or at least played easily. In addition I think accordion players tend to be more flexible in
their style.”
“I think that concertina players have a sense of pride in what kind of music they play
and also the reason that they play the concertina is because they fell in love with the
traditional sound. I think this might make them more reluctant to change their styles and
song lists. I know that’s how it is for me.”
40
“You need to play what the crowd wants which includes more foxtrots. In addition to
what you play, you also need to be an entertainer, telling jokes and relating to the crowd
when you aren’t actually playing. Even though I think this is what you need to do to get
a full crowd, I can tell you I do not do this. I play what the band and I like to play which
includes mostly polkas and waltzes. I like to stay with more traditional songs and songs
that the Elmer Scheid and Jerry Schuft bands played.”
Corey Miller, 20-year old bandleader and concertina player
41
Jim Lombard
Woodworking and Polka
Jim Lombard, who is from Dayton, Iowa began attending
polka festivals in 1989 when he went to his first festival in
Stratford, Iowa. “I haven’t missed a Saturday in Humboldt
since the fest began,” he said.
Lombard worked at the Nissen Meat Packing Plant in
Webster City, Iowa until 1985. In June of that year, he had
back surgery. After rehabilitation from his back surgery, he
went to the Easter Seals Camp Sunnyside in Des Moines,
Iowa for four weeks to learn woodworking.
“I’ve made a Labrador dog, a bear, a deer in the forest
and bird houses. I send for patterns from woodworking
books. It gives me something to do, and everyone likes
my work.”
Lombard’s woodworking shop is in his garage, but he
keeps his scroll saw in the basement year-around.
42
43
The Wendinger Band
Musicians who call Minnesota home
It is of course no coincidence that the places of heavy German and Czech settlement in
Minnesota were also the most active musical band centers. In one aptly named town,
New Prague, which had been settled initially in 1854 by Czechs and later included
a minority of Germans and Danes, a Bohemian ensemble was first organized in the
1870s...
Victor Greene
“A Passion for Polka: Old-Time Ethnic Music in America”
44
45
Everybody Dance!
46
One BIG Happy Family Productions
Photography, layout and
design by Lori Runkle
FOCUS Grant funding from Iowa State
University, in partnership with sage advice
from my advisors Jody Graden and Barbara
Mack, helped bring this project to life.
47
Roll out the Barrel
48
The End...
This book is dedicated to my mother and to my sister,
LaVon Runkle and Louise Runkle, two women who are the
heart of my world.
Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future, and
just as an answer to a riddle seems so obvious once it is revealed, it seems curious to me
now that I passed through all those early moments with no idea of their weight.
Lucy Grealy, “Autobiography of a Face”
49
Don’t forget the tuba...