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CHAPTER 1
The Beginning
Much to his undoubted chagrin and frustration, my father was drafted into the military while my mother was still pregnant, which is why I was born in 1941 in my mother's hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, which is right down the road from the Basketball Hall of Fame, by the way, rather than the diminutive, two-square-mile town of Florida, New York, my father's hometown, and their place of residence when they got married. It had to have been hard on my mother, being uprooted from her new home and having her first child without her husband on the scene. But my mother was a tough lady, and I'm sure she handled it with grace and courage. After my father finished his tour of duty, we resettled in the town of Florida, and my parents bought the house across the street from the home in which my father was born.
I've lived in that very house ever since and have no plans to leave; if you ever visit me in Florida, you'll understand why. It's a lovely town, quiet and tranquil, filled with nice restaurants and nicer people. (And in 2010, we even lost our status as a one-stoplight town when they put up a second one.) Best of all, I know everybody, and everybody knows me. In every sense of the word, it is my home. I've been lucky enough to travel across the country countless times and perform all over the world, but I wouldn't want to live anywhere other than Florida. Either I was born a small-town boy, or I've become one over time, and the thought of living in a big city doesn't do it for me. And besides, depending on traffic, Manhattan is only a ninety-ish-minute drive away. Why would I want to be anywhere else?
The Florida population back when I was a kid was around 1,500, so there was only one school, the S.S. Seward Institute. If you went to Seward, you were there from kindergarten to high school graduation. (I should mention that if you're ever in Florida, you'll see the name Seward a whole bunch because it was the birthplace of William Henry Seward. Seward, who lived from 1801 to 1872, was arguably one of the finest politicians of his era. He was the twelfth governor of New York, served as secretary of state under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, was an outspoken opponent of slavery, and, most notably, spearheaded the purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867. Yes, a guy from Florida bought Alaska. If he'd have played accordion in a polka band, good ol' William Henry Seward would've been perfect.) However, Seward Institute wasn't named after the former governor, but rather his father, who started the school back in 1846.
The Seward Institute was just up the street from my house — everything in Florida was just up the street from my house, if you want to get technical about it — so I was able to walk to and from school each day, all by myself. (Another reason that my small town trumps your big city: Parents can let their children wander the streets without worrying. The only concern these days is that after a heavy snow, you have to keep your eye peeled for a speeding snowmobile.) Right across the street from the school stood the Lyceum, a bowling alley that, up until I was in sixth grade, used to be an auditorium. When it got converted, we couldn't have been more thrilled because the school's two physical education teachers put their heads together and decided that bowling was an excellent way to burn calories, so we spent many a gym class knocking down pins. (The Lyceum is now my office, my polka headquarters, and the home of the Jimmy Sturr Travel Agency.)
Here's what it was like to live in Florida: Two or three blocks down from the Lyceum stood a hardware store, right on Main Street. It was a three-story building, on top of which sat an enormous speaker. Each and every December, without fail, the hardware store's owner would fire up his record player and pipe Christmas music through those speakers, music that could be heard and enjoyed throughout the entire town. Listening to "Jingle Bells" or "Winter Wonderland" on your way to or from school, while seeing snowmobiles cutting a swath over the freshly fallen snow, just made you feel good. Everybody in Florida had a snowmobile — I got my first one when I turned sixteen — and there weren't any laws governing when or where you could drive them. Whenever it snowed at night, you'd see a dozen or so of them zipping up and down Main Street, stopping at one bar, then moving on to the next. I'll admit that the barhopping looked like a whole lot of fun to my teenage self, but knowing what I know now, I would never drive a snowmobile while intoxicated, nor should you.
I was a good kid, in part because my father was a strict but benevolent disciplinarian, and, in part, because I was just a good kid. I played every sport my school had to offer, specifically basketball, baseball, and soccer (unfortunately, they didn't offer football), and also took to the ice with our town's hockey team. But sports was only one of my favorite pastimes. The other was music. And that started very early on.
Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Schmerhorn, was not only my first-grade teacher but from grades one through three, she taught me piano. I enjoyed banging away on her keyboard, but it didn't particularly inspire me. In retrospect, it's possible that I didn't take to piano because Mrs. Schmerhorn was teaching me more exercises than songs. Parents and music teachers take note: If you want your children to take to their instruments, make sure you give them some context. Yes, they need to learn their scales, but they also have to learn why they're learning their scales. This is probably why I didn't stick with piano. But music wasn't about to let me go that easily, because music was in our house.
During an assembly on my first day of third grade, the principal, Mr. McLain, said, "Okay, kids, show of hands. How many of you have a musical instrument at home?" Two seconds after my hand shot into the air, he asked, "What kind of instrument do you have, Mr. Sturr?"
"A saxophone, sir. It's my dad's."
"A saxophone, eh? Well, you go ahead and get that saxophone! Go get it right now!"
My father played sax around town, sometimes with a dance group, sometimes with a marching band. When I was five or six years old, that instrument was always upstairs in our attic; every so often, I'd sneak up the stairs, pick up the shiny, curvy instrument, and pretend I was wailing away. I'd never actually blow; I'd just place my lips around the mouthpiece and finger the keys, imagining that I was surrounded by a roomful of people dancing. It was considerably more enjoyable than plinking and plunking out another étude for Mrs. Schmerhorn.
I had no idea why the principal wanted me to get the sax — maybe it was simply for show-and-tell — nor did I know what I was going to do with it when I returned, but I was nonetheless thrilled. "Yes, sir!" I said, standing up and hustling to the door. "I'll be right back!" It took me about three minutes to sprint home, two minutes to convince my mother to let me borrow my dad's sax, then another four minutes to sprint back. All my classmates oohed and aahed over that glittering saxophone; the principal and my teacher beamed at me as if I were the star pupil. Even though I didn't play a single note, that was, in some ways, the beginning of my life, because from that moment on, my life was all about music.
That very week I started taking private sax lessons, which weren't all that thrilling, although they were more exciting than the piano lessons, since I finally learned some actual songs. It was slow going, but I stuck with it, because I was pretty sure that if I got good, it could lead to ... something. Knowing my dad's work with his bands, I was aware that a guy from Florida could play for adoring crowds (for a burgeoning ham like me, playing for adoring crowds sounded pretty great), but I didn't know how to get there. That didn't stop me from trying both the sax and the clarinet, the saxophone's first cousin, which I took up a couple years later.
Eventually, I began to improve, and the more I improved, the more I enjoyed playing; the more I enjoyed playing, the more I appreciated the polka music that flew from virtually every radio in town. The music's stomping beats and raucous feel hit me on a gut level and gave me something to aspire to. (I finally began to understand how those boring études and overly simple melodies I practiced time and again could be useful; if you know how to do simple stuff, it's easier to do the complex stuff.) Polka became part of my daily life. Polka was in my blood.
All which was why, when I was eleven years old, I started my very first band.
I pitched the idea to our choral teacher, Mrs. Hansen, who gave me a hearty endorsement, dubbed us the Melody Makers, and offered to help us in any way she possibly could. Under Mrs. Hansen's supervision, we practiced and practiced and practiced some more, usually after school, sometimes in my living room, and sometimes in the school's music room. Eventually, we got pretty darn good ... or at least I thought so at the time. It's probably best for everybody that no tapes of those early rehearsals exist. If I were to place a wager, I'd bet we sounded exactly like what we were: a bunch of eager kids joyously stumbling through a repertoire of simple polkas.
I still remember each and every one of those guys. The accordion player — and he was a good one, even back then — was named Dave Hawkins; Dave still lives not too far from my house and has traded in the squeeze box for a real estate business. Our drummer was Tommy Greco, a great guy who ultimately became a police inspector in Middletown, New York; he's now enjoying his retirement in one of the Carolinas, hopefully banging on his kit every once in a while. Our trumpeters were Paul Ketterer and Corky Palmer, and those guys could blow loud, believe me. Finally, there were the Melody Makers' two Polish members (worth noting because so much of polka culture originated in Poland), drummer Walt Miloszewski and Tommy Regelski. A terrific piano player, Tommy was the only Melody Maker other than yours truly who went on to have a career in music, specifically that of a professor at his alma mater, SUNY Fredonia. I sometimes wonder if he thinks about those numerous rehearsals of ours when he's shaping and molding the minds of New York's up-and-coming young musicians.
The Melody Makers' auspicious debut took place at one of our school's monthly Parent Teacher Association meetings, a job that came to me the way many jobs in the music industry come about — connections. In this case my connection was my mother, who was the PTA president. (My father, it should be noted, was the president of the school board, which I'm sure didn't hurt our cause either.) I don't remember our set list, and, as was the case with our rehearsals, the performance wasn't documented on tape. I'm certain, however, that the PTA gave the Melody Makers a wonderful reception. The only downside to the job was that we didn't get paid!
By the time I hit junior high school, I changed the name of the band from the Melody Makers to Jimmy Sturr and the Golden Bells Orchestra. Why? Well, because back then, it seemed like almost every polka band in the great Northeast had a "Bell" in its name. For instance, the great Gene Wisniewski's band was called the Harmony Bells Orchestra, Bernie Witkowski's terrific unit was known as the Silver Bells Orchestra, and good ol' Joe Resetar led the Liberty Bell Orchestra. Why all the bells? No clue. And I never asked. But I figured if bells were good enough for Gene Wisniewski, Bernie Witkowski, and Joe Resetar, then bells were good enough for Jimmy Sturr.
I don't know whether it was because we were that good or that cheap, but for whatever reason, the Golden Bells were hired to play a bunch of the well-attended local street festivals, as well as the occasional Polish wedding. We didn't work as much as we would've liked, however, not because we weren't professional sounding, or because of our ages, but because the Golden Bells Orchestra wasn't the only polka band in the area. As I learned over the next several years, Florida and the surrounding towns and villages comprised one of the great polka music hotbeds in the Northeast.
The most popular group in our area was called the Gay Musicians, which played the majority of the high school dances and seemingly all of the weddings, with an orchestra led by a man named Joe Zack a close second. Joe was so obsessed with music (almost as obsessed as me) that he eventually opened a record shop in which almost 90 percent of the albums were polka, most of which were on Dana Records.
Right now you're probably asking yourself, "Why were there so many polka bands in the Florida, New York, area? And who the heck is Gene Wisniewski? And what the heck is Dana Records?" Well, take a seat, my friends, because I'm about to give you a brief history of polka.
CHAPTER 2
Jimmy Sturr's Brief History of Polka
Jimmy Sturr's brief history of polka can't officially begin without Jimmy Sturr's brief history of Florida.
Founded in 1760 by some intrepid, forward-thinking Anglo-European colonists and incorporated in 1946, Florida, New York, is the undisputed "Onion Capital of the World," despite what those big talkers in Vidalia, Georgia, or Oneida Lake, New York, have to say about it. Florida is covered with onion farms, many of which are heavy with what's called black dirt, a type of dirt whose properties make it the perfect birthing place for perfect onions. Even today, it seems like you can't drive a country block without running into an enormous onion farm ... or two ... or three.
When all those colonists came from Europe to work in the black dirt, they brought their lives and traditions with them, and by that I mean their traditional recipes, their favored styles of clothing, and, most important for the sake of our story, their music. For the majority of these newcomers, that music was polka. (Believe it or not, you can hear the roots of polka in compositions from eighteenth- century classical composers like Frederic Chopin and Sergei Rachmaninoff.) All of which is why polka has been a major part of my life since I was a kid — it was always there. I guess you could say it was my first love.
But I wasn't alone. If you lived in Florida, you had polka in your blood because the music was everywhere you turned. On the radio: polka. At the high school dances: polka. At weddings: polka. At all the town celebrations: polka. It was all polka all the time, and it was glorious. The bubbly, effervescent melodies ... the party-inducing beats ... the lyrics that made you smile, even if they were in Polish and you didn't understand them. I believe that polka was (and is) the reason that Florida was (and is) one heck of a happy town. This isn't to say that there wasn't any other music floating around — I enjoyed Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent, and the like, certainly — but polka was my rock and roll. Why? Because of how it felt.
Polka is unlike any other style of music for a variety of reasons, the most notable being its time signature. For you nonmusicians out there, a time signature denotes how many beats there are in a single measure. (To break it down even further, a measure, when you're reading music, is the way a song is subdivided. If that's confusing, it's probably time to go visit your elementary school music teacher.) Most songs sport a 4/4 time signature, meaning there are four beats in a measure subdivided by four. A waltz, on the other hand, is 3/4, meaning three beats in a measure subdivided by four. In rock, soul, classical, and country, 4/4 is the most common time signature, but musicians can use any kind of signature they desire. However, if you're writing or arranging something for a polka band — a real polka band — the majority of the time, it'll be in 2/4, although my Orchestra has been known to play a waltz or three. Not only that but the vast majority of polka tunes are formatted in four-measure increments. In other words, all the sections of the song are either four measures long, or eight, or sixteen, or thirty-two, etc. Why all the fours? Because they offer the perfect blueprint for dancing the perfect polka. (You didn't think you'd be getting a musicology lesson from me, did ya?)
When the polka first came to America, its scene, such as it was, became splintered because like all the other European transplants, the practitioners from the different countries in Europe settled all throughout the states. Some planted roots in the New York City area, some around Chicago, and some around Detroit. For example, there were heavy pockets of Slovenians in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, while a good number of Germans settled in Minnesota and Iowa. A huge Polish contingent settled in Buffalo, New York, and they all brought their distinct, individualistic brand of polka to their new homes.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Polka King"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Jimmy Sturr.
Excerpted by permission of BenBella Books, Inc..
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