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Polka Mania!

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The polka is indigenous to Eastern Europe, though the precise location of the musical style's origin is not known. According to ethnomusicologist Charles Keil, polka literally means "Polish woman," and the song and dance originated in Czechoslovakia in the 1830s to mock Polish female stereotypes. The fast tempo and catchy rhythm caught on and eventually were exported by traveling entertainers. In 1844 the music and its dance debuted in Paris and immediately became all the rage, in no small part owing to the scandalous way a man was allowed to rest his hand on a woman's hip while dancing. After its Parisian incubation, the polka exploded around the globe. It crossed the channel to England. In Paraguay it became the national dance. It swept across Argentina and Brazil and the United States.

"There is no evidence that before or after 1844 the polka was ever popular in Poland," Keil writes in Polka Happiness. "As the fashion spread from Paris and London, the Polish aristocracy may have resented the stereotype, and Polish peasants probably had no time to be amused by any possible resemblance to their own regional dance traditions. Polish Americans returning to Poland are often frustrated to find that the music and dance they know and love as 'Polish' does not really exist there in the cities or in the villages or even in the folkloric ensembles unless a special effort is being made to please Polish-American tourists."

The international polka craze ended as abruptly as any fad, though its influence can still be heard in Tex-Mex, samba, even merengue, Keil says. In the United States, the polka retained popularity among Polish immigrants who hungered for music sung in their native language. In the Polish neighborhoods of Chicago, Buffalo, and elsewhere, the polka mutated over time into several strains of a uniquely American musical style. Li'l Wally is considered one of its most important innovators.

"I picked it up real fast, because I love music," he says while recounting those Sunday picnics at Caldwell Woods. In particular a concertina player named Eddie Zima caught his ear. "I sat back on a picnic table to watch the dancers and watch [Zima's] band play," he remembers. "When they started to play some songs I already knew, I turned around nonchalantly and started singing loudly. So this guy Zima taps me on the shoulder and says, 'Kid, come over here and sing.'"

The crowd loved Wally, so much so that when the hat was passed, the band collected more than 80 bucks, a small fortune at the time. Although he was only eight years old, Wally scrapped his junk business and took to singing in the park as often as he could. Couples began booking him for weddings. At night he would sneak out of his house to see hot polka bands playing on Division Street. "I was booked like crazy," he recollects. "At that time I was still going to grammar school. I had so much money in my pocket that my mom accused me of stealing it." By the time he was fifteen years old, he was on Polish Broadway, leading his own group. He never bothered with high school.

Wally played raw, almost improvisational songs and sang them with unbridled passion. His was a new way of doing things, and listeners found it irresistibly appealing. The dominant American polka of the Forties was a very fast prance popularized by Frankie Yankovic, among others. Wally thought this "Eastern-style" polka failed to meet the audience's needs. So he slowed down the tempo. In Polka Happiness he explained why:

You see, a polka was never supposed to be played fast. If you play it fast, you modernize it. I went to Europe, all different villages. I never heard a fast polka there. So why should I hear a fast polka here? My beat is more ethnic. People didn't used to understand that, but now they do. When I first began, DJs would send my records back and say there was something wrong. They were used to that other style, the Eastern style. They used to tell me this is too slow. I used to tell them it was ideal. Actually, it's not slow. It's a bouncy beat, but not fast. If you eat food, you chew it. What are you gonna get out of it if you just swallow it? You'll go to the washroom because it'll block you up. Same thing with this. Sure, certain people can do it, but they have to be geniuses. They have to rehearse. Eastern style may be musicians' music, but I don't play for musicians, I play for the public. The public wants to hear melody, lyrics. They want to hear a song with a simple, real pretty story behind it that they can dance to. Real bouncy.

Bouncy. Easier to dance to. Wally's style so revolutionized the polka -- and became so popular -- that almost every other polka band in Chicago copied it. Or more accurately, adapted to it. Wally, after all, was what the people wanted to hear. The style he invented came to be known as the Chicago Sound. Some people, especially Wally, prefer to think of it as "The Li'l Wally Sound." His fame grew exponentially.

The polka king worked tirelessly to maintain his success. Telephone poles, billboards, and storefront windows around Chicago were plastered with so much Li'l Wally advertising that his name became as well-known as the mayor's. On a radio show he hosted every morning, he promoted the songs he recorded in his own studio and pressed at his own plant. With the keen sense of a marketeer, he named his label Jay Jay because he believes birds make people happy. (The Jay Jay logo depicts two stylized birds inside an oval that carries the motto "Be Happy Night and Day with Jay Jay.")

He followed up each hit song with yet another record, then another. During his peak in the early Fifties, he released ten or twelve albums per year. "If you're hot, just keep on going," he advises. "If you're hot, they're looking for more. If you got another song, record it. When you cool off, that's no good."

On weekends he and his band might play three shows per day. He toured regularly, leaving the radio show in the hands of Jeanette while he performed in Cleveland on Wednesday; Youngstown, Ohio, on Thursday; Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday; and at a church picnic on Saturday in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Sunday might find him at a dance in Fiedor's Grove outside Pittsburgh.

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