Polka Mania!

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.

"I'd tell my band to bombard, to shoot the moon," Wally recalls. "In other words, go out and go full blast. Do the best you can like there's no tomorrow. Let's win that crowd! Do whatever you can to win the audience. Give them all the talent that you have."

His trio -- trumpet, concertina, and Wally on drums -- played the Lucky Stop in Chicago. For a wedding he'd add a standing bass. Bigger gigs merited a clarinet or a violin player. Most of the musicians were at least fifteen years older, and most held full-time factory jobs. "All my guys worked during the day," he elaborates. "They couldn't play all night long till five in the morning like I could. A lot couldn't handle it, so I had to get other musicians to replace them."