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Polka Mania!

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"You don't know how I love this," he says when he concludes. "Music is the best medication in the world. You know, when you feel down in the dumps, maybe you got a flat tire or whatever, or somebody's sick, now you take a record, you take an album, you take a CD, you play it and try to forget about everything. If you play happy music -- and polka is the happiest music there is -- it will make you feel so much better. It's better than taking some pills. It's better than taking aspirins or whatever. It relaxes you. You'll feel so much happier, so much better. And whoever's next to you will feel the same way. You'll feel like dancing. You'll feel like singing."

Wally's fans often send him jokes in the mail. There was one about how Poles are the most important people in the world, because without them we'd have no way to fly our flags. Then there was one from the former editor of Polka News: "He says that this guy dies and he goes to Heaven, and he hears polka music and drumming and singing, but especially drumming. And so he tells Saint Peter that he didn't know Li'l Wally was here in Heaven. And Saint Peter says, 'That's God playing the drums. He only thinks he's Li'l Wally.' I think that's very cute."

Soon after arriving in Miami, Wally purchased his studio, which had a history of recording notables such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. With the same zeal he displayed while conquering Chicago, Wally launched an aggressive campaign to infect South Florida with polka fever. More than once he tried to host a polka radio show (on WEDR-FM and WAXY-AM), but he could never hold on to a sponsor. He opened Miami's only polka bar, on 71st Street in Miami Beach. Li'l Wally's Carnival Bar naturally included a jukebox stocked with polkas. Jeanette served golabki (stuffed cabbage), Polish sausage, and sauerkraut. Wally played his concertina behind the bar. He organized polka jam sessions whenever he could get musicians together. The bar, which opened in 1970, survived for six years.

He's since given up his goal of converting South Florida musically. Rarely, perhaps once a year, he still plays with a band of hired musicians in Hollywood or at Miami's Polish American Club near the Miami River. He tours the state annually, playing mostly at other Polish-American clubs and churches. "Wally doesn't play around here very often, but when he does, he can draw a crowd," says Polish-American Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Wenski, a former priest at Notre Dame D' Haiti Catholic Church near the recording studio. "I remember one concert about fifteen years ago; he played at the Polish American Club. All these people originally from Chicago or Buffalo or Pennsylvania came down to see him. A whole busload of people drove all the way over from Naples just for the show."

Wally's failure to turn Miami into a polka capital still rankles him. "I don't want to knock it," he says of the nonexistent local polka scene, "but see, they don't have no good Polish polka radio shows, that's number one. Number two, here in Miami you got a different clientele altogether. You got people from all over the world. Chicago is a polka town. That's why I made a song called 'Chicago Is a Polka Town.' You got over a million Poles there, just Polish people alone, plus Czech and Croatian and Slovenian and German. These people really enjoy that type of music. Over here they come from Canada, they come from South America, they come from all over."

Simply in order to play, Wally must travel, which he does frequently during the summer months. Still, he believes Miami has the potential to become polka-friendly. "You have to have some spot and somebody who has some faith in you to book you and promote like heck," he advises. "I can create it, but I don't want no place on the business end. I only want to stick to my music. I love to play."

Polka music has evolved since Wally's heyday in the Fifties, with new standouts such as Eddie Blazonczyk amplifying a country-and-western vibe that has long been part of the music. Wally generally despises this development, arguing that the changes have diluted the sound he created. His performances, so resolutely anchored in the past, are largely nostalgic; a mostly older audience waves handkerchiefs during the "Li'l Wally Twirl," just as they have for some 50 years.

Polka may have moved forward, but Wally's influence has never waned. "He's past his prime as far as his great material, but he's still a living legend," says Don Hedeker of the Polkaholics. "I compare him to John Lee Hooker. Okay, sure, he made his greatest records in the Fifties and Sixties, but it's still a thrill to play with him."

Adds Charles Keil: "Wally is still looked to as a standard. His is a great way of doing polka music, and everybody should know that way to play. Anyone who can't play it Wally's way, with energy, is not a polka musician."

Wally continues to work on his music nearly every day. Sometimes inspiration strikes at odd moments. "I was making spareribs yesterday," he relays, "and as I was putting them in the oven, a song popped into my head. So I stopped what I was doing and wrote it down." Usually he labors alone at night while Jeanette sleeps. Almost every day, for four hours or so starting around 2:00 a.m., he sits at the kitchen table eating Jell-O and graham crackers and writing down the lyrics to songs on any scratch paper he can find.

His records his melodies on a small tape recorder. He doesn't play any instruments while composing, preferring to sound out the tune on his lips as if he were blowing an invisible trumpet. "I work day and night," he says. "I used to work at least three nights and three days without sleeping. I'm a workaholic. But see, I love what I do. I got an idea, I can't sleep unless I fulfill the idea. How could I just fall asleep? God is with me. God and the pope are with me."

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