Polka Mania!

Albums were recorded in as little as three hours. Wally would sound out the basic melody for each instrument, leaving plenty of room for improvisation. "Most bands, they write out everything right to a T," he says. "Sometimes it takes a year to make an album. I don't like it this way. I go to a recording studio without no notes."

His recording philosophy -- just pound it out -- applied to his life. In a few short years his workload had mushroomed. And whether it was playing drums onstage or driving the tour van to a gig in northern Minnesota, he tackled the job with his trademark intensity. "I got radio shows. I got responsibilities with all the recordings with Jay Jay record company. I got to work with the distributor," he recites. "Twenty-four hours a day is not enough. There's times I used to work around the clock, two, three days without stopping. If I was tired I would just eat something, maybe drink a glass of beer, then keep going."

He developed his first ulcer in 1954. Soon the condition grew so severe he checked into a hospital before a show in Wisconsin. Back in Chicago a doctor recommended that half of Wally's stomach be removed. Otherwise, the doctor said, he had only two more years to live. He was just 24 years old. "I went to Jay Jay [recording studio]," he recalls. "Naturally I was not jovial anymore, 'cause I got this on my mind. I used to always whistle, always sing. But I didn't because I got this on my mind. So a fellow that used to work for me says, 'Wally, something's wrong here that you're not telling anybody. You're not jovial like you always are.'"

Wally explained his predicament, and the fellow recommended another doctor, a Polish doctor, who in turn recommended that Wally take a vacation in Miami. "I went to the movies every day. I cooked like bacon, lying out in the sun," Wally says of his first visit to Miami Beach. "I don't take no phone calls, so I don't know what the hell is happening with Jay Jay. I bought all kinds of clothes; I must of spent $2000 on clothes, which is like five or ten grand today. I figured if I'm going to die, I'm going to die in style. What the hell; whatever happens happens. When I finally came back to Chicago, I felt like a newborn baby."

Wally liked Miami so much he decided to move down full-time. He and Jeanette have lived in the same house in North Bay Village for more than 30 years. "I've lost a few opportunities being here, sure," he says. "Good European tours and the like, greater opportunities for me to expose my product and expose myself. But I figured I could fly anywhere. And anyway, I can only be in one place at one time."

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In the waiting room of the studio, along one wall, hangs the album cover to Li'l Wally in Miami Beach, a live recording that features the "Fort Lauderdale Polka" and the "Dilido Polka," written in honor of the Collins Avenue hotel where the album was recorded in the late Fifties.

Wally settles into a chair beneath the album cover and unsnaps a large brown suitcase. "The concertina is the second-hardest instrument in the world to play, after the violin," he explains, expanding the instrument's lung as he pulls it from its case. "With an accordion you get the same tone whether you are pulling the instrument apart or pushing it together. With a concertina, you get one tone when you push in and another tone when you push out, so it's twice as hard."

His concertina is green, pearl, and chrome, and is personalized with "Li'l Wally" on one side and the word "Superstar" on the other. It weighs eleven pounds. Behind him hang more album covers, including Polka A Go Go, with cover art depicting three dancers twirling next to the polka king's smiling mug. As he prepares to sing, sitting in his baseball hat and misbuttoned shirt, he looks almost cartoonish, like a lovable clown in a comedy act. Then he begins to play.

"We thank God that we have you for our pope," he sings in Polish. "From our souls and our hearts we are kneeling, and we are asking you for your blessing." Wally has described this song, "God Bless Our Polish Pope," as a "real tearjerker." When he recorded it in 1982, he says, he was "bawling [his] eyes out." As he sings it now, his eyelids are clenched shut. His face is raised toward the ceiling, and he belts out the words as if he were exorcising them with unabashed emotion. However this song may sound with a full band and the traditional oompah-pah polka backbeat, unaccompanied here he's turned it into a stirring hymn.