Polka King Read online

  Our first concert was scheduled for Monday evening, at the Palace of Culture and Science in downtown Warsaw. The palace is a sprawling, impressive structure—ornate and classic looking, albeit drab and a tad dingy—that too few people outside of Poland know about. I suspect part of the reason the country doesn’t trumpet it as a tourist attraction is that it was designed and built by the Soviets in the early 1950s, when the Communist Party was at the height of its power. The fact that it was originally called the Josef Stalin Palace of Culture and Science probably didn’t help matters.

  The soundcheck and preconcert preparation went off without a hitch. The entire band was eager to get moving—this was, after all, one of the biggest concerts in the long, storied history of Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra—so by the time showtime rolled around, we were on a hair trigger.

  Right before we were to take the stage, a gentleman snuck up behind me and barked, “Mr. Sturr!” I turned around and found myself face-to-face with the director of the Palace of Culture and Science. When my heart started beating again, I shook the unsmiling gentleman’s hand and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” he grunted, “you can very much help me.” He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it, then continued, “Before you begin your show, we need to go over this list. There are certain songs that we insist you not play.”

  Was the government of Poland really going to put restrictions on polka? After all, it was Poland, which many consider the birthplace of the music. “What songs are those, sir?”

  Reading from the paper, he said, “‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ ‘God Bless America,’ ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ ‘Dixie,’ ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ ‘Home on the Range,’ ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ and anything by Metallica.” I could be wrong about the Metallica part. But I could also be right.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “None of that material is in our repertoire, sir,” I said, “so we won’t have any problems.” Apparently satisfied, he gave me a curt nod and went on his merry way.

  The first half of the show went beautifully. The sound in the hall was decent, we played pretty darn well, and everybody in the crowd, from the United States and Poland alike, seemed to be having a great time. At intermission, a shambling, genial-looking gentleman sauntered into the dressing room, stuck out his hand, and said, “John Davis, United States Ambassador to Poland.” After we shook hands, he said, “Great show, Jimmy, terrific stuff. It’s as good, or maybe even better, than anything you’d hear out here. Can’t wait for the second half. So how do you like Poland so far?” Before I could answer, he put his index finger to his lip, pointed to the ceiling, shook his head, and mouthed, “They’re listening. Be nice.”

  I gave him the biggest smile in my arsenal and said, “Mr. Ambassador, I love Poland! The people have been nothing but wonderful, the accommodations are clean, and the food has been terrific.” (The only thing I lied about was the food. That afternoon, the restaurant at the hotel served me a steak that had probably been sitting under a heat lamp since the Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz administration.) “Do you enjoy it here, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Jimmy, Poland is the most wonderful place on the planet. I’ve been here since 1983, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Love everything about it—everything.” He then walked out of the dressing room and motioned me to follow. When we were in the hallway, he leaned into me and whispered, “Watch what you say, Jimmy. Almost every place you’ll be taken to is bugged—your hotel, your transportation, the bathrooms, everything. And you know that grouchy-looking lady who’s been following you around? She’s KGB.”

  While this was surprising and strange, none of this clandestine spy business particularly bothered me. I hadn’t said anything disparaging about the country to anybody. I probably wouldn’t be saying anything disparaging, because other than the food, I thought Poland, while not quite heaven on earth, wasn’t bad at all. It was a new experience for me, and I planned to embrace it on every level, to focus on the good and ignore the bad. I gave John a smile and said, “Don’t you worry one bit, Mr. Ambassador. I don’t want to be deported, so I’ll watch myself.”

  When we took the stage for the second half of the show, I really looked at the entire audience for the first time that night. (Sometimes when you’re on a strange stage in a strange land, you focus more on the music and less on the crowd, at least until you get your bearings.) I noticed that way up in the third balcony, up against the back wall, there were probably twenty to twenty-five armed and uniformed soldiers, marching back and forth, back and forth. Unlike the bugs that the ambassador warned me about, that was disconcerting. I was no stranger to guns (I went to a military academy and spent some time in the army and the National Guard, after all), but it’s not every day that you see weaponry at a polka show. I made a conscious effort to ignore the soldiers and focus on the listeners.

  Aside from the military men, there were just under three thousand people in the audience that night, five hundred–plus of whom were, as noted, part of our group, and several hundred of whom were Polish relatives of both our tour guests and my band. One of the guys in our group had some family members come to the show, and the only way they could get there was via a ten-hour train ride. (It turned out that they left almost immediately after our performance. Think about that for a second. They rode twenty hours for two hours of polka and a few minutes with a family member they barely knew. That was dedication.) As the show progressed, the vibe in the room became warmer, deeper, and more emotional. I could feel the outpouring of love for us and our music radiating all the way from the back of the room.

  Right before our closing number, I leaned into the microphone said, “You know what, my new friends? It’s a shame that the whole world can’t be with us in this hall, just watching people from two countries, regardless of their political views, sitting together and laughing together and crying together and singing together.” After the translator told the audience members what the heck I’d just said, they gave us a wild ovation, after which we launched into the Polish national anthem. After the final note of the song faded into the ozone, I turned to the band and, before I could chicken out, said, “‘God Bless America,’ key of G. Go!”

  Four bars in, much to my surprise, the place went nuts. The folks we’d brought over started singing along, while their Polish brethren clapped and whistled their approval. I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t that.

  After a whopping four encores, I hustled offstage toward my dressing room. Before I could even turn the corner, the director of the Palace of Culture and Science snuck up behind me and barked, “Mr. Sturr!”

  Fortunately, I didn’t have any water in my mouth.

  At that moment, my overriding thought was, “I hope the Polish prison food is better than the Polish hotel food.” I took a deep breath, turned around, and was greeted with a sight that I’ll never forget—the cranky-looking liaison had tears in his eyes. He threw his arm around me, pulled me in tight, and said, “Mr. Sturr, this was one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen.”

  So not only was I not arrested but I had somehow managed to touch somebody who I never in a million years could have imagined touching. I figured that with all the clandestine behavior, the hidden listening devices, and the armed guards, anybody in charge of anything in Poland probably had a heart of stone, but boy, was I wrong about that one. The director’s reaction almost knocked me on my backside. I mean, who’d have thought a kid from a tiny, one-stoplight town in the Northeast could have a Communist government official tearing up from just a couple hours of polka.

  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-squar
e-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.

  Jimmy (left) at age four with cousins Judy Haley and Jay Reed.

  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 possib
ly 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.