Polka King Read online

  This was another possible profession in my growing list of possible professions—musician, professional baseball player, and now booking agent. The future was looking bright.

  Unfortunately for me and the music fans of Florida, New York, the future was about to be put on hold.

  6

  Military Man

  Since I started school at an early age, I graduated from high school at sixteen, an accomplishment of which I’m still quite proud. In hindsight, however, I kind of wish I’d have taken my time, because during part of my senior year in high school, I was only fifteen. Yes, I was relatively mature—none of my classmates were leading bands, doing recording sessions, booking shows, and playing baseball at a relatively high level—but it might have been better for me had I had the opportunity to hang out with kids who were my own age.

  After graduating high school, I received a full scholarship to Valley Forge Military Academy & College in Wayne, Pennsylvania. VFMA&C was founded in 1928 by one Lieutenant General Milton Baker. Baker was an Anglophile and Revolutionary War buff, so many of school’s trappings were straight out of 1776. His administration also had an affinity for West Point—if you ran a military academy in the Northeast, you’d better have an affinity for West Point, if you knew what was good for you—so our insignia and uniforms were a blend of British-ness and New York-ness. It was different than anything I’d ever experienced at the S.S. Seward Institute, that’s for certain.

  I wasn’t in love with the place, but I sucked it up, in part because I wanted to do right by my parents, and in part because I was getting my education for free, thanks to the music scholarship I’d managed to earn. Having a music scholarship in my back pocket meant that, in addition to learning how to be a good soldier, I was able to play in both the school band and the marching band. What I didn’t play, however, was sports. VFMA&C made a musical investment in me, and if I hurt myself in an intramural baseball or football game, the school wouldn’t have gotten any return in this investment, and my scholarship would’ve gone down the drain. But that didn’t stop me from messing around on various athletic fields with my classmates. I’ve always had some kind of sports in my life—even today I’m in a local Florida tennis league and play two, three, or sometimes four days a week—and I wasn’t about to stop then.

  Going to VFMA&C was, to that point, the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. For a kid who’d lived in his small-town home his entire life and had done nothing but lead a band, play sports, goof around on snowmobiles, and sneak away to listen to polka at picnics, well, this was some serious culture shock. The people were different, the disciplines were different, the goals were different, the food was different—everything was different. The worst aspect about the whole thing was the rigid regimentation; we awoke at the crack of dawn, lights out was at 10 p.m., and everything in between was timed to a T.

  My first year, which is called the plebe year, was particularly brutal. Aside from the difficulty of the classes, I had to deal with homesickness (other than my trips home at Christmas and Easter, I wasn’t allowed to leave the campus), constant hazing from the upperclassmen, and constant verbal abuse from the officers. It wasn’t as bad as standard basic training, but it was darn close.

  I didn’t agree with some of the school’s policies, although I suspect that every VFMA&C student has had some frustrations with the teachers or the administration’s decisions at one point or another. At that time, for instance, your rank was determined by how much money your parents had. Since I’d been a jock in high school, I was in good shape, so based on that, you’d think that I’d be able to climb through the hierarchy quickly and easily. Well, when I returned for my sophomore year, I was made a non-com, which was a sergeant. However, many of that year’s incoming plebes—kids who were supposed to be below me on the totem pole—were ranked higher than me despite the fact that I had a full year’s experience on them. But these highly ranked plebes were highly ranked because their parents donated a whole lot of cash to VFMA&C. My mother and father didn’t do that. Mind you, I didn’t want them to pay for my promotions. If I was going to succeed, I was going to do it the honorable way.

  The musical aspect of school wasn’t always particularly fulfilling, but that wasn’t a shock because I knew going in that VFMA&C wasn’t exactly Juilliard. The one good thing about the whole deal was that we played a whole lot of music, all day, every day; the symphonic band plowed through some interesting marches for the appreciative cadets, and our marching band was actually very good. There were even some moments that could actually be called fun. For instance, we performed at a couple of huge parades in the Philadelphia area; when I was an upperclassman, we did a few overseas concerts in England. But there sure as hell wasn’t any polka going on.

  Or was there?

  VFMA&C students had two choices as to how we could spend our Sunday mornings: We could either go to the school’s chapel for services, or we could wake up really, really, really early and go up to the nondenominational service at the Catholic Church in nearby Wayne, Pennsylvania. (If you went to Wayne, you were exempt from chapel.) I opted for the early-bird special, as did some of the Catholic guys in the band. When we’d return to the barracks, we’d go off to the band room and play some polkas.

  One Sunday afternoon, an English gentleman named Colonel Mulhart, who was considered the toughest of our tough teachers, burst into the room and roared, “What the hell is that racket you guys are playing?”

  I said, “Polkas, sir.”

  “What the hell is a polka?” I launched into a thumbnail sketch of the music, but he cut me off pretty quickly. “I don’t really care and I don’t like it one bit. If you keep playing this junk, you’ll never amount to anything.” After about ten more minutes of yelling at us, he stomped off. Fortunately, he didn’t bring us up on charges; he probably realized that we couldn’t be court-martialed for playing European dance music.

  All of this hell was worth it. VFMA&C was a daily struggle; when I went into the army a couple of years later, I won every award that could be won because I’d already learned and perfected everything I needed to know to be a good military man. And those awards weren’t only ego boosters; each win earned me a forty-eight-hour furlough. Whenever I got my two-day pass out of Fort Dix, I’d make my way from Trenton, New Jersey, back to Florida, and play in as many polka jam sessions or softball games as I possibly could.

  Postscript: Several decades later, after I took home what I believe was my tenth Grammy Award, VFMA&C honored me as its Man of the Year, something that I still consider to be one of the greatest honors of my life. Before I gave my thank-you speech, I peered out into the audience, and who’s sitting right there in the front row? None other than my polka-hating nemesis, Colonel Mulhart. Our eyes met, and he gave me a friendly nod. As I nodded back, I thought, I’ll never amount to anything playing that crap? Every cadet at the school is here in full dress, all because of polka music. Take that, you sonofabitch!

  Jimmy receiving the Man of the Year award at his alma mater, Valley Forge Military Academy & College.

  7

  Radio Days, Part One

  After graduating from Valley Forge Military Academy & College, I used all of that hard-core military training not to build a bomb or take over Belgium, but to land a job at an insurance company called Dickerson & Meany in Goshen, New York. The primary reason I landed the job wasn’t because of the skills I’d picked up at VFMA&C, but rather because the Meany half of Dickerson & Meany was one of my father’s best friends.

  Initially, working as an insurance agent was a comedown, to say the least. Think about it. In high school, in addition to recording and performing with my band, I had the opportunity to excel at almost any sport my heart desired. VFMA&C and the army, while difficult and oftentimes depressing, were always, at the very least, interesting. Selling insurance wasn’t. I didn’t envision myself doing it for a living—for that matter, I could barely envision myself doing it for another week—but I stayed with Dicker
son & Meany all the way up until I fulfilled my military duty with the National Guard. Sometimes, as they say, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

  I’d spent two years in the army and four in the National Guard, so it’s understandable why, at that point in my life, I couldn’t envision making a living playing music. Besides, I didn’t even know anybody who was paying their bills with polka, so I was scared to take the plunge. I mean, I was a young kid from a small town; how was I ever going to make a dent in the music world? There were probably so many other musicians who were going for it, what chance did I have of succeeding? Sure, when I was growing up, there were polka concerts all throughout the area, but since most of the shows were at outdoor festivals, it wasn’t a year-round thing. For that matter, it wasn’t even a half-year-round thing, and I couldn’t imagine giving myself any kind of financial cushion making music.

  Which brings us to the Onion Harvest Festival.

  Since its inception in 1939, every five years Florida plays host to the Onion Harvest Festival. This may sound quaint to you big-city folks, but this thing is huge—we’re talking as many as fifteen thousand attendees, even back in its earliest days. The reason it is held five years apart is because that’s how long it takes to prepare. The Monday after, say, the 1959 festival ended, the committee had to start planning and plotting for 1964.

  All that planning and plotting paid off because the festival was, without fail, always quite a spectacle. Aside from having access to all the onions you could ever want, you could enjoy dance troupes that performed traditional Polish dances. Those troupes were composed of up to one-hundred and fifty people of all ages, from kindergarteners to grandparents. I imagine that it took a good portion of those five-year periods to teach these amateur dancers how to move together in lockstep.

  In 1961 the two men in charge of the 1964 Onion Harvest Festival, popular local attorney Michael Gurda and Monsignor Felczak, held a planning meeting at Mr. Gurda’s house, a meeting to which I was invited. I had no clue why I was asked to join the festivities. Maybe it was because I was a precocious kid who led a band. Maybe it was because my family had known Mr. Gurda for years. Maybe it was because Mr. Gurda made a mistake and invited Jimmy Sturr Jr. rather than Jimmy Sturr Sr. Whatever the reason, I was one of fifty or so people packed into Mr. Gurda’s living room.

  Jimmy in Polish costume leading the band at the 1989 Onion Harvest Festival.

  Our host was handing out assignments—this person was in charge of bratwurst, that person was in charge of liquid refreshments, this other person was in charge of the first-aid tent—and near the end of the meeting, after reading off another one of his never-ending lists, Mr. Gurda pointed at me said, “And Jimmy Sturr over here and his polka band will be playing at the festival.”

  “Um, I am?” I asked.

  “You are,” Mr. Gurda said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very much so.”

  Hit with a wave of nerves and delight, I could barely speak. This would be by far the biggest show I had ever played, and I was thrilled.

  First thing the next morning, I called Mr. Gurda to thank him. “Polka is everything to me,” I explained. “I can’t believe I get to play for all those people. That’s all I want to do—share the music with the world. This is my dream come true.” I then joked, “The only thing that could possibly top this is if I had my own weekly radio polka show, but I know that’ll never happen. I’m just a kid.”

  He paused, then said, “Where are you right now?”

  “At home.”

  “I need your phone number.” After I gave it to him, he said, “I’ll call you back in five minutes. Don’t leave your house. Stay by the phone.” As instructed, I hovered over the telephone, and, sure enough, he called back five minutes later. “The general manager of WALL-AM in Middletown is waiting to meet with you right now. Go up there and—”

  Before he was able to finish the sentence, I yelled, “Thanks a million, Mr. Gurda,” and then I slammed down the phone, sprinted out to the car, jammed the key into the ignition, put the pedal to the metal, and headed up to the neighboring town. When I arrived at the station, I was ushered into the station’s general manager’s office. After we shook hands, he said, “So Mike Gurda tells me you’re something of a polka maven . . .”

  I felt myself blushing. “I don’t know if I’d say maven.”

  “Take a compliment, kid. Mike also told me that you want to host a polka show. When would you want this show to air?”

  “How about Sundays? In the afternoon? At one o’clock?” I’m not sure where the day and time came from, but there it was.

  Nodding, the general manager said, “When can you start, kid?”

  It’s a good thing I was sitting down, because a light breeze probably would’ve knocked me on my butt. “Um, I don’t know,” I said. “When do you want me to start?”

  He made a show of looking at his calendar, then asked, “Can you be ready next Sunday?”

  “Um, sure.” I should probably mention that I’d never been on the radio, I had no radio training, and, up until that very moment, I had never set foot in a radio station. I’d listened to more than my fair share of radio, of course, so I knew what went into making a show sound good, but I had no clue how to do it.

  “You know what you’re doing, kid?” the general manager asked.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “But don’t worry about it. Just come in every night this week and pay attention to the deejays. You seem like a bright kid. You’ll figure it out. See ya tomorrow.”

  As instructed, the next night, which was a Tuesday, a mere five days away from my big debut, I made the drive to Middletown, parked myself in the studio, and, keeping my mouth shut the entire time, paid close attention to the on-air personalities. I noted how they delivered their in-between-song banter, studied their energy level (sometimes you had to speak emphatically and sometimes you had to keep it relaxed), and discerned how they read the advertisements. On Wednesday they let me say a few things on the air; on Thursday they let me twist and turn some of the dials. Considering my life path, it’s more than fair to say that that one week of schooling at WALL was more important than my four years at Valley Forge.

  Come Sunday, I thought I was ready to go on the air. The general manager knew better and he wisely had one of his veteran on-air personalities hover over my shoulder for the entire show, making sure I didn’t knock us off the air, or blow anything up, or sell us to the Russians. I survived and I must’ve done okay, because they invited me back the next week . . . and the next week . . . and the week after that.

  Since then, I’ve been on the air on one station or another each and every Sunday. I’m proud to say that in those four-plus decades, I’ve never missed a single show. Right now, I record my show, which is syndicated nationally, in my basement during the week, but it still airs on Sunday, so my consecutive-game streak remains intact. If you want to put it in baseball terms (an opportunity I rarely pass up), I guess you could say I’m the Cal Ripken Jr. of polka-radio-show hosts, the guy who will keep playing the game week in and week out, until he decides it’s time to hang it up.

  And I can’t imagine ever hanging it up. Ever. But there were some sordid events in my early radio days that almost turned me against the medium forever.

  8

  Radio Days, Part Two

  It was sometime in the late 1970s when a man named Jim O’Grady, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, bought WALL-AM. (Fortunately, Jim liked me and polka music, so I was kept on the schedule when his regime took over.) A couple of years later, WTBQ-AM, another local radio station in nearby Warwick, New York, went up for sale. I was familiar with WTBQ because it had its own polka show on Saturdays. The show’s host, a blowhard named Ron Kurowski, had an unhealthy hatred for yours truly; he despised me as a disc jockey and even more so as a bandleader. Kurowski disliked me so much that he always used a chunk of his weekly airtime to knock me
.

  “I don’t know how many of you listen to that Jimmy Sturr fella over on WALL,” Ron would say, “but if you do, you shouldn’t! I mean, what’s a non-Polish guy doing playing polka on the radio? Jimmy Sturr, stop pulling the wool over the Polish people’s eyes! Listeners, if you care about polka music being played by a real polka person, call up WALL, or write them a letter, and demand that they fire that fraud! And, of course, you’d better not buy any of his records, records that you can be sure I’ll never play, because Jimmy Sturr is a blight on the polka community!” Wow. Nineteen years old and already a blight.

  This went on week in and week out. One day, after a particularly personal attack questioning my parentage, I tracked down the owner of WTBQ, a decent fellow named Ed Klein, and told him, “Listen, I don’t care if Kurowski doesn’t play my records, but you’ve got to stop him from talking trash about me on the radio. He’s embarrassing me, he’s embarrassing my family, he’s embarrassing the polka community, and, frankly, he’s embarrassing himself.”

  Without hesitation, Ed said, “You got it. No problem.”

  I listened to the show the next Saturday, and Kurowski didn’t mention my name once. The following week, however, he mentioned it a whole bunch. It was the usual litany of how my not being Polish is a black mark on polka, and how I shouldn’t be allowed either on the air or in a recording studio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fact that he disregarded his boss’s order put me over the edge.

  So first thing on Monday morning, I burst into my lawyer’s office and said, “Enough is enough. I’ve been polite about this business with Kurowski, but I’m done being Mr. Nice Guy. Let’s sue this jerk into the next century.”