In popular song, it`s Frank Sinatra.
In classical violin, it`s Itzhak Perlman.
And in polka music, it`s the unchallenged king of accordionists: Frankie Yankovic.
Over the past 50-odd years, Yankovic has done for the polka what Chubby Checker did for the twist or Lawrence Welk for champagne music.
Playing roughly 300 dates a year, and covering more than 100,000 annual miles in his beat-up van, Yankovic long ago earned the title ”America`s Polka King” (he literally won the crown in 1948, during a national contest in Milwaukee).
So when Yankovic straps on his squeezebox Sunday in the Condesa del Mar in Alsip for his 75th birthday celebration (beginning at noon), you can bet that polka fans from across the Midwest will be spinning in the aisles.
”You know how Guy Lombardo used to say his music was the sweetest this side of heaven?” asks Yankovic, who officially turns 75 on July 28.
”Well I like to say that polka is the happiest music this side of heaven.
”You can tell when you look at the expression on people`s faces as they dance the polka. They don`t seem to be thinking about tomorrow`s bills or where their kids are going to school.
”It makes their troubles go away.”
If so, few artists have relieved more people of their woes than Yankovic, whose devotion to the polka borders on religion. He first heard the call as a child in Cleveland, the town he likes to call ”the capital of Slovene life in America.” Yankovic`s parents, both Slovenian immigrants, had fled his birthplace of Davis, W. Va., when the authorities discovered that dad was a bootlegger.
Before Frankie Yankovic was old enough to spell his own name, he was beguiled by the sight of an accordion.
”I noticed Max (a boarder in the Yankovic household) controlled everyone with his accordion,” writes Yankovic in his charming autobiography, ”The Polka King: The Life of Frankie Yankovic,” as told to Robert Dolgan, (Dillon/ Liederbach Books-it`s now out of print but often turns up in used bookstores and libraries).
”If he played something fast, they sang fast. If he played something sweet and sentimental, they sang that way. He had power. I would watch every move he made on the keys.
”I wasn`t old enough to have my own cheesebox yet, but I`d pretend I was playing one on a little footstool we had in the kitchen. The stool was shaped about the size of an accordion, and I`d pick it up and sing songs and make all the appropriate gestures, just as though I was playing.”
Before long, Yankovic-with barely two dozen lessons under his belt-was jobbing around town on his own cheesebox. By 17 he was a star on Cleveland radio, by 23 was cutting his first 78 r.p.m. records.
Yet the early triumphs were virtually wiped away by the tragedy of war. At the end of 1944, Yankovic-by now a husband and father-was fighting in the bloody Battle of the Bulge. After his platoon barely survived a fierce snowstorm, Yankovic found himself in a British hospital bed, his hands and feet black with gangrene (from frostbite).
”After a couple days, (the doctor) told me he would have to amputate my hands and feet,” writes Yankovic in the autobiography.
”He told me I didn`t have any chance to survive otherwise and said the gangrene would spread through my whole body. . . .
”The doctor said there was no time to be lost. By this time I was so doped up that nothing hurt. My mind was made up. I figured it wasn`t worth living without my hands and feet. I didn`t have the guts to go back home that way and face my wife and children. . . .
”That was the worst time of my life. I couldn`t understand why this had to happen to me, especially to my hands. I was a musician. I needed my hands. Why couldn`t I have just been shot in the back?”
So Yankovic took the biggest gamble of his life, betting he could fight off the disease when his doctor said he couldn`t.
To everyone`s surprise, the gangrene began to dissipate in a few days, and Yankovic was back at the squeezebox.
”When they told me there was an accordion right there at the hospital, I couldn`t believe it-that was the best therapy,” says Yankovic.
”Still, it was very painful to teach myself to play again. Many times I just wanted to give up; I just couldn`t seem to get my fingers going.
”I would start off like a beginner, one note at a time. To give you an idea of how painful it was, when I wrote my first postcard home from the hospital, it took me an hour-and-a-half.”
Perhaps it`s no surprise that after surviving this ordeal-and re-learning to play an instrument he had once mastered-Yankovic was not going to be stopped by mere career obstacles. Never mind that, at the time, the polka was ”the kind of music many people used to laugh at,” recalls Yankovic.
After the war Yankovic was signed by no less than Columbia Records, and he quickly went about releasing America`s first million-selling polka records, including ”Just Because” (1948) and ”The Blue Skirt Waltz” (1949, with lyrics by songwriter Mitchell Parish, who also penned the classic ”Star Dust”). Over the next 25 years, Yankovic blanketed America with polka records, including the immortal ”Who Stole the Kishka?”
So how did one accordionist and a few sidemen turn an ethnic two-step into a genuinely popular dance?
”I tried to change the polka along the way, to make it more modern,”
says Yankovic, referring to a Czech dance that originated in the 19th Century and has been mistakenly considered a Polish creation over the years.
”When I was growing up, the old polka used to be played with a lot of brasses, trumpets and other blaring instruments,” says Yankovic, who is a scholar on the subject.
”But I wanted the polka to reach all ethnic groups, and to reach teenagers, as well.
”So I got rid of the brass, and tried to get a smoother, more elegant sound by filling in with two accordions. Later, I started using electronic keyboards. You`ve got to stay up to date.”
Along the way, Yankovic enjoyed the kind of adventures one might expect of a polka virtuoso:
– He played a battle of the bands against no less than Duke Ellington-and won. ”The contest was held in Milwaukee, which was one of the biggest polka cities at that time,” recalls Yankovic.
– He broke into the swank Hollywood club scene, where he entertained the likes of Lana Turner, Rosalind Russell and Joseph Cotten. ”When we first played the Sunset Strip, the boys in the band said to me: `We can`t play polkas here, Frankie.`
”And I said: `Look, they hired us as a polka band, and that`s what we`re going to play.` So we simply started out with a couple of fox trots, and right in the middle-while people were still gliding on the dance floor-we switched to a polka. We had them in the palm of our hand from then on.”
– And in Yankovic`s most treasured accomplishment, he won the first Grammy Award given for polka music, in 1985 (for Yankovic`s ”70 Years of Hits” recording). ”It was a great feeling, but the best part of it was that the record industry was finally recognizing polkas in the awards,” says Yankovic.
Yet Yankovic acknowledges that he has paid a price for his artistic triumphs. He credits his two failed marriages to a life spent on the road.
”I don`t have the closeness with my kids (he has 10 of them), like a father would if he really had raised his kids, played with them, spent time with them.”
But truth be told, ”I`d do it all over in a minute. Polka music is in my blood.”
