Show menu

MINNESOTA POLKA: Elmer Scheid / Die Hans Wurst Polka / Soma 1029 / 1955

Thanks! Share it with your friends!

You disliked this video. Thanks for the feedback!

Added by
1 Views
Elmer Scheid (1921-2012) of New Ulm, MN, was a concertina player whose first professional job came in the 1930s at age 13 with the John Fritsche Band (Fezz’s father). He also played with the Six Fat Dutchmen and the Babe Wagner Band, managing the latter for two years after Babe’s death in 1949. Scheid founded his own Hoolerie Band in 1951 and became one of the most popular groups in New Ulm (the “Polka Capital of the Nation”), performing for the next 50 years. The band recorded fifteen albums on the Epic, Decca, Polka City, Pleasant Peasant, Czech Records, Oxboro, and Soma labels. As the demand for “old-time” music declined in the 50s and 60s, Scheid worked as a custodian at 3M in New Ulm and later tended bar at Turner Hall, but traveled with the band on weekends. Fellow musician and concertina player Donnie Klossner said, “The Elmer Scheid band was so popular around here, we usually didn’t have to travel far. When we were younger, many polka band leaders like Johnny Gag and Jerry Schuft wanted to play the concertina like Elmer Scheid because he had such a nice, clean style.” Elmer Scheid was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 1995.

The Soma Recording Company of Minneapolis, MN, was founded by brothers Amos and Dan Heilicher in 1954, and owned by Amos Heilicher until 1967. [The label name is "Amos" spelled backwards.] The brothers acquired the FM Recording Company, of Hollywood, CA, and many of Soma’s early releases were polka matrices from FM, which had been recorded in 1949 and 1950. Soma’s subsequent catalog included polka, country, Dixieland jazz, and pop, with hits by Bobby Vee, the Fendermen, the Trashmen, and Dave Dudley. Soma was absorbed into Pickwick Records in 1967.

Hanswurst (German for “Johnny Sausage”) was a buffoon-like comic character of German-speaking carnivals and theater in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Austrian actor Joseph Anton Stranitzky (1676-1726) developed the role into an independent character, much like Swedish-American Hjalmar Peterson’s character “Olle I Skratthult” in 20th century America. Like Peterson, Stranitzky had many imitators. Hanswurst was scorned by the ‘legitimate’ Viennese theater, but lived on in both puppetry and live actor performance. The term “Hanswurst” was used in German as an insult, and had enough currency in American English in the 1920s to be widely used in newspapers for “oaf” or “dummy,” especially on the sports page where a “pugilistic hanswurst” would be the fall guy for a boxing champ. The “Hanswurst Polka” was recorded by Peter Müller for the Odeon label in 1926, and by John Wilfarht for the Okeh label in 1928.

[Die Hans Wurst Polka, Elmer Scheid, Soma 1029, recorded 1955, matrix ES-4]
The flip side of this disk is Die Hoolerie No. 1: https://youtu.be/P0NsNLJ04YA
Polka Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj57_HkEA2N2CuWrSxUj4Ca6YXb1_P-ES
https://www.ipapolkas.com/2016-hall-of-fame-inductees-and-award-winners/
Category
COUNTRY HITS
Commenting disabled.

Up Next