Friday, October 11, 2024
Fifty years ago, a parody recording by a local polka band of a national hit song was getting a lot of airplay on local radio, making it a “Most Requested Song” and causing quite a stir on Central Wisconsin jukeboxes.
“People are talking about it, whistling it, tapping their toes to it … and buying it,” the Stevens Point Daily Journal reported in its Oct. 7, 1974, edition.
The “it” was “Pollack from Polonia,” a 45 rpm record put out by Norm Dombrowski and the Happy Notes Orchestra and was a take-off on Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” song.
Mike Piotrowski, who was then the lead singer and accordionist for the Happy Notes, said the song started as a joke. “When I first started with the group, I was singing Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee.’ Because another member of the group, Gene Lorbiecki, is from Polonia, I substituted Pollack from Polonia. The rest of the words just kind of grew from there.”
Lorbiecki, who is listed as co-author of the lyrics on the record, said recently he supplied the local information to the song, and it was fun to hear the audience react to those local locations mentioned in the song. “We had a lot of fun doing it, it was really popular.”
The lyrics certainly drew a reaction locally:
“I’m proud to be a Pollack from Polonia,
A place where even squares can have a ball,
We still drink Point beer down at Kezeske’s,
Point Special is still the greatest thrill of all,
Polonia, Wisconsin, USA.”
Because of public reception to the song at dances where they played, Dombrowski said he decided to record the song and released it on the “B” side of another popular song by the band, “I’m Looking Under Polka.” That record was released on the band’s private label, Gold Records.
Piotrowski said Dombrowski was one of the best promoters of polka in the nation, and he quickly made the record available in the area.
Carman Lane, manager of the former Graham-Lane Music Shop in downtown Stevens Point told the Journal, “Record sales have been gigantic. We’ve sold over 100 copies during the first week. And people are hearing it on juke boxes and buying it from the bartenders.”
Lane said the record’s local color was responsible for the sales, adding that “Many people are buying two, three and four copies to send to Uncle Bill and all of their out-of-town friends.”
Lloyd Buchholz, then the manager of the K-Mart Discount Store in Stevens Point, said he didn’t have the record for sale, but wished he did. “I’ve made several phone calls to see who could sell them to me, but I haven’t found anybody. If I could get them, I’m sure they would sell like crazy.”
Dombrowski said the reaction he had been getting to his record “has been tremendous,” and he hadn’t received any adverse comment on the use of “Pollack” in the lyrics.
“In a sense, I expected it to be a big local hit,” Dombrowski said then. “I expect it to be big wherever there are Polish people, and I sure hope it goes national.”
Donn Nichols, then program and music director at WSPT Radio, said the record would have been on the charts but “it’s too localized to go national right now. There’s a pretty big chance of it becoming a big regional hit.”
Nichols said the station had received numerous calls requesting the record be played and asking where it is available for sale.
The Journal reported, “in the midst of Polonia, Wisconsin USA, is Ernest Kezeske’s Store and Tavern. And in the midst of the commotion, the Kezeskes seem to take their newly-found fame matter-of-factly.”
Kezeske’s daughter Eileen told the Journal the family didn’t know of Dombrowski’s plan to record and market the song. Although there had been strangers in the bar since the record came out, she said she didn’t expect there to be a real increase in business because “business has always been good.”
In the Journal story, she said over 80 copies of the record had been sold at the bar already and the other Polonia taverns were also selling it. “There are a few people around here who are jealous of Gene’s success,” she said. “The customers in here play it constantly, but that’s okay. I like it.”
The excitement about the record soon ended.
Dombrowski told a Portage County Gazette reporter at the 50th anniversary of The Happy Notes that a representative from the company that recorded Haggard’s song approached him with a cease-and-desist order or the company would sue him. The company wanted record sales stopped and unsold records destroyed.
Dombrowski said band members were young, with families, and didn’t get paid much for performances, so they agreed to the company’s demands.
The U.S. Supreme Court finally decided in 1994 that a commercial parody of a song can be considered fair use under the Copyright Act of 1976. That case involved a parody of the Roy Orbison song “Oh, Pretty Woman,” by the rap group 2 Live Crew. Some parodists, notably “Weird Al” Yankovich, seek permission as a courtesy, although it is not required.
Dombrowski died March 7, 2013, but the Happy Notes band continues to perform, with members of his family and other longtime band members.
Some of the band’s best known songs were “Astronaut Polka,” which had nationwide sales after being recorded in 1968; “Sweet Violets Waltz;” “Will You Love Me When;” “Looking for a Sweetheart;” and “Please Don’t Drink My Beer.”
One can only wonder what the popularity and sales might have been if the cease-and-desist threat hadn’t been issued.
