Last weekend’s frigid, snowy weather reminded me of the scene in the 1990 film “Home Alone” where Kate McCallister (Catherine O’Hara) is trapped in Scranton, Penn. on Christmas Eve.
Just when she considers selling her soul to “the devil himself” to get out of town, she’s rescued by a knight in a yellow satin jacket — Gus Polinski (John Candy) “Polka King of the Midwest.”
Candy wasn’t really a musician (though he did know his way around the clarinet), but most of the guys who portrayed his band, the Kenosha Kickers, were. Eddie Korosa was one of them. And since it’s National Polka Month, I asked him to tell me about that experience.
He said it all started with a phone call in early 1990 to his parents’ venue, the Baby Doll Polka Club, which was one of Chicago’s hottest spots on the South Side near Midway International Airport for the music genre until 2004. A talent coordinator for “Home Alone” was on the other end of the line, asking if a polka band could get to Northfield for an audition in two hours.
“I got a combination of my band and my dad’s band to jump in my polka truck,” Korosa said. “But the crazy part was they wanted us to be on the North Side of Chicago at seven o’clock. Have you ever driven down the Kennedy Expressway at six o’clock?!? And I think it was raining that day, too.”
Korosa said the motley crew’s frantic drive in rush-hour traffic resulted in just a 30-second audition in front of director Chris Columbus and writer/producer John Hughes, but they were hired on the spot.
The real polka band’s turn at stardom required an 18-hour day at Meigs Field on Northerly Island. Remember all those polka tunes Candy name dropped when he first met O’Hara? Korosa said he gave those to Candy, who ad-libbed most of that dialogue. And the scene in the back of the rental box truck? That was filmed at the former airport, too.
“We were actually in a warehouse at Meigs Field sitting in the back of the truck. Outside the truck were stagehands with a few two-by-fours above the tires and below the bed of the truck moving them back and forth so it looked like we were driving down the street. So, yeah, it was a multimillion dollar movie and that’s how they made the truck move,” Korosa said.
He has some fond memories with Candy.
“We were killing time in the back of the truck and (Candy) says, ‘Hey, can you play a little “Roll Out the Barrel?” ‘ The guys started playing it with John singing it while John Hughes and Chris Columbus were waiting to say, ‘Action.’ It really was a great experience and I thank my mom and dad for having the Baby Doll Polka Club, which was so popular back in the day, that’s why they called.”
Sadly, Korosa didn’t get to keep his Kenosha Kickers jacket, which was embroidered with his name. He said it was displayed in a Planet Hollywood restaurant to promote the movie then sold for almost $7,000 during a charity auction. His daughter gifted him a replica a few years ago.
Polka venues around the city have closed as interest in the music has dwindled, but Korosa continues his family’s tradition. He plays Stadium Club in McCook Tuesday nights and Schnitzel Platz in Glendale Heights on Friday and Saturday nights.
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Walter ‘Li’l Wally’ Jagiello: The ‘Polka King’
The Chicago native recorded 110 albums and gained fame as the co-writer of the Chicago White Sox fight song, “Let’s Go, Go-Go White Sox.” He is credited as the originator of Chicago-style polka, a counter to the faster Eastern style.
“Li’l Wally” acquired his nickname early. “He was a small guy so they’d put him up on a picnic table to sing,” his wife Jeanette told the Tribune. He was named “Polka King” during an event at the Aragon Ballroom in 1954.
Jagiello never attended high school and started singing at Polish picnics in Caldwell Woods on Sundays when he was 8 years old. At 14, he became a bandleader. Five years later, he was signed by Columbia, cutting eight records over a two-year contract. He then started his own label, Jay Jay Records.
Among his biggest hits was “Wish I Was Single Again” in 1954. He wrote “Let’s Go, Go-Go White Sox” with fellow musician Al Trace in 1959 and hired Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers to record it. It enjoyed brief popularity during the Sox run to the World Series that year and was revised for the 2005 championship season.
The son of Polish immigrants was named to the International Polka Association’s Hall of Fame in 1969 and appeared on “The Lawrence Welk Show” several times in the 1960s.
Jagiello called his 1984 performance for Pope John Paul II in the Vatican the highlight of his career. He wrote a song for the occasion, “God Bless Our Polish Pope.”
He died on Aug. 17, 2006, in Miami Beach, of congestive heart failure. Jagiello was 76.
Vlasta Krsek: ‘International Queen of Polka’
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As a child in her native country she was known as the “Shirley Temple of Czechoslovakia,” but Krsek gained popularity in the 1980s for appearing in her traditional folk costume and serenading late-night shows hosted by Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman.
Krsek wrote the following ballads: “The Chicago Bears Polka,” “The John Paul II Polka,” and “Chicago Cubs! Way To Go!” The Berwyn resident also played music for animals at Brookfield Zoo.
She might be best remembered, however, as the accordion player cranking out “Twist and Shout” during the Von Steuben Day Parade scene in the 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Krsek died in 2020.
Eddie Korosa Sr.: ‘Prince of Polka’
Korosa Sr. started playing the button-box accordion when he was 8 and performing in front of groups when he was 10.
Although he enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after his band — the Merry Makers — was formed, he did not let the change in location interrupt his playing.
After he returned, he composed the “Baby Doll Polka” in 1951, which led to several appearances on radio shows. Its popularity also helped Korosa win the title of “Prince of Polka” in 1951, in a contest among dozens of polka bands sponsored by radio station WTAQ. He also hosted “Eddie Korosa’s Polka Party” on WCIU-Ch. 26 and performed on “Ron Terry’s Polka Party” on WGN-TV.
And in 1954, Korosa built the original Baby Doll Polka Club at 73rd Street and Western Avenue, a lounge that seated 450, and boasted larger-than-life photographs of his own baby dolls — his three daughters. On a given Saturday night, the lively establishment would draw more than 1,000 people.
His son, Eddie Jr., recalls spending lots of time at the club as a child.
“Every Sunday afternoon, parents could bring their kids in and my mom Irene offered free potato chips and root beer for them,” he said. “My parents would have a live radio show then and it kind of got me into the music and I started playing drums when I was 5 or 6. The main instrument of a polka band is, of course, the accordion and that’s one of the reasons that I took up playing it. Yeah, and I also wanted to be in the front of the stage — I was kind of cute back in the day.”
The elder Korosa died in 1998. He was 80 years old.
Eddie Blazonczyk Sr.: Grammy-winning recording artist
As a radio broadcaster, record-label owner and perpetually traveling performer, Blazonczyk served as self-made nexus for all things polka.
Born in Chicago on July 12, 1941, he benefited from hearing a broad range of polka bands at the Pulaski Ballroom and the Mountaineer Tavern, which his parents operated on the Southwest Side.
When his father bought a tavern in the Wisconsin north woods, Blazonczyk heard a new slew of regional bands. Attending high school in Wisconsin, he also discovered nascent rock-n-roll, initially performing under the name Eddie Bell and touring with Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and Brenda Lee.
By 1962, Blazonczyk had returned to Chicago and to his first love, polka, joining a locally known band called the Versatones and transforming it into a nationally known brand with a decidedly updated approach. The Versatones released their first album, “Polka Parade,” on Blazonczyk’s new Bel-Aire label and eventually proceeded to tour the globe.
Blazonczyk’s hits include “Angeline Be Mine Polka,” “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” and “Poor Boy Polka.”
In addition to the 1986 Grammy Blazonczyk won for “Another Polka Celebration,” he received more than a dozen Grammy nominations as well as one of this country’s most prestigious cultural honors, a National Heritage Fellowship, presented by then first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1998.
When Blazonczyk retired after a stroke, his son Eddie Jr. continued to lead and tour with his own version of the ensemble until the end of 2011.
Blazonczyk Sr. died in 2012 at age 70. A bill in 2015 proposed his song, “Polka Celebration,” become the official Illinois polka (since square dancing is already the official state dance and “Illinois” written by C. H. Chamberlain and composed by Archibald Johnston is already the official state song), but it failed to pass.
‘That’s the stumbling block. What do you do to promote it to younger people?’
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Polka music evolved in Chicago because of the dance halls opened by Eastern Europeans who wanted to preserve a key component of their culture.
“[Dance halls] were significant throughout the city,” Peter Alter, curator at the Chicago History Museum, told the Tribune in 2009. “They were meant to perpetuate at least some variety of homeland culture — whether it’s a true understanding of what homeland culture is or … some American-Chicago version.”
These once prominent venues have shuttered — including Polonia Banquets in Brighton Park, which shared a building with the International Polka Association Hall of Fame and Museum — but the museum’s collection continues to expand.
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