Dave Wood

World War II was finally over and, as in the 1918 war, survivors decided to have some fun. TV was in its infancy and hadn’t ruined the entertainment industry. Small towns had poor TV reception, so city fathers restored baseball parks which filled the bleachers with fans to cheer on the returning GIs who gladly traded their bayonets for baseball bats. The new movie theatres sprung up and invigorated the film industry. “Clark Gable’s Back and Greer Garson’s Got Him!” was M-G-M’s motto.

And dancing the blues away was a staple of weekend entertainment for many small-town folks.  “Young and old danced on and on with Whoopee John,” referring to John Wilfahrt’s nationally known melodic old-time band. Following along were Fezz Fritsche’s Goosetown Band and Harold Loefflemacher’s Six Fat Dutchmen, all three the pride of New Ulm, Minn. Lesser combos also played the larger pavilions, including Jimmy “Dancing Shoes” Palmer, a big band from Chicago who came annually to Independence’ s Midway Pavilion where we loved to hear his 12-piece band break into styles aping nationally famous bands—Glenn Miller’s, Benny Goodman’s, Tommy Dorsey’s,

But most of the local dance halls depended on countless local bands, which played both pop and ethnic numbers for old-timers and hepcats alike. Towns like my hometown of Whitehall were especially fortunate to hear bands that the more cosmopolitan urbanites never had the chance to dance to. One of our favorites was Iver Johnstad, who was a barber by day, a band leader by night, whose repertoire included “Life in the Finnish Woods and Kann Du Glenna Gammel Norge? (“Can You Remember Old Norway?”) Ernie Reck’s Polish heritage came shining through with Reck’s Arcadia-based band which aired for years on WEAU TV. Central Europe’s heritage was favored by Bobby Art (nee Artobosy) who wrote, played and sang “When the Sun Comes Over the Brewery, It’s Time to Hit the Hay.” 

And I’m glad to report one Norwegian fiddler earned a place in history: Leonard Finseth, who learned to fiddle on a homemade violin fashioned from a cigar box. Leonard was invited by the Smithsonian to come to Washington to record the Scandinavian tunes of glory for the museum’s posterity files. Len fiddled on a budget model he purchased from a catalog he called “Monkey Ward.’’

Places to dance abounded in my neck of the woods: Fournier’s in Eau Claire. The Avalon in La Crosse, Lakeshore in Hixton, The Silver Dome in Neillsville, and Independence’s Midway Pavilion with its magnificent maple floor built by the Kampa family in the Roaring Twenties, where my dad danced his first Charleston in 1924 and, with one artificial limb, his last two-step with my sister in the 1985.

In the 1950s six of us high school kids formed a band named after Iver Johnstad’ s Idlewild Orchestra. Iver gave us his old dance posters, which we plastered over two counties. It was Lent, when most large pavilions closed, so we drew a large crowd (of non-believers?) at little York Hall, then a larger crowd at a town hall. Then tragedy struck when our school board forbade my taking its bass horn to dance halls, and without an Oom-Pah, our polka and waltz band was a goner.

A luckier high school band in the area, led by Norman Herman was named The Rhythm Playboys. Just last week I watched them on national TV! I’ll betcha Norm is glad he played the accordion, and not the bass horn. I hope they’ll also end up at the Smithsonian!