TUBA DAN'S FAMILY BAND
Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Czech-Style Polka
One of nine children, Dan Jerabek was raised on his family's forty-acre farm near Kewaunee, Wisconsin. "My dad wanted to keep us on the farm and out of mischief, so he gave us instruments." His siblings played piano, concertina, bass clarinet, drums, button accordion, cornet and saxophone; Dan blew the tuba. As Dan puts it, Wisconsin's Bohemians "all love music and they all love to show off. They either played or wanted to." Indeed, residents of Wisconsin's Czech communities formed bands soon after settlement in the nineteenth century. Dominated by brass and reeds, these groups were patterned after European military bands, leading parades on the 4th of July, or playing at various other community events.
By the early twentieth century, however, smaller dance bands began to play throughout the year. The new Czech bands that began to emerge in the 1920s retained the bass horn as their "bottom." As a kid, Dan heard such local Czech musical stalwarts as Romy Gosz, Gene Heier, Joe Karman, and Rudy Plocar at live dances and over Manitowoc and Green Bay radio. In the 1950s the Jerabek family played variety shows in Manitowoc and Kewaunee Counties. When Dan was fifteen, a local musician who needed a tuba player heard he had a horn and hired Dan for eight dollars to play at a wedding.
Over the next two decades he played with over forty bands, either full-time or as a fill-in player. Foremost among them was Pulaski's Dick Rodgers Orchestra. Richard Rodziczak (a.k.a Dick Rodgers) was strongly influenced both by the improvisatory Polish concertina-violin duets of his father's generation and by eastern Wisconsin's Lawrence Duchow who fused Czech music with sweet jazz. Anchored by Dan Jerabek's bouncing tuba and the wild swirling accordion of Dick Metko, the resulting Rodgers confection blended the swing of jazz and the improvisatory fire of Polish polka with a solid Czech dance hall sound.
In the late 1960s, while playing for Dick Rodgers at Americano's Ballroom in Appleton, Dan Jerabek met his future wife, "Corky." A decade later, Tuba Dan and the Polkalanders was built around Dan's energetic bass horn, Corky's drumming, and the talents of their son, Danny Jerabek Jr., on clarinet, saxophone, and button box. Along with Corky and Danny Jr., the Family Band includes Danny's wife, Michelle, on saxophone and Don Hale on trumpet.
Information contributed by Danny Jerabek based on biographical sketch compiled by Dr. Jim Leary, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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