Polkabilly

My brother, a UW folklore professor, has written another book on the Midwest's north country traditions, this time centered around music, "Polkabilly".

He's written his own review, (who better to know), in the newsletter of the Center for Upper Midwest Cultures:

The work offers a freewheeling blend of continental European folk music and the songs, tunes, and dances of Anglo and Celtic immigrants. Polkabilly has enthralled American musicians and dancers since the mid-19th century. From West Virginia coal camps and east Texas farms to the Canadian prairies and America's Upper Midwest, scores of groups have wed squeezeboxes with string bands, hoe downs with hambos, and sentimental Southern balladry with comic "up north" broken-English comedy, to create a new and uniquely American sound.

The Goose Island Ramblers (Bruce Bollerud, Smokey George Gilbertsen, and Windy Whitford) played as the house band for a local tavern, Glen and Ann’s, in Madison, Wisconsin from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. The group epitomized the polkabilly sound with their wild mixture of Norwegian fiddle tunes, Irish jigs, Slovenian polkas, Swiss yodels, old time hillbilly songs, "Scandihoovian" and "Dutchman" dialect ditties, frost-bitten Hawaiian marches, and novelty numbers on the electric toilet plunger.

And if you'd like a taste of north country ethnic and immigrant humor, try "So Ole Says to Lena:Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest". It reads like you're there with a group cracking jokes. When my kids were small I had to edit or skip some altogether. As I recall, one goes something like this: Ole and Lena are on their way to Minneapolis. Ole is driving, Lena sitting next to him. After a while, Lena says: Ole, you can go further. Ole: All the way to Duluth?

Some of those polka dancers headed up the railroad from Chicago a century or so ago and never came back. And a few of their descendents are branching out a bit more---hey, they're not all Lutherans, some are Catholics and every so often indulge in a Polka Mass.

UPDATE: The review was from the publisher, erroneously attributed to the author.