Vrazels Polka Band

This Band was a part of our childhood...Every Sunday at noon on AM 1330, the "radio man"-Alfred Vrazel came on. And if it was your birthday weekend, he would announce it to everyone in Milam & Bell County. Also, we went to countless dances at Seaton Star Hall in Seaton, Tx. Many times when we were at Uncle Richard and Aunt Betty's house, the "radio man" would drive by on his tractor and wave. He was a celebrity...from Yarellton, Texas. Our "good 'ol days".

The Vrazels Polka Band have retired after 55 years

By TARA DOOLEY Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Dec. 26, 2008, 2:22PM

Karen Warren Chronicle

Bill and Annie Mae Cernoch dance at the SPJST Hall. Brothers Anton Vrazel, 81, Alfred Vrazel, 68, and their six-member band have been performing polka music with inflections of their Czech heritage at dance halls, folk festivals and country stores throughout much of Texas for 55 years.

Last Chance Polkas

After 55 years, the Vrazels’ Polka Band has two more shows before retiring.

What: New Year’s Eve Dance

Where: SPJST Hall number 18, 702 Highway 95 North in Elgin

When: 8 p.m. to midnight Dec. 31.

What: Retirement Dance and Party

Where: Mayborn Civic and Convention Center, 3303 N. 3rd St. in Temple.

When: 3 p.m. Jan. 24. Doors open at 1 p.m.

Information: www.vrazelspolkaband.com

Polka Radio

What: Alfred Vrazel’s Polka Show

When: 12:15 p.m. Sundays

Where: KMIL-FM (105.1) and KTAE-AM (1330) in Cameron

On the Web: kmil.com

Inside the door, a couple collected $8 and dispensed tickets that doubled as raffle numbers. Once in the hall, guests collected a beer or a Coke before taking a seat with the generations of friends and family gathered at long tables encircling the dance floor.

Some fans dressed in pressed jeans and snap-button shirts. Others wore dirndl-like skirts with patterns in red, white or blue — the colors of the United States and the Czech Republic. There were cowboy hats and John Deere caps, boots and heels.

By the stage at the front of the room, band leader Alfred Vrazel chatted with the friends and family. Drummer Thomas Strmiska checked equipment and David Trojacek warmed up his saxophone. Anton Vrazel took to his stool in his green Alpine hat with his accordion.

Chatter and little white lights illuminated the nearly windowless hall. The dance floor was empty.

At 2 p.m. on the nose, Alfred Vrazel launched the band into its first number:

“Let’s have a party, party tonight,” he sang. “We’ll play the music for your delight. Roll out the barrel. Spread out the cheer. We’ll play a polka for everybody here.”

Before the first notes could reverberate across the room, champion polka dancers Gwen and Lee Roy Petersen hit the floor, sweeping nearly once around before Alfred sang his way to the refrain and the floor could snap into action with the hopping dance steps of hundreds.

The Vrazels’ Polka Band played. The people danced. It’s the simple version of the band’s 55 years of polka success, said Alfred’s 81-year-old big brother, Anton.

“It’s happy music for happy people,” he said.

After 51/2 decades of tending farm and ranch land in the Buckholts area by day and playing polka dances when the work was done, the Vrazels have decided that it is time for their polkas to end.

A dance in Elgin on New Year’s Eve is the band’s final regularly scheduled performance. In January they will play a retirement dance and party at the convention hall in Temple.

“It took a lifetime to get to where we are at,” said Alfred Vrazel. “It was a very hard decision. We spent many sleepless nights and prayed over it before we made the decision.”

The decision means decades of fans — most of whom consider themselves friends — will tune in to the younger groups playing polkas for a dancing crowd. It also will leave the state bereft of polka pioneers of a music that Alfred Vrazel calls Tex-Czech Polka.

“They are the first generation of that sound,” Pat Jasper, the former founding director of Texas Folk Life Resources. “And that is the sound that has taken over. The first generation of that sound will really depart the stage when they retire.”

The sound they helped pioneer is a Lone Star state original, crafted out of the Vrazel family’s Moravian roots mixed with the country of Texas.

Indeed, heritage is an important ingredient of successful music-making, according to Alfred Vrazel. Or as he puts it: “The main thing is be yourself and do your own thing, and never forget where you came from.”

From their father’s 150 acres, the family of four brothers worked about 1,500 acres at the height of their business. Now it’s down to about 1,000 and only two Vrazel brothers, Alfred and Albert, remain in the partnership.

“We were poor, let me tell you,” Vrazel said. “None of us wore shoes on the farm back in them days. You just wore shoes going to church on Sunday.”

Alfred Vrazel was the first in the family to take up music in about 1952, he said. His daddy ordered him a $32 button accordion from Sears. He taught himself to play by listening to the radio, 78 rpm records and local bands. When Anton Vrazel taught himself to play the accordion, Alfred added saxophone and guitar.

Alfred Vrazel’s performing career began at a celebration for a neighborhood farmer who had just completed a new wood-frame home.

“Later we played the small stores around,” he added. “There used to be a lot of stores in the country, little grocery stores, and they had a little beer garden in each one of them. We would play there for entertainment, no compensation.”

As Vrazels developed into a band of six, Alfred took on duties as the band leader, and both brothers worked at booking jobs — after they farmed fields of cotton, corn, hay and wheat and ranched cattle.

Laddie Barcak first encountered the Vrazels at Bill Mraz Dance Hall in Houston’s Garden Oaks neighborhood, a legendary gathering spot of polka lovers until fire destroyed the hall in 2004. Barcak had come to Houston at age 18 from Flatonia. Farm life was not for him, he said.

Though there were many memorable Vrazels concerts, one of the highlights for Barcak was a show in East Bernard that featured the reigning kings of the polka scene in 1967: The Joe Patek Orchestra, Lee Roy Matocha and the Vrazels.

“They were called the Big Three,” Barcak said. “The hall was jammed wall to wall to the rafters. Everybody was there.”

“They really brought about some modern innovation with the instrumentation and their arrangements and their drummer,” said Carl Finch of the Grammy award-winning alt-polka band, Brave Combo.

At first the Vrazels encountered resistance from clubs owners, Alfred Vrazel said.

“But the audience changed their minds,” he said. “People started coming. They like what they heard.”

Bands such as Brave Combo continued to tweak the tradition. Even more authentic Czech bands such as The Dujka Brothers Band have added polkas to the canon with Texas flair including numbers such as Pivo and Kolaches, Cerveza and Tamales.

Barcak figures the music isn’t going anywhere. Polka radio shows will always play the Vrazels. And Barcak has all the band’s recordings.

“I don’t like to see it, but I’m happy for them,” said Laddie Barcak, 66. “I guess we’re greedy. We always want them there.”

Anton Vrazel, 81, plans to make more time for family. He figures he missed a number of weddings and family reunions over the years. Once he exits the concert stage, he plans to join in on the festive occasions.

Otherwise, he plans to keep himself occupied with his cattle business and restoring old tractors, he said.

Alfred Vrazel, 68, plans to keep up with polka by continuing with Alfred Vrazel’s Polka Show on the radio in Cameron. But he and Bernice are going to wait until after the Jan. 24 retirement dance before they decide what to do with their free time.

Alfred Vrazel, 68, plans to keep up with polka by continuing with Alfred Vrazel’s Polka Show on the radio in Cameron. But he and Bernice are going to wait until after the Jan. 24 retirement dance before they decide what to do with their free time.

Some of it might be spent organizing Alfred’s stacked music room, cataloging the recordings, photos, programs and other items collected over 55 years in the polka business.

They may even take in a few polkas from the dance floor.

“I’m going to have to learn how to act,” Alfred Vrazel said.

“I’ve never been through the front door of a dance hall, I don’t think. I’ve always come through the rear. I’ll have to get my wallet out and buy us a ticket.”