Music: Peripatetic Polka

Germans insisted it was an old Bavarian drinking song. Americans and British thought it was one of their own. Anyhow, they all sang it. The Beer Barrel Polka became the Tipperary of World War II, rivaled in popularity only by Lili Marlene, which had more homesick appeal, but less oompah.

The unknown little man who actually wrote Polka turned up in the news last week. He is a village orchestra leader named Jaromir Vejvoda, from the tiny Prague suburb of Vrane. In 1930, when he was 28, Vejvoda scribbled down Modran-ska Polka (his first composition) for his small stringed orchestra which played in the village park. Only in 1934 did he let it be published and words set to it. One Vasek Zeman retitled it Skoda Lasky (Jilted Love) and wrote these sob-saccharine lyrics in Czech:

Roses are blooming, what for,

Nobody can help me any more,

They bloom, they wither, their leaves fall off,

Just as my tears into cool grass roll.

Bouncing Words. Even with such lyrics, the song pulled through. It became a hit, with just as sobby words, in Germany as Rosamunde, in Denmark as Skon en min Kone, in Sweden as Ut i Naturen.

In Manhattan, Tin Pan Alleysmiths Shapiro-Bernstein heard a recording of Jilted Love in 1938, hired Songwriter Lew Brown to write some words that would bounce like the music. Result: the Polka’s now familiar “Roll out the barrel” lyrics.

By the time Bohemia was blacked out by war, Vejvoda had already collected sizable royalties. Polka sold more than a half million copies in the U.S. alone.

Everybody was sure that the Andrews Sisters had done it to death—but military bands took it up again. During the war, it brought in money by the barrel; big U.S. and British royalties now await him.

Innkeeper’s Delight. Composer Vejvoda, 43 and balding, now runs a pleasant plaster inn on the banks of the Vltava. In his prosperity, he owns two 20-piece bands.

Last week for the first time Composer Vejvoda heard Lyricist Lew Brown’s malty English lyrics translated by a U.S. newsman. As he drew beers for customers in his inn, he smiled appreciatively. “You know, those are better words for a song written by an innkeeper,” he told the newsman. “Have another one on the house?”