Philadelphia Weekly

Polka--it's your great grandfather's rock 'n' roll. And like rock 'n' roll, it's not just music, but a whole way of life. Beer. Funny hats. Funnier accents. Aged men in short pants. And fun food: polish pickles, hot cauliflower, banana peppers, cabbage roll, pierogies, kraut, kielbasa and enough variations on sausage to knock Mike Ditka on his ass with a triple bypass.

And polka seems to have all the answers to life's persistent questions. Who could argue with the wisdom of, "In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink it here"?

Really, have you ever heard a better reason to choose life?

Polka is a sound, a flavor, a fashion and a philosophy, but first and foremost it is a dance. Invented by a Czech peasant girl in 1830 near Prague and named after the Czech word "pulka," which means "half-step," polka moves in 2/4 time parceled into three quick steps and a hop. Soon the polka was giving the waltz a run for its money in the ballrooms of France and England and quickly spread across the porous borders of Northern Europe, taking root in Slovenia, Poland and Germany.

It was the Germans who incubated polka in the beer halls, combining it with lager and lederhosen and big-breasted frauleins brandishing pretzels the size of newborn babies. Polka was smuggled into the New World in the scuffed steamer trunks of European immigrants. The tired, the hungry and the poor trudged from Ellis Island to the industrial centers of the Northeast and the Midwest--the coal mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania and the factory floors of Chicago and Detroit, where polka flourished in ethnic halls and church bazaars.

But by the tail end of the 20th century, polka was in danger of artistic stagnation and insularity. Sure, there were the standards: the "Dance on Your Toesies Polka," the "No Beer Today Polka," the "Glub, Glub, Glub Polka" (which presumably means there was in fact some beer available that day), the "Gimme a Drink Polka," the "Shut up and Drink Your Beer Polka" and that end of the evening slow-grinder "Party Pooper Polka." But even devout polka party people had to admit that these tunes were pretty much the same stale accordion wheeze Xeroxed over and over again.

And then something earth-shakingly seismic hit the polka scene, something dramatic and life-altering, something that would do for polka what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" did for alternative rock: the Chicken Dance. It would change the world like nothing has since the Hokey Pokey.

Forget the Macarena, the Lambada and the Electric Slide. They all separate the cans from the cannots.

The beauty of the Chicken Dance is how democratic it is, how it brings us all together, bridging the divides of age, ethnicity and cool. Everyone can do it--young and old, hip and square, fat kids, skinny kids, even kids with chicken pox--and together we can all surrender our dignity for a few minutes and have a collective belly laugh at our highfalutin selves.

The choreography is almost Zen-like in its simplicity: First you raise your hands shoulder-high and pinch all four fingers against your thumbs like a chicken's beak pecking the air. Then you press your fists into the center of your chest, throw your elbows out and flap your wings, wiggle your butt, and with a twisting motion, collapse your body down to a crouch. Clap five times and repeat.

Of course you already know this. Everybody knows this. But few know how or why this ethnic curiosity became a wedding reception staple.

When PW attempted to trace the Chicken Dance's origins, we found the trail riddled with half-truths and boastful claims and counterclaims. Clearly we were venturing into a shadowy underworld of lies, suspicion and deceit.

There were people who made it known they did not want this story told. We received threatening umlaut-laden letters filled with rotting kraut. Menacing telephone callers promised that if this story went to press, "Kay Graham is going to get her tit caught in the wringer."

We tried to explain that Kay Graham used to own the Washington Post, and that the caller was mistaking this for Watergate, and besides, she's dead. But there was no talking sense to these dumb bunnies. Still, under a veil of threats, we intrepidly pursued the truth.

This much is known: The song was written in the 1950s by a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas, who tended a flock of ducks and geese. Hence the song's poultry theme. Slowly, the "Chicken Dance" spread out across Europe, becoming a staple at summer festivals. It was eventually recorded by a two-man accordion duo called the Electronicas.

But how did the song get to America? Several claim to be the first to bring it Stateside, and still others claim to be the first to record it domestically.

It was the quest to separate truth from half-truth that led us to the Festplatz at Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pa., in search of the nearest polka expert, Jolly Joe Timmer, king of all polka media, star of stage and TV screen. Over the course of 50 years, Jolly Joe has built an impressive polka: bandleader of the Jolly Joe Timmer Orchestra; owner of polka-centric radio station WGPA Sunny 1100 AM; host of two different cable TV polka hours; proprietor of Joe Timmer's House of Music, a shop that sells both polka recordings from around the world and boombas (a musical instrument that is essentially a pogo stick with a tambourine and sleigh bells attached, which you bounce up and down and beat on with a drum stick); upstairs from the store, the recording studio of Rave Records, his polka record label; and last but not least, Jolly Joe Timmer's Grove, a nearby picnic area that every Sunday in the summer feeds and entertains anywhere from 70 to 700 polka enthusiasts.

Around these parts, polka is a scene, baby, and Jolly Joe is a legend--part entrepreneur, part humanitarian. "I perform polka because it means so much to my audience," he says of the septuagenarian faithful who turn up, God bless 'em, for every picnic, fair, festival or pretty much any place that features the suffix "-platz." "And I do the TV show primarily to entertain those who are too ill to go out and polka themselves."