MINNESOTA POLKA: Eddie Skeets' Orchestra / Mexican Polka / Pleasant Peasant 64-62 / 1962

Eddie Stanley Washinowski became “Eddie Skeets” when his band was hired to play a live radio show in Minnesota, and the station manager demanded a name change: “I said, ‘They called me "Ski" in the Navy.’ He said, well, you're Skeets now. Eddie Skeets.”

Eddie was born March 14, 1921, in Philadelphia, PA, and got his first accordion as a birthday gift from his parents when he was 12. “They saved up their money for a whole year. It cost them $100.” Within two years, Eddie was a professional polka man, playing in three-piece combos in Philadelphia and adjacent New Jersey. “I started playing when I was 14 and I haven't missed a New Year's Eve since.” After serving in the Navy during WWII, Eddie moved to southern Minnesota and married Adeline Preuss of Round Lake.

Eddie and Adeline moved to nearby Worthington, where “Eddie Skeets and his Swiss Boys” had a regular 10:30 am spot, Monday through Friday, on newly minted KWOA radio. Soon “Eddie Skeets and his Famous KWOA Radio Band” became a full-time job, playing throughout the tri-state intersection of the states of Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota. Named the fifth most popular polka band in the nation by Downbeat Magazine, Eddie was booked 360 days a year. As he later said, “Well, I've got three kids - so I guess I had three days off.”

Moving to Sioux City, IA, in 1963, the band added more ballroom content to their dance card. Eddie’s son Jeff eventually played keyboards with the band in the 1970s between attending high school and the University of South Dakota. During the ‘70s and ‘80s the “Jeff and Eddie Skeets Orchestra” made a number of LP albums. In 1983, on his 37th wedding anniversary, Eddie had a stroke which affected his left side, and kept him from playing for a time. Within two years, however, he had worked his way from a wheelchair to a cane, and then back to the stage with an adapted accordion to compensate for his now weaker left arm. On October 25, 1995, Eddie died in Sioux City from complications of heart surgery. He was 74 years old.

“That's been his whole life,” Adeline Washinowski said. “He loved people and loved to play the music that they enjoyed.”

His agent, John Eckert, once said, “I still hear Eddie Skeets saying ‘John, don't leave the ballroom without the money…’”

Pleasant Peasant was a 1950s - 1960s polka label from Minneapolis, MN, founded by C. B. Brown, who also ran the Lodestar label. Many of the recording artists were descendants of German and Czech immigrants living in the area to the west and southwest of Minneapolis/St. Paul, which included the town of New Ulm, “Polka Capital of the Nation.” [Note: Robert Schumann’s 1848 work, “Fröhlicher Landmann,” is often translated as “Pleasant Peasant.”]

[Mexican Polka, Eddie Skeets, Pleasant Peasant 64-62, recorded 1962, matrix KB 2962-A]
The flip side of this disk is The Bride & Groom:    • MINNESOTA POLKA: Eddie Skeets' Orchestra /...  
Polka Playlist:    • Polka Time