Romy Gosz

Roman 'Romy' Louis Gosz (August 2, 1910 Grimms, Wisconsin - August 29, 1966, Manitowoc, Wisconsin) was a popular and commercially successful polka musician in the upper Midwest.

Gosz's music featured the Bohemian brass style and appealed to the many ethnic groups (Dutch, Bohemian, Belgian, German and Polish) found throughout the region.

Romy Gosz was born on August 2, 1910, in Grimms, Wisconsin, to Paul and Anna Gosz, the fourth of their seven children.

At age 7, Gosz would take his first and only piano lesson.

When he told his piano teacher he would not be able to make his next lesson because he had a dance job, he was told "not to come back at all if you can play a job with one lesson".

When he was 11, Gosz joined his father Paul and his older brother's, George and Mike, in forming the Paul Gosz Orchestra.

Their first job was playing at a silver wedding anniversary in Newton, Wisconsin.

The very next night, they played a golden anniversary at the J.D. Prokash hall in Rockwood, Wisconsin, and the night after that, the group played a sixtieth wedding anniversary dance.

A few years later, Gosz's father Paul decided to work more at his day job at the local lime kiln, Allwood Lime Company, and he handed the management of the family orchestra over to George.

By 1928, leadership of the group had passed to Romy, who was barely eighteen at the time.

Still a minor, Gosz was unable to conduct business and manage the band legally, so he retained his father's name for the group.

Early on, Gosz determined that his group should focus on the making of records and live performances.

He thought that playing over the radio on a regular basis would be detrimental to the band's traveling and the resulting opportunity to interact with their audiences.

On July 5, 1929, Gosz married Antoinette Leggio at St. Anne Catholic Church in Francis Creek, Wisconsin, the same parish where he had attended school as a boy.

The couple took up residence in a small home that Gosz and his father built in Rockwood.

Over the next seven years, the couple would have five children (four sons and one daughter).

Gosz and his orchestra cut their first record in 1930 at the Broadway studio in Grafton, Wisconsin.

They recorded an old Bohemian tune called.

Gosz commented that they did it "just to see what the band sounded like."

The recording of "Pilsen Polka" became a bestseller throughout the decade and was key to building Gosz's popularity.

Later that same year, the band donated its services for the diamond jubilee celebration of St. Mary's Catholic church in Tisch Mills, Wisconsin.

When the pastor, Father Rudolph James Hodik, went to Rome the following year for an audience with Pope Pius XI, he presented the pontiff with some of Gosz's recordings.

Father Hodik returned home with a papal blessing for Gosz and the band.

The papal blessing and a picture of Pope Pius were some of Gosz's proudest possessions and were displayed prominently in the Gosz home.

In 1931 Gosz found himself without a trumpet player.

Gosz commented, "I knew where I could get a good pianist, but couldn't find a trumpet player, so I changed from piano to trumpet. I taught myself. In six months we made a recording with me double tonguing on the trumpet."

The Wisconsin American Legion was searching for a musical theme for its 1934 convention, when somebody heard Gosz's "The Prune Song".

It was immediately adopted as the convention theme.

Originally an old Bohemian waltz called "Sveskova Alej", Gosz increased the song's tempo and added some double tonguing to the trumpet part.

This is typical of many of his recordings.

Today, the song is known as "We Left Our Wives Back Home"

His recordings "Musical Clock" and "Picnic In The Woods" appeared in early country music charts printed by Billboard Magazine.

By 1940, Gosz's band was very popular with the general Wisconsin audiences.

It was around this time that a Sheboygan, Wisconsin, radio station polled listeners for their favorite bandleader.

In the one-week poll Gosz placed first, with a margin of seven hundred votes over the second-place finisher, western bandleader, Gene Autry.

The national press soon took note of Gosz's popularity, with articles appearing in Billboard, Coronet, Life, Pic, and Time.

In 1948, Gosz purchased a home with an adjacent Tavern and Dance Hall at "Polifka's Corners" (the intersection of Manitowoc County Road T and Polifka Road) near Kellnersville.

On June 9, 1948, Gosz took part in a battle of the bands at the Milwaukee Arena.

Competing against Louis Bashell, Lawrence Duchow, Harold Loeffelmacher and the Six Fat Dutchmen, Whoopee John Wilfahrt, and Frankie Yankovic.

At the event's conclusion, the title of "America's Polka King" was awarded to Yankovic.