Verne Meisner
Encyclopedia
LaVerne Donald "Verne" Meisner (December 4, 1938 – June 10, 2005) was an American polka musician born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

 and raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin
Whitewater, Wisconsin
Whitewater is a city in Jefferson and Walworth Counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located near the southern portion of the Kettle Moraine State Forest, Whitewater is the home of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater.-Geography:...

. He was inducted into five halls of fame, including the International Polka Association
International Polka Association
The International Polka Association, IPA is located in Chicago, Illinois and dedicated to the study and preservation of polka music and the cultural heritage of Polish Americans who have made this music tradition part of their heritage. The IPA hosts an annual festival and convention as well as its...

 Hall of Fame as a "Living Legend" in 1989. He is best known for the songs "Memories of Vienna" and "El Rio Drive."

Meisner was known for playing Cleveland-style polka waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...

es. Radio personality George Mlay said, "No one can play a waltz like Meisner." He released 30 singles and 20 LPs
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

/CDs, wrote over 60 songs, and sold approximately one million records in his career. He toured the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Europe, and Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, playing 200 to 250 dates per year for 40 years.

Career

Meisner began playing polka music in a band as an 11-year-old after receiving his first accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

 as an 8-year-old. He attended dances and learned how to play music by ear
Learning music by ear
Learning music by ear is done by repeatedly listening to other musicians and then attempting to recreate what one hears. This is how people learn music in any musical tradition in which there is no complete musical notation...

 after several months of listening to Frankie Yankovic
Frankie Yankovic
Frankie Yankovic was a Grammy Award-winning polka musician. Known as "America's Polka King," Yankovic was the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during a long and successful career.-Background:Of Slovene descent, he was raised in South Euclid, Ohio...

's music on his phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

. Meisner formed his first band, which began performing in 1950 as "Verne Meisner and the Polka Boys". He briefly toured with Yankovic in 1955.

His first recordings were created in 1957 when the band recorded the original tracks "Memories of Vienna Waltz" and "Polka Dancers Polka" on the Paragon Label. Meisner and his band began to be noticed around Milwaukee after they appeared on the Fritz the Plumber Radio Show. They recorded their second record, "The 400 Polka and Waltzing in Vienna", in 1957 and followed it up with 1959's "Pretty Polly and Till I Return".

When Meisner's National Guard unit was called up in 1962, the band did not release a record until it came out with the LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

 "A Polka and Waltz Holiday," on Cuca Records
Cuca Records
Cuca Records of Sauk City, Wisconsin was founded by James Kirchstein in 1959 and actively produced LP and 45 rpm recordings until the early 1970s. During this period, Cuca recorded and released primarily polka and ethnic music on LP but also issued other musical styles, including pop, rhythm and...

.

Halls of fame

Meisner was inducted into five halls of fame. Besides his 1989 induction into the International Polka Association
International Polka Association
The International Polka Association, IPA is located in Chicago, Illinois and dedicated to the study and preservation of polka music and the cultural heritage of Polish Americans who have made this music tradition part of their heritage. The IPA hosts an annual festival and convention as well as its...

 Hall of Fame, he was inducted into the Cleveland Style Polka Hall of Fame and the Minnesota Polka Hall of Fame, and received the Wisconsin Polka Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award. Meisner and his son, Steve Meisner, were the first polka artists to receive the Wisconsin Area Music Industry
Wisconsin Area Music Industry
Wisconsin Area Music Industry is an American volunteer organization founded in 1980, and based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its stated purpose is "to educate and recognize the achievements and accomplishments of individuals in the Wisconsin music industry." The organization is best known for its...

 (WAMI) award in 1988.

Personal life

Meisner was married to Judith Ann Kutz and the couple had three children (Steve, Daniel, and Michele Bush) before divorcing. His second wife, Shirley Tyson, died in the 1980s.

He suffered from alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

 after spending so much time performing in bars, but he became sober in his 40s and alcohol-free for the final 20 years of his life.

Death

He died from melanoma
Melanoma
Melanoma is a malignant tumor of melanocytes. Melanocytes are cells that produce the dark pigment, melanin, which is responsible for the color of skin. They predominantly occur in skin, but are also found in other parts of the body, including the bowel and the eye...

 complications on June 10, 2005. He was living in Waukesha, Wisconsin
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Waukesha is a city in and the county seat of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. The population was 70,718 at the 2010 census, making it the largest community in the county and 7th largest in the state. The city is located adjacent to the Town of Waukesha...

 at the time. In his death announcement in the New York Times, the newspaper said "Considered one of the titans of polka, Mr. Meisner was a bridge between the classics of the Lawrence Welk era and the pop-infused polkas of contemporary artists. To thousands of fans, he was second only to Frank Yankovic, the acknowledged king of polka."
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