MINNESOTA POLKA: Ernie Coopman / Johnny's Waltz / Pleasant Peasant 14-60 / 1960

Ernest A. Coopman was born on January 5, 1933, in Joslin, IL, just east of Moline. His father, Maurice, was of Belgian heritage, while his mother, Viola Johnson, had Swedish roots. Viola’s brother, Leroy, was the only musician in the family, playing guitar and fiddle. When Ernie was 12 or 13, the family moved to Wisconsin and then to Minnesota, where his mother’s family lived. About that time, Ernie saw someone playing a concertina at a wedding shower: “I’d sit by the stage and watch them guys play all night long.” After working for a farmer for a summer, Ernie had saved enough money to buy his own concertina. He patterned his style after Elmer Scheid, who was then playing with the Babe Wagner band: "that was my cup of tea."

From January of 1951 to February of 1953, Ernie was a member of the U. S. Army. In the summer of 1955, he replaced Norbert Gag as the concertina player in Norm Wilke’s Little Fishermen, and on August 30 that same year married Sharon Rae Schindle in Mankato. Ernie played with Wilke for a year before joining Bruno Randles’ Jolly Brewers, which played in the Scheid style Ernie preferred. In 1959, Ernie bought the Jolly Brewers Orchestra and taught himself to read music. For a time he used the band’s arrangements, but by 1960 he was writing his own because he couldn't afford to buy them, and “a guy can't sit and be a stick in the mud!”

Ernie’s day jobs included carpentry, building houses and cabinets with Norbert Gag, work with a candy company in Mankato, and working as a mechanic’s helper, which led to a serious hand injury in 1967. He had to quit playing and “folded the band up, put the book in closet and it’s still there." Although the doctor told him he might never play again, and Ernie had no feeling in his hand, he played with two fingers and kept going for years until he got his feeling back. Eventually, in 1973, Ernie started another band, The Stagemen, and “worked probably all the ballrooms in the state of Minnesota, at least in the southern half,” as well as engagements in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa.

All the while Ernie worked at repairing and tuning concertinas, selling and repairing snowmobiles, and part-time carpentry. His obituary lists his memberships in SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Catholic Order of Foresters, American Legion Post 11, Eagles Club, Moose Club, and the Button Box Club of Glencoe. He was also involved in KEYC-TV’s Bandwagon show, which has been televised since 1960, featuring traditional dance music (such as polka) with a participating ballroom audience. Ernie Coopman passed away at his home outside Mankato on December 12, 1998, at the age of 65.

Much of the content and all of the quotations are from a summary of James Leary’s 2/6/1990 interview with Ernie [http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/displ...] with additional information from Ernie’s obituary [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2...].

[Johnny's Waltz, Ernie Coopman & his Jolly Brewers, Pleasant Peasant 14-60, recorded 1960, matrix KB 2001 B]
The flip side of this disk is Cherry Polka:    • MINNESOTA POLKA: Ernie Coopman / Cher...  
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