Holy schmolka! With the dance world still recovering from the disco one-two knock out of Disco Queen Donna Summer and the end of Bee Gees' Robin Gibb, the Reaper goes ahead and claims another terpsichorean royalty club member, Eddie Blazonczyk, King of the Polka. 

Millions are squeezing their concertinas a little tighter tonight knowing that Eddie Blazonczyk is no longer on the job taking polka into forbidden worlds it was told it didn't belong. With his versatile Versatones, he made albums of "country-styled" polkas, patriotic polkas, and at the height of the Stars on 45 craze, he even released a long player of extended medleys of polka's greatest hits!

Blazonczyk knew the world was allergic to that five-lettered word but he had the temerity to affix "polka" to the end of every song title from "Did You Have To Bring That Up Polka," " Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man Polka" and this album's cautionary "Don't Get Married Polka." I plunked down my two quarters hoping that I'd found the '80s dance pop-polka fusion of the last century that Saturday Night Fiedler had been for disco and classical music. But this is just another Blazonczyk polka record with nary a Vincent Price soundbyte or Jacko cover, although there might not be that much spiritual distance between the King of Pop and the King of Polka with "P.Y.T" and "Hey Pretty Girl Polka" or "The Lady in My Life" and "Blond Bombshell Polka." If I could only find a Polish translator!

I'd like to think in a parallel polka universe, Polka Thriller, released on Blazonczyk's own label, sold as many copies as the regular Thriller did, except out of the backs of station wagons. R.I.P., Eddie.

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