Whenever, through the hiss and crackle of the ether, the announcer proclaimed to the world
in his characteristic sing-song that this was "Radio Luxemburg, Station of the Stars",
I would freeze in front of the radio loudspeaker in our Nowa Huta flat on the C2 estate, and
nothing else at that moment could tear me away from it. The fading and
returning wave might, after all, bring another hit at any moment,
or another performer of "our music". Naturally, it was rock and roll
in all its expression, simplicity, distinctive accent and dynamics, with a pulsating
rhythm and that characteristic walking bass, lifted straight out of jazz boogie-woogie.
That was a little later, two or three years after a certain event which left
me and my secondary-school friends dumbfounded, a state that quickly turned into
permanent excitement.
That event was the performance by "Big Bill" Ramsey at the "2nd Jazz Music
Festival" in Sopot in 1957. We listened to it a little later,
when a vinyl LP with a blue label, chronicling that festival,
let us experience, together with the crowd howling behind the music, our first rock and roll almost "live".
It is hard to describe what a thunderous impression it made on us fourteen-
and fifteen-year-olds. I remember that at every break, in our "salon" -
the boys' toilets - our friend Maciek would do for us, for the umpteenth time, "Caldonia"
by Ramsey, imitating his voice, as it seemed to us, quite fantastically.
And yet until then there had been Dixieland, which we adored; there had been Louis
Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Chris Barber, Acker Bilk and many, many others, not yet
precisely identified at the time, for the moment came only later when a familiar phrase
could at last be matched with the right performer's name.
With music, first jazz and later the rock and roll I have mentioned, came
a second fascination - an enchantment with the equipment for playing it. At home I had
a folding suitcase gramophone (called an "adapter" in those days, a forerunner
of the "Bambino", famous and commonplace a little later) by the name of "Karolinka".
Probably the first tape recorder that I operated entirely by myself was
in "Próżniak" (as we called the TPPR club), which we visited precisely
for its "Melodia" tape recorder. For the tape recorder, because the music recorded on the tapes
consisted of the ubiquitous mass songs, products typical of socialist realism, and
music officially let through the tight sieve of censorship, performed
by radio orchestras and singers of the likes of Janusz Gniatkowski or Natasza Zylska.
The lady who ran the club came to trust me, and whenever I appeared
in the doorway a murmur of joy could be heard, the tape recorder emerged
from the back room and with great solemnity I set about getting it going.
In 1959 - as Piotr Nitecki has recalled - a youth cellar
was opened, run by a scout troop of watermen, in order
to raise the money that was lacking for a summer camp on Lake Gardyńskie,
near Mikołajki. After a few visits to the cellar, instead of jiving to rock
till I dropped, I mostly took care of playing music from records on a very
primitive record player. By far the greatest rarity was a single (an original)
on the RCA label, containing the famous "Jailhouse Rock" performed by
Elvis Presley himself. In one afternoon it could be heard anything from a few to
twenty-odd times. It was the only Western record, brought along by
a friend who, incidentally, had the nickname "Presley". The joy lasted several weeks.
One day there was nothing less than an attempt on the record. While it was playing
someone switched off the fuses, and at the same moment someone else swept the record off
the turntable, and that was the last we saw of it.
Our cellar found no favour in the eyes of the adults. If anything it had
a bad reputation, although, looked at from today's perspective, it was a well-behaved
rosary circle. And yet there were moments such as unexpected raids by parents
aiming to haul their youngster out of this den of depravity. We were
ready for that. Before the parents managed, in the dark and down the awkward stairs,
to reach the inside, the person concerned had already been warned. I remember how once
the parents of Zygmunt burst in unexpectedly. The "lookout" had already tipped us off and our friend
Halina quickly shoved him under a pile of jackets and coats. The parents inspected every
nook and cranny and, not finding Zygmunt, left quickly, rather pleased.
The summer of 1960 marked the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, and one element
of the lavish celebrations were youth camps scattered in a star pattern around the historic
fields. I was there too. Our camp - that is, for the youth of the Kraków voivodeship
- was situated on the picturesque Lake Jeziorak, near the village of Urowo.
Why am I writing about this? Because there I came across yet another piece of sound equipment.
Every camp, and so ours too, was visited two, sometimes three times a week by a radio relay unit
on wheels, that is, a military propaganda vehicle towing a power
generator. That way, wherever it stopped it had its own electricity, and through great
loudspeakers word and music rang out over the whole neighbourhood. I turned up at once
beside this invention, and when my enormous interest had been correctly
read from my goggling eyes and the soldier in charge of the whole outfit allowed
me to cross the threshold (to be precise: to climb the steps) into that wondrous world,
my darting eyes immediately picked out the object of greatest desire,
namely a "Smaragd" tape recorder (made in East Germany), two-speed (9.5 rpm and 19 rpm).
From that moment until the end of the camp I waited impatiently for each successive
appearance of the vehicle. I quickly took over the whole operation from the soldier, to his
delight as it happens; I marked the reels with the music that was best for us (there were, alas, few of them)
and my sub-camp got, broadcast into the air, what it liked best. On the third or
fourth visit it turned out that the soldier, after all not much older than us,
had been infected by the new music too and had a suitable tape of his own. A group
of my closest and most trusted friends, chosen by me, was able to hear real rock
and roll numbers, though only in the doorway of the unit, because the soldier was afraid - which
we fully understood - to play his own tape through the loudspeakers.
Some time in the winter of 1960 my contact with live music began. The boys at the 12th
Secondary School used to play in the common room. Jurek had an in with Mr Rozmus at the Music Centre and
kept bringing instruments from there. Of course jazz was still the rule.
I had a guitar at home and practised laboriously from a tutor book for the instrument, but
I lacked the patience. When one day Jurek brought a double bass, there were plenty
of volunteers to show off with contortions while plucking the strings. I had a go then too,
and I admit it suited me better than my guitar. Besides, the guitar was already being played by
Zygmunt, and doubling up was not advisable. When at last a drum kit appeared in the common
room (it was probably Jurek too who lugged it over from the Music Centre) and I managed to get
behind it a few times, I understood that I did not want to play anything else, that on the drums I would be able
to express myself musically in keeping with my inner energy.
Witek Robotycki used to come to us with his wonderful trumpet, and Andrzej Sajdak would sit down
at the piano. Others came too, whom I no longer remember exactly today, but at times
the line-up looked truly impressive (piano, trumpet, clarinet, guitar, bass, drums)
and the piece we were playing had so much dynamics, harmony, the swing proper to jazz
and shared improvisation that shivers ran down your spine.
And then came the moment described earlier. With "Big Bill" Ramsey began a complete
fascination with Rock'N'Roll, although at that time we were not yet fully aware that this was
it, for good; but we were certain that it was our music.
Yet the changeover was not immediate; we could not betray jazz. In fact, I think that
it never really happened. I always felt jazz within me, and it had so many shades.
Jazz and rock were often played by the same musicians. Only, full knowledge of that came
later, and at the turn of the sixties and seventies many rock groups
were marked by elements of jazz, at least by jazz improvisation. That is, in any case, a broad
subject, too broad for the frame of these recollections, so I will not develop it.
Back then, at the beginning of the sixties, we jazzmen were a little ashamed that this
new music, although it grows among other things from the jazz trunk, is somewhat primitive. Besides,
official sources (read: of the older generation), and not Polish ones at all but American,
trying to calm worried citizens, were informing all and sundry that this was just a prank
of the young, it would last a few weeks and be over.
Yet we stayed with this new music of ours, because it proved impossible to reject; it proved
with each day to be more and more ours - that of the first post-war teenagers, of a generation
that wanted to have something of its own, wanted to create and even (why not?) to hand down models to the adults.
All this and more reached us only a little later. In that first period of rock
and roll what prevailed was an astonishing fascination, complete identification and a total, downright organic inability to reject it.
So after a short time, keeping jazz for listening to and experiencing at home or at the Kraków
Jazz Club, we officially threw ourselves into playing what we wanted more and more, together with an ever
larger group of thrilled listeners.
The first vocalist of our band, still a school band then, was Zygmunt, singing of course a few
songs by Elvis. I remember that among them were: "Dixieland Rock", "Blue Suede Shoes"
and "Jailhouse Rock".
The music we played and the music we listened to absorbed us completely. A large number of performers
important to us, such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley Pat Borne and
many others, were in the steadily growing collection of none other than Zygmunt.
I was hungry for that music, so in order to draw on his resources more often we devised a certain method
of transmission from the home of Zygmunt to mine. Zygmunt connected two wires from the output of his gramophone
to the telephone socket; I did the reverse, two wires from the telephone socket to the input of the radio
(the "Tatry" receiver, excellent for those days, had such a function under a separate key). We would ring
each other, and once the connection was made we put aside the handsets, which were of course superfluous, and Zygmunt put a record on.
The reproduction on my radio set was excellent. Once, during such a broadcast, my younger neighbour burst in,
greatly agitated, asking which station was playing like that, because he could not pick it up.
This went on for several months, until one day telecommunications workers turned up at my flat
to carry out some checks on the telephone line. When they saw two
wires clipped to the telephone socket they knew at once - as it later turned out - that this
was exactly what they were looking for (apparently their telephone exchange was badly overheating). Unfortunately, from
that day on private music transmissions were out of the question.
Rehearsals and playing at dance evenings in schools, in "Violinka" and other places,
took up the months until the summer of 1961.
Back at the end of the 1960 camp I have mentioned, I had agreed with the camp commander that for the next
camp a year later I would talk my bandmates into going together. And so it happened. Admittedly not
all of us, but some were glad to take part. The camp was held on Lake Głębokie near
Międzyrzecz in the Lubusz Land (see the photos).
After returning from the camp, from September we threw ourselves into playing with fresh zeal, and now as "Biała Gwiazda"
we were soon recognised among our peers even in the street.
I never expected that, in a certain sense, we would come to belong to a group of untouchables.
One day at dusk I was walking with a girl along the area marked out today by Kocmyrzowska
Street. In those days, of course, it was rough ground, a rather deserted and unlit place. At one
point a little group of about seven young toughs appeared in front of us. They were unmistakably heading straight for us,
and their bearing made it clear that they were to be feared. A stalemate; I had no chance.
I braced myself and prepared for unpleasant surprises. When we stood face to face,
the ringleader, a strapping lad, looked me over carefully, then smiled unexpectedly and
I heard: - Oh, it's you, Wacuś?! He threw in a few appreciative words about the girl's looks and
hurried his little band along. When they had passed, his explanations still reached us: - What, didn't
you recognise him? That's the drummer from "Biała Gwiazda".
I did not hear the rest, but from that moment I understood that, in some way, our dynamic
music really does soothe manners too, and that young musicians playing for their peers are in a certain
way singled out by them.
Mine was not an isolated case. Then, and years later too, many recalled similar moments.
By playing our music we earned the recognition, admiration and protection of our peers.
Understandably, it flattered me a little, and my sense of belonging to a recognisable
group by the name of "Biała Gwiazda" became decidedly fuller.
The magnetism of Rock'N'Roll lasts to this day. When I sometimes watch dance tournaments, it is always
this dance, this music, that stirs the greatest emotion in me, and a couple dancing to that rhythm performs,
to my mind, the most beautiful figures. Music that was supposed to be a whim lasting a few weeks
has become, after more than fifty years, indisputably a heritage of world culture with
unquestionable merits for the development of contemporary popular music. That gladdens me greatly,
and seeing my own small part, and that of my friends (in the broad sense, meaning all my friends from the Kraków
bands), in promoting it, I have jotted down these few words.
