PRAGUE SPRING

Jaromír Vejvoda (1902-1988) came from a widely branched musical family based in and around the town of Zbraslav. His father, grandfather and uncle were all local bandleaders. The young Jaromír took up violin at the age of six, to add to it flugelhorn as a fourteen-year-old, an instrument which proved fairly helpful during his years of national service. After that, from 1925, he worked in his father-in-law's innkeeping business in the town of Vrané nad Vltavou, simultaneously taking over from his own father as the bandleader in his orchestra, for which he also began to write music.
The origin of his best-known piece, the Modřany Polka, was described by his son Josef, another in the family line of musicians, as follows: "One day in 1927 father was just chasing his fingers across the piano keyboard at the Corner House restaurant in Zbraslav which was owned by his parents. Then suddenly the tune that emerged incidentally from that subconscious twinkle settled in his head - and he liked it." That was Vejvoda's very first composition written for his own band. In 1934 the polka was published by the Prague firm, Jana Hoffmana vdova, where it was additionally provided with lyrics by Vašek Zeman, and re-named to Škoda lásky (Love Lost Forever). When shortly before the Second World War, it was sold by the Prague publishers, in a batch including other lidovka numbers, to America's Shapiro Bernstein, the polka was ready for its worldwide trajectory, encompassing English-speaking countries under the English title, Beer barrel Polka ("Roll Out the Barrel"), and German-speaking ones, as Rosamunde - Polka. Ironically, then, it was sung on both sides of the front-line... It is not without interest that on 21st March, 2002, this polka was performed by the Prague Castle Guard and Czech Police Band at New York's famous Carnegie Hall, under the baton of the composer's son, Josef Vejvoda - at the wish of the concert's organizers, thereby to render homage to Jaromír Vejvoda on the centenary of his birth and the 75th anniversary of the writing of this composition.
Jaromír Vejvoda wrote more than a few brass music hits, such as Poppies in Bloom; I Love to Dance; If the Bands Didn't Play, Green Groves; The Path Leading Home; Zbraslav Song, and many others. As for Love Lost Forever, it was voted Hit of the Century in a recent poll.
The family tradition has been carried on by Jaroslav's youngest son, Josef Vejvoda (b. 1945), an internationally renowned jazz musician who has not shied away from the occasional foray into the domain of lidovka. He writes songs, and leads his own brass orchestra called The Vejvoda Band, plusanotherensemble, the Josef Vejvoda Gala Orchestra. "I owe my father everything, so what else can I give him back but a song of my own", Josef Vejvoda adds to his polka composed to the text of Miloň Čepelka, Song for Jaromír Vejvoda.