Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band

The Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band was a humorous musical group of amateur musicians living in the San Francisco, California, area who played a repertoire of polkas and light classical music while adopting a persona of mild confusion and wearing self-created uniforms once described as rejects from the Franco-Prussian War. The group originally formed one Christmas season in 1949 to play carols in Sausalito, Calif., and someone brought a book of polka music, possibly one of the "Hungry Five" books by Harry L. Alford whose music became a basic part of the Guckenheimer repertoire. The group became increasingly popular in northern California, often invited to play at wine festivals and openings and in later years for such august occasions as opening night of the San Francisco Symphony.

Although all were business professionals, the group joined Local 6 of the American Federation of Musicians and became "professional musicians" when they were invited by San Francisco Records to make its first record album, "Oom-Pah-Pah In Hi-Fi" -- described on its front cover as "The sourest German village band music ever!" Although the group played for laughs, all its members were quite adequate musicians, some of them very good. The occasional native German-born listener would often remark on the Guckenheimers' similarity to actual village bands back in the old country. The village band sound was authentic enough RCA Victor signed the group to record a second album, "Sour Kraut In Hi Fi" (LPM-1453)

The name of the group was taken from an obscure brand of whiskey and adopted by the group's leader, Richard B. Gump, who took on the persona of Herr Doktor Fritz Guckenheimer, Kapellmeister. All of the other band members adopted names that were some variant of Schmidt. Gump was a San Francisco art dealer and owner of Gump's store in downtown San Francisco, which was also the recording location of their best known record album for RCA Victor Records "Music For Non-Thinkers" (LSP/LPM 1721), which was recorded on Sunday December 29, 1957, in stereo. It was released in 1958. It was re-released on an unknown date, and kept the original stereo catalog number, but adopted a new per-side catalog number at well, J2PY-2451/J2PY-2452.