Dec 4, 2020
With percussion instruments that included a makeshift washboard and a stage routine punctuated by comic banter between their musical numbers, they were nationally known entertainers from the 1920s through the mid-1940s.
The Hoosier Hot
Shots were regulars on National
Barn Dance, one of the most popular radio shows in the
country, broadcast on WLS-AM in Chicago. They
were featured as a novelty act in Western movies
starring Gene Autry and slapstick
comedies with the Three Stooges. They were
headliners in vaudeville venues and recorded much of their music
at Gennett
Studios in Richmond, Ind.,
which launched the recording careers of many American jazz, blues,
country and gospel stars during the era.
The three primary members of the Hot Shots band were Otto "Gabe" Ward, who was born in Knightstown and grew up in Elwood, and two brothers, Ken and Paul "Hezzie" Trietsch, who hailed from the small town of Arcadia in Hamilton County. The Indiana State Museum periodically has exhibited Gabe Ward's clarinet and Hezzie's unusual washboard instrument, which he made by hand; the exhibits also have included vintage posters for some of their 21 movies.
In this encore broadcast of
a show from 2018, we turn our spotlight on the colorful and quirky
Hoosier Hot Shots. Nelson is joined in studio by Todd
Gould, a senior producer/director at WTIU-TV in Bloomington and
a broadcasting instructor at Indiana University. In
working with his WTIU colleagues on a documentary about Gennett,
where emerging stars like Hoagy
Carmichael, Louis
Armstrong and Jelly Roll
Morton recorded, Todd researched the Hot Shots.
(Hoosier History Live explored the impact of the
recording history made at Gennett Studios on a show in
2013.)
In an article about the Hoosier Hot Shots in the Fall 2018 issue of Traces, the Indiana Historical Society's magazine, Todd wrote:
"During two of the most tumultuous times in our nation's history, the Great Depression and World War II, Americans found comfort in the silly songs and crazy antics of a band from the flatlands of central Indiana ... Their sound and lyrics were unlike anything Americans in the early 20th century had ever heard before."
A sample lyric from a Hot Shots song:
From the Indies to the Andes in his undies
And he never took a shave except on Mondays
He didn't eat a thing but chocolate sundaes
'Twas a very, very daring thing to do.
In addition to
Todd Gould, Nelson is joined in studio by Hamilton
County historian David
Heighway, who has researched the deep roots of the
Trietsch family in the county. Ken Trietsch (rhymes with "beach")
played the guitar and banjo while Hezzie played the washboard - as
well as cowbells, horns, pie tins and, as Todd put it in his Traces
article, "other assorted gear that looked more at home in a
farmhouse kitchen than on a stage."
Periodically during our show, we feature brief excerpts of the Hoosier Hot Shots' recordings to give listeners a flavor of their distinctive routines.
Their signature line was a question - "Are you ready, Hezzie?" - posed by Ken Trietsch to his jokester brother just as the Hot Shots were about to kick off a routine.
Ken (1903-1987) and Hezzie (1905-1980) Trietsch came from a musical family in Hamilton County of five sons, all of whom played multiple instruments.
They met
Gabe Ward (1904-1992) in the 1920s when all of them became members
of the Rube Band, a vaudeville troupe known
for playing "wildly extemporaneous, comical versions of the day's
popular songs," according to Todd's article in Traces. After the
Rube Band dissolved, the three Hoosiers eventually started
performing on radio with the Hot Shots name.
Major success followed on National Barn Dance, which also launched the careers of Gene Autry, Patti Page and other entertainers. By the mid-1930s, the Hoosier Hot Shots had added a fourth member, Illinois native Frank Kettering, who played the bass fiddle, organ, piccolo and other instruments.
Among the quartet's most popular songs was Whistlin' Joe from Kokomo. According to Todd's article, the song was one of several Hot Shots' tunes featuring the names of Indiana towns.
During World War II, the Hoosier Hot Shots joined USO tours of North Africa and Italy. (Kettering, though, was drafted. He was replaced by a series of musicians who also weren't from Indiana.) The band's popularity waned by the early 1960s.
Click on the links below to listen to samples of songs from the Hoosier Hot Shots catalogue: