A History of Matter's Ballroom
by John Condon
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FROM BARN TO BALLROOM: A History of Matter's Ballroom
by John Condon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped me with the research for this paper. Thanks to John and Suzanne Matter for access to their ballroom and their documents. Thanks to the following people for interviews about their experiences at Matter’s: Doug Koempel, Margaret Sorenson, Gordon MacMasters, Harold Cronin, Ellen Blagen, and Darwin Schrage.
Additional information and resources were provided by Beth Hoven-Rotto, James Ronan, Gene Condon, and David Anderson.
Thanks also to my instructor Dr. Becky Kamm and my classmates in the Technical Writing class at Northeast Iowa Community College.
John Condon
November 29, 1998
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Introduction
Matter’s Ballroom is located 3 miles north of Decorah, Iowa, on Locust Road. An old windmill tower sits at the edge of the parking area, a reminder of the ballroom’s agricultural beginnings. Painted white, the ballroom has a metal roof and red letters spelling out “Matter’s Ballroom”. A large farmhouse stands near the ballroom, and this is the Matter home place. The current ballroom owners, John and Suzanne Matter, live across the road. Inside the ballroom are framed photographs of the many stars that have appeared at Matter’s, as well as promotional posters, a beautiful stage and dance floor, and back against the wall, an old piano. A mirrored post marks the center of the dance floor, and this post is part of the original barn. The ballroom is well maintained and has a comfortable ambiance.
Matter’s has been holding community dances since 1917. The long history of Matter’s as a central meeting and dancing venue in the local community for so many years invites further exploration into its formation, operation, and social significance.
The Matter family was involved in a great variety of businesses, including a large orchard which thrived into the 1950s, a 15-acre potato farm, a poultry farm and hatchery (which produced up to 30,000 eggs annually), a popcorn business, and a tourist attraction (Wonder Cave), in addition to operating a 120-acre Iowa farm. I will focus on the ballroom business in this paper, with a look at the cultural movements which may have affected Matter’s. Matter’s Ballroom can claim to be the ballroom in the United States with the longest ownership by the same family. I have found nothing that even comes close to disputing that claim.
As a local musician, I have performed all over Northeast Iowa, often in the local remaining opera houses and ballrooms. Communities that have lost their dance hall or ballroom often rebuild a community center of some kind, almost inevitably a steel- sided box, Sheetrock and carpet covering every surface. These newer buildings serve a necessary community function, but have none of the romance of the classic ballrooms and opera houses once so common in rural Iowa. This paper grew out of my love for unique and old buildings, and their histories and functions.
The aspect of Matter’s that is most unique is that the same family has cared for the building and the business for 80 years. The current owner, John Matter, is the grandson and namesake of the man who built the apple barn, which became a ballroom. Matter’s Ballroom is still vital and beautiful, a rarity in the world of dance halls and ballrooms.
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The Fiddle and the Farm
Dance parties held in a farmhouse kitchen or parlor were very common in the Midwest from the early 1900s through the Great Depression. Called “house parties” or, picturesquely, “kitchen sweats,” these country gatherings were an excuse for nearby families to get together to make music, dance, and just socialize (Martin, 1994). These house parties would feature local musicians playing fiddles with other instruments to accompany the fiddler. Rugs were rolled up, and furniture was carried onto the porch or even the lawn. Sometimes the kitchen wood stove was disconnected from the chimney and toted out. Food was brought in for the midnight “lunch”, and a large pot of coffee was made. Finally, the room was ready.
The fiddle kicked off the first song, and the neighbors had a dance. They danced for hours, often until the break of day. The kids would fall asleep in the bedroom on the pile of coats, and the men would go outside to “check on the horses” and pass around a jug. The dancers would pass a hat to pay the musicians, or the musicians would have to make do with great helpings of food and drink as payment. In the wee hours of the morning, or even early the next day, the party broke up and everyone went home to do the chores. Plans were made for the next “house party” (Martin, 1994).
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The Dancing Craze of 1920
In the mid 1800s the upper classes danced in their spacious mansions and hotel ballrooms. These wealthy Americans were able to hire dance instructors to learn the complicated steps of quadrilles, lancers, gallops, and gavottes, which were popular at the time. Importantly, these dance instructors also taught dance etiquette and helped establish the order of the dance programs for the lavish balls of high society. On the other end of the social spectrum were the patrons who flocked to the scores of saloons in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Liquor in these places flowed freely, and men danced with the establishments’ women, who were often prostitutes. No respectable woman would have wanted to be seen at the big city saloons at the turn of the century (Gault, 1989).
Religious denunciation notwithstanding, the jazz and ragtime dances born in the saloons became very popular. Compared to the polka or schottische, the new dances were easier to learn and encouraged closer physical contact. Rag music inspired the invention of more than 100 dances between 1912 and 1914, with names like the fox trot, horse trot, crab steps, kangaroo dip, camel walk, chicken scratch, lame duck, bull frog hop, and turkey trot. Capitalizing on the rising popularity of these “animal dances” many well known restaurants in New York City removed sections of tables and installed dance floors. Hiring a good dance band soon became more important than hiring a good chef (Gault,1989).
Vernon and Irene Castle were fine dancers who appeared in the 1907 play Merry Widow, which featured the hit song “The Merry Widow Waltz.” They gave dancing exhibitions in American theatres and cafes, and starred in the 1912 play Watch Your Step. The following year their sensational turkey trot and tango in the Broadway production of Sunshine Girl made them darlings of society. The Castles demonstrated that properly executed dancing was neither vulgar nor immodest. The Castles popularized the fox trot, still a very well known dance. They owned numerous dance schools and dance halls, the finest being the Castle House on East 46th Street in New York. Entering the Castle House, one saw fountains in the foyer and a double staircase leading up to two mirror-lined halls. In one hall was a “colored band” for jazz dancing, and in the other a string orchestra for the tango and the maxixe (Gault, 1989).
The Castles had helped to combine the respectable society dances with the wilder jazz dances, which was a potent combination for a dance -crazy culture. More respectable than the saloons of the near past, dance halls were sprouting up everywhere toward the end of WWI (Gault, 1989). In Northeast Iowa and elsewhere, the house party tradition was being weakened by the influence of the automobile (Martin, 1994). The automobile was breaking down the close neighborhood alliances precisely at the same time that dance pavilions and ballrooms were being constructed in this area.
Matter’s began hosting dances in 1917, the Inwood in Spillville in 1920, and the Lakeside Ballroom in Guttenberg in 1927. Numerous open-air dance floors were constructed around 1920. Called boweries, these dance floors were similar to large decks, constructed in the spring and dismantled in the fall. In Waterville, Iowa, the volunteer fire department built the bowery and sold the tickets. The bowery location was later the site where the Rainbow Gardens ballroom was built in 1933 (Ouren, 1998). A bowery in Bluffton, Iowa, was reportedly built so near the Upper Iowa River that a railing had to be built to keep dancers from flying off the deck and into the river!
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Early Years at Matter’s
Rural people frequently used one-room schools and barns for their neighborhood dances. Barns and schools had few items that would get in the way of a dancing throng. In 1905 John and Emma Matter planted an 18-acre orchard on their farm north of Decorah. In 1914 the Matters built a 32′ by 80′ fruit cellar to hold apples from their 1,240 mature apple trees. A building was constructed on top of the cellar for the purpose of crating and shipping the apples. Because crating and shipping apples is inherently a seasonal task, the building was little used for most of the year, and was quickly seen as a fine dancing place by the standards of the day (Internet).
John and Emma Matter were members of a neighborhood club called the Clay Hill Community Club (CHCC). This club, a group of 60 local farmers and their families, began to hold dances in the apple-crating barn. Each club member could invite another couple to the dances, and soon it was deemed an honor to be invited to “Matter’s Apple Warehouse” (Hart, 1980). Wedding dances and shower dances were also held at the barn. In the 1920s through the 1950s wedding dances were held on almost any night of the week, unlike the present day, in which Saturday is almost exclusively chosen. Wedding dances were smaller affairs than today, usually with a small group of friend and family in attendance. A shower dance would usually be held a week or two after the wedding took place.
Matter’s was also often used for fundraisers. In 1918 John Matter was mentioned in the Decorah Journal for his contribution of $119.50 to the Red Cross, money raised by having a dance. This contribution may have been motivated in response to the global influenza epidemic, which killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide in 1918 (Human Disease, 1999). The influenza epidemic was milder in Decorah, but John Matter canceled the scheduled October 18, 1918, dance at the apple warehouse because of the epidemic. Over 100 cases of influenza had been reported in Decorah (Decorah Journal, 1998).
Prohibition began on January 16, 1920. In Northeast Iowa, as in most of the rest of the nation, Prohibition was not entirely adhered to. Decorah supposedly had bootleggers who operated in the south Decorah area known as “tin-town” (near the present day Hardees). Alcohol was available in the parking lots of all of the ballrooms in this area. John Matter did not allow liquor in the ballroom, but he certainly was aware that the hayloft in his nearby barn was being used as a convenient hiding place for the liquor of a few of his patrons. Alcohol was not allowed in the ballroom’s dancing area until 1955, although beer could be bought at the VFW lodge, which was attached to Matter’s for many years.
Margaret Matter, later Margaret Sorenson, is one of John and Emma Matter’s eleven children. Margaret worked at the ballroom for 50 years and now lives in Decorah. Margaret was born in 1921, and she provided much of the following information about the activities at Matter’s in the late 1920s and 1930s. Margaret said that the Fourth of July was special because an ice-cream stand was set up, serving ice cream and gum to the kids. During the days of the CHCC, dances were held every week. Everyone brought a sack lunch, and members were encouraged to at least bring cinnamon rolls. Most people brought cinnamon rolls because they were inexpensive.
Margaret said that at the 11:30 p.m. intermission tin cups were passed around, filled with coffee from a large boiler. People would eat and converse, sitting on the benches which surrounded the dance floor. Gas lamps lit the hall (some of the original gas piping is still installed at Matter’s). Coal stoves provided heat and an electrical generator was installed in the basement in the 1930s. The ladies’ room was upstairs, with no heat, and lit with a kerosene lamp. Children slept on the stage and even on the piano! This was a grand piano and would hold a bunch of small children.
Once a year around Thanksgiving a big oyster supper was held. Oysters were boiled in a large copper kettle. Matter’s was closed during Lent until the 1960s. The only exception was St. Patrick’s Day, when a big party was held. The large Irish population around Bluffton always supported Matter’s well, and they came in droves on “St. Pat’s”. When the party was really hopping, local Irishman Joe Kelly would come onto the floor and dance a jig.
Margaret, like all of the Matter children, helped with the chores around the hall. “We didn’t have fancy brooms like you do now, so we used an apple crate, gunny sack, and some kerosene to clean the floor,” said Margaret. The kerosene was used because it removed the shaved wax, which was used to lubricate the dance floor.
The Kentucky Homers were one of many local groups that played at Matter’s and most, if not all, of the bands had a fiddler. These groups played a mix of tunes, which reflected many ethnic influences. Norwegian, German, and Irish musical influences could be heard in these bands. Square dances, hoppwaltzes, schottisches, one-steps, two-steps and polkas were normal dance styles seen in the early days.
Dance types were usually played in sets of three. After a band played a set of three tunes of a similar style, the crowd would return to the benches while the band took a break of a couple of minutes or more. Bill Sherburne was a great fiddler from Spring Grove, Minnesota, who played dances well into his eighties. Playing dances for younger crowds in the 1980s, he would become anxious if after playing a set of three tunes the dancers would not leave the floor, as was the old custom. West Union musician Doug Koempel reports that some dancers in central Iowa still expect this three-song convention.
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1934-1957
In 1934 the Clay Hill Community Club disbanded and John made the ballroom into a larger hall. Matter’s featured old time bands along with regional bands like Lawrence Welk. Welk, who was at the time based in Yankton, South Dakota, appeared numerous times at Matter’s in the 1930s and 1940s. Welk was broadcasting on WNAX radio in Yankton from 1927 until the mid 30s, and had performed almost exclusively at regional ballrooms. His later television show was filmed at a ballroom in California. Other musicians appearing at this time were Hal Leonard, Don Strickland, and Les Hartman. Lawrence Welk received a guarantee of $135.00, or 80% of the receipts, whichever was more. In his autobiographies, Welk describes this era as a constant financial struggle. The regional ballroom circuit is where he built his talents as a crowd- pleasing orchestra leader (Welk, 1971).
Matter’s booked a wide variety of acts. On Saturday, December 12, 1936, for an admission price of ten cents, people were offered a wrestling match featuring Iowa’s Iron Man, Everett Bray, against Frosty Bennet, Tiger Man of Wisconsin. This match took place during the dance intermission. The band was the WMT German Band. (Decorah Newspaper, Dec. 10, 1936).
Regularly scheduled dances were held at Matter’s on Tuesdays and Saturdays starting in 1936. Matter’s had large windows, which they would open wide, allowing people who were parked outside to hear the music. Hamburgers and hot dogs were sold to people both inside and outside. A lunchroom was operated from the late 1940s through the early 1950s, with a standing order of 500 hamburger buns per week. Hot dogs cost five cents, and hamburgers were ten cents. Pop was kept cold by using ice provided by Dirk’s Icehouse. This ice had been cut from the Upper Iowa River.
People attended dances in huge numbers in the 1930s and 1940s. Entire carloads of people would frequently take long trips to regional ballrooms. Trips to La Crosse, Clear Lake, Austin, Oelwein, Independence, Janesville, Guttenberg, Luana, West Union, Waterloo, and Prairie du Chien, were common weekly occurrences. Dance admission prices averaged fifty cents during the latter part of this era. It was possible to dance seven nights a week because area ballrooms alternated their dance nights. Dances were held on Tuesdays and Saturdays at Matter’s, Wednesdays at the Checkerboard in Prairie du Chien, Thursdays at Spillville, and Fridays at the Avalon in La Crosse. The air was often blue with cigarette smoke, and an occasional fight would break out. Crowds of 600 people on a Saturday night were common at Matter’s into the 1950s.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Matter’s featured bands like Hal Leonard, Big Tiny Little, Viking Accordion Band, Tiny Hill, and Al Menke. In the 1950s and 1960s bands like Leo Greco, Jerry Gilbertson, Bobby Hankins, and Andy Doll would play one Saturday each month. Some regional musicians led a vagabond life, often placing heavy burdens on their families. They were in great demand, as seen by their schedules at that time. One astonishing Al Menke band schedule from approximately 1955 shows 34 gigs in 36 days, all one-night-stands at ballrooms in Minnesota and Iowa.
Dances did not always take place as planned. In 1947, Mr. and Mrs. R. McGee planned their wedding dance for Thursday, February 6, at Matter’s. Heavy snow forced them to reschedule the dance for Tuesday, February 18. This time the road was clear, but the bridegroom had the mumps. Mrs. McGee stayed home to care for Mr. McGee, and the party went on without them. The Kentucky Homers played a wedding dance with no bride or groom (Decorah Journal, Sept. 3, 1997).
Leonard Matter purchased the ballroom from his father in 1951. Leonard Matter had been a WWII POW, earning the Purple Heart. He was known as a well dressed soft- spoken man. Leonard and his wife Carol had three children, who grew up helping with the small tasks at the ballroom. Leonard operated the ballroom until 1971, when his son John took over operations.
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Rock and Roll Comes to Iowa
Dale Wood was a WWII veteran who took a job broadcasting on station KTNM in Tucamcari, New Mexico, in 1946. He later worked at a station in Clovis, New Mexico, where he met Buddy Holly’s producer, Norman Petty. Wood worked at radio stations in Texas and Wyoming before taking a job at KOEL in Oelwein, Iowa. In 1956, Wood took his daughter to see the movie Rock Around the Clock featuring Bill Haley and the Comets. “Rock Around the Clock” is often cited as the first rock and roll recording, and Wood was immediately aware of the business potential of this new musical movement (Popular Music, 1999).
The next day, Wood had the radio station engineer build him a portable sound system with turntables for playing records. That next Saturday, Wood hosted Oelwein’s first rock and roll dance at the Coliseum Ballroom, and the place was packed (Winner’s Circle, 1998). Wood took his record hops to other ballrooms, including Matter’s, and brought in big crowds of teenagers. Parents could attend these sock hops for free to insure that the children behaved well. The Nehi Bottling Company of Decorah sponsored the sock hops at Matter’s.
In the late 1950s, Iowa had more ballrooms than any other state, and Dale Wood arranged with Minneapolis booking agent T.B. Scarning to book the new rockers into 16 small Iowa ballrooms (Winner’s Circle, 1998). Matter’s was first.
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Gene Vincent
About one year after his smash hit “Be-Bop-a-Lula” became a top-ten million seller, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps gave the first rock performance in Iowa at Matter’s on Friday, August 9, 1957 (Decorah Journal, Aug. 7, 1957). Gene Vincent played a raw and aggressive blend of country and rock called rockabilly. The cost for the show was $1.25, and presumably Dale Wood spun records for the better part of the 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. sock hop/concert. Wood commented in 1998 that the performers back in the fifties didn’t know very many songs, so he would play records between the groups normal two sets (Winner’s Circle, 1998).
Photos of this concert show Gene Vincent and the band rocking hard. Visible in some photos is the leg brace that Vincent wore following a serious leg injury while serving in the Navy. Vincent had only limited chart success after a very huge start to his career, touring endlessly and marrying four times. Plagued by alcoholism, he died at the age of 36 in 1971.
The Gene Vincent concert was a success, and Leonard Matter agreed to host other rock performers. Jerry Lee Lewis appeared at Matter’s in 1958 as the second rock show. Photos from this performance show a blond Jerry Lee pounding on an upright piano, which is still at Matter’s, though worse for the wear. Normal Saturday night old-time and variety dances continued, with Andy Doll performing the day after Gene Vincent (Decorah Journal, Aug. 7, 1957).
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Buddy Holly
The tragic death of Buddy Holly near Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1959, still saddens fans of his music. Wholesome and talented, he was a huge star in the United States when he performed at Matter’s Ballroom on July 9, 1958. In 1957 Holly released “That’ll Be The Day,” which was a number one record. In December of that year “Peggy Sue” reached number three, and three months before his concert in Decorah, “Maybe Baby” was a hit. Buddy Holly and the Crickets played to a large crowd of teenagers who sat near the front of the stage or stood behind a rope, which bisected the dance floor.
Holly and the band wore matching suits of light-colored slacks and sport jackets with ties for this performance. Holly wore very dark sunglasses the entire evening. He had very poor vision. John Lennon is reported to have begun wearing his glasses on stage after seeing Holly’s example. Photos of the Buddy Holly concert show bottles of Royal Crown Cola placed strategically around the stage, because of the Nehi sponsorship of the sock hops. A photograph taken after the concert shows a slim and smiling Buddy Holly leaning against the concession bar.
Holly played a Fender Stratocaster guitar in his Decorah concert, and is credited with popularizing this widely used model (Easter Seals, 1987). He is also given credit by rock historians for establishing the basic rock instrumentation arrangement of drums, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass. He also produced his own studio recordings (Rock Music, 1999).
Buddy Holly and the Crickets performed in Waterloo, Iowa, the night before, and in Oelwein the night after the Matter’s show (Easter Seals, 1987). Holly was booked to return to Matter’s in 1959 as part of the ill-fated Winter Dance Party. The booking price for Buddy Holly rose sharply after a very successful 1958 European tour, and Leonard Matter got out of the booking. The grueling Winter Dance Party tour of seven states included eight planned in Iowa, six of these in ballrooms. A search of the Decorah Journal found no comment of Holly’s concert at Matter’s, nor any mention of his death in Clear Lake on February 3, seven months after his show at Matter’s. Buddy Holly was 22 years old when he died.
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Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash began his recording career in 1955 on the same record label as Elvis Presley, Sun Records. His first record, “Cry, Cry, Cry,” was a hit, and he went on to record some of what were to become his trademark songs, including “I Walk the Line.” After signing with Columbia Records in 1958, the next few years saw Cash living a chaotic life of pills, booze, and constant touring (Johnny Cash, 1999)
Johnny Cash performed at Matter’s at least twice. (Accurate records of many Matter’s performances do not exist, and most appearances at Matter’s received little comment in the newspaper.) Longtime Matter’s employee Margaret Sorenson remembered one Cash performance in particular. She said that the crowd was kicking up so much dust as they danced that Johnny had to cut his show short.
Darwin Schrage, currently an administrator at Northeast Iowa Community College, was a guitarist with the popular regional performer Andy Doll from 1955 through 1958. Schrage performed on the same bill with Johnny Cash at Matter’s in the late 1950s. Johnny played two sets, alternating with Andy Doll and his group. Schrage noticed that Cash was very thin, and Schrage was unimpressed with Cash’s performance. Schrage also provided instrumental backup for Cash at an engagement in Dubuque at the Melody Mill. After that performance, Cash and his band vandalized the backstage area, smashing microphones and punching a large hole in the wall (D. Schrage, personal communication, November 18, 1998)
In the winter of 1960, Cash again performed at Matter’s. The radiator froze in the car that the group was traveling in, and they left the car at the Sinclair station overnight. (The station was located at the bottom of the Locust Road hill, site of the present day Subway.) The Decorah taxi service gave the band a ride to Matter’s for the evening’s show, and gas station owner Harold Cronin kept the car inside and filled it with anti- freeze. He also invited the waitresses from a neighboring tavern to see the celebrity vehicle, and they paid him a quarter to be able to sit in the car. The next day, a member of Cash’s crew came to pick up the car. This crew member asked Cronin if it was all right to go back to the motel with the car to get some money. Cronin agreed, and the man did not return, leaving Cronin with an unpaid $9.89 repair bill (H. Cronin, personal communication, November 12, 1998).
Seventeen years later Cronin received a check in the mail from John R. Cash and June Carter Cash of Hendersonville, Tennessee, for $29.92. Puzzled at first, Cronin soon learned that word had spread from Decorah to Nashville through Mike Ritland. Ritland was at the Sinclair station in 1960 when the car was brought in. Many years later, while a Nashville musician, Ritland befriended Cash, and reminded him of the debt. Cash had by that time (1977) cleaned up his lifestyle, and was attempting to repair some of the damage that he had done earlier as a wild musician.
Harold Cronin was featured in local newspapers for this story, and is pictured holding the check in the Thursday, March 24, 1977, edition of the Decorah Journal. Cronin has not cashed the check, keeping it as a personal memento.
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Liquor
Matter’s Ballroom first allowed beer to be consumed in the dance area in 1955. People in the 1940s and 1950s were allowed to bring a bottle of liquor into public dances. The establishment served them a “set-up,” which was a soft drink. This practice helped to make an evening of dancing and drinking affordable.
Harold Hughes was elected Governor of the State of Iowa in 1962, and a major factor in his victory was the issue that became known as “‘liquor-by-the-drink.” Hughes, a recovering alcoholic at that time, sought to ban the practice of individuals bringing liquor into public places. Evidently teenage drinking was on the rise, and the availability of bottles in people’s vehicles made the job of law enforcement difficult (G. Condon, personal communication, November 21, 1998). The liquor-by-the-drink law was enacted in 1963, and the new law allowed Matter’s and all other bars and restaurants to serve mixed drinks along with the beer that they had already been serving.
The 1963 law was a major change in the public’s drinking habits. Before the law went into effect, taverns could only serve beer. Overnight, a bar’s capacity for increased income rose, and the dance halls lost an important ingredient of their popularity. Now, when a person went to a dance, they were required to buy alcohol only from the dance hall, and not carry in their own liquor. The dance hall had to buy their alcohol from the state. Matter’s lost many dancers from Minnesota, a state that did not adopt this change until later. The ability of Matter’s to earn income from the sale of mixed drinks did not make up for the loss of income from area dancers who disliked the new alcohol restrictions. Taverns saw an increase in profit after 1963, and many began to hire bands and hold dances. These smaller dances began to negatively affect the area ballrooms. (J. Matter, personal communication, September 18, 1998).
The new alcohol laws damaged other ballrooms more than Matter’s. Many ballrooms focused solely on a diminishing older crowd, and were hurt financially when many of their hard-drinking patrons stayed away. Matter’s, because it was only one part of a larger family business enterprise, was able to weather these changing laws. The younger crowd was being courted with rock and roll, and had begun to attend Matter’s in droves.
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Big Names, Big Nights
Ballrooms had been the main performance venue for orchestras during the Big Band years. Country—western performers started to take advantage of the extensive Midwest network of ballrooms in the mid 1950s. Matter’s started to host performers like Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, and Jim Reeves. Country performers at that time often played mid-week shows and then hurried back to Nashville for the Saturday night performance of the Grand Old Opry on radio station WSM.
Crowds had become so large that an addition was added to the ballroom in 1959. This addition to the east end of the ballroom considerably increased the seating capacity, and provided another bar. The basement of this addition was first used as a kitchen, providing a lunch for the hungry dancers at intermission. In 1964 the downstairs room was named “Someplace Else,” and began to feature live music. The older style music that was featured in the upstairs ballroom no longer drew the crowds that it had in the past, and Leonard Matter wanted to attract both the young and the old in the same evening. The one-dollar admission price into the ballroom included admittance to both the upstairs and downstairs rooms. People upstairs would often go downstairs to see what was happening in “Someplace Else.”
Carmen Hanson was a regular performer during the first years of “Someplace Else”, and The Rubber Band was the house band at Someplace Else from 1966 through 1971. Originally called the Runaways, The Rubber Band played 50s and 60s rock and roll, along with some country tunes. Advertisements from 1967 describe their sound as “Big Beat.”
Doug Koempel played keyboards with the Rubber Band during their years at Matter’s. He remembers that the crowds were so large that it was difficult to walk from the stage to the bar to get a drink while on break. Performing with the Rubber Band while still in high school, Koempel said, “ People then (in the late sixties) weren’t as bored with bands as they seem to be now. People would hang over the railings and really watch us. We were cool or something, and we had a great time.”
The Rubber Band released a 45-rpm record entitled “Five—Foot-Two” at the urging of Leonard Matter. Leonard hoped to score a hit with the group. The record was sent to local radio stations with a red garter wrapped around it. This promotion was not the success the band and Leonard had hoped it would be. Leonard was very supportive of the Rubber Band, and the band built their popularity steadily during the late sixties, largely through their hundreds of dances at Matter’s. The Rubber Band played a farewell show at Matter’s on February 17, 1996 and the largest crowd in years gathered for the band’s final performance. The Rubber Band’s 1996 release, entitled “Retrospect”, is dedicated to Leonard Matter.
The years 1957 through 1971 saw more than 80 national recording artists perform at Matter’s. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons performed for an estimated crowd of 2000 people on Thanksgiving night, 1962. Other performers who played at Matters include the Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, Del Shannon, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Darin, Tony Orlando, and dozens more. Local rock bands performed between sets of the headliners, providing continuous dancing and music.
The Royal Guardsmen performed at Matter’s in 1968. They had hit songs in 1967 with their “Snoopy” songs. “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” and “Return of the Red Baron” were big hits all across the U.S. Leonard Matter booked the group on the strength of these hits, and he was furious when the group decided not to play the “Snoopy” songs. The Royal Guardsmen were not the clean-cut band that they had been just months before. Many social changes were occurring in 1968, and the group grew long hair and developed a bad attitude. The drummer even performed without a shirt, further frustrating Leonard’s expectations of proper band behavior (D. Koempel, personal communication, November 12, 1998).
John Matter, along with his wife Suzanne, took over operations of the ballroom in 1971, becoming the third generation of Matter’s to operate the ballroom. John and Suzanne redecorated the upper east addition with a “zodiac” motif. This room was operated as a separate dance room for a short time in the 1970s. The room features a serpentine bar, which was bought at an auction when the Waterloo, Iowa, Woolworth’s store went out of business in the 1960s. Originally a lunch counter, it is the centerpiece of the stylistically interesting “zodiac” room at Matter’s.
The big-name recording groups, which were once so affordable and willing to perform in ballrooms began to make demands that new owner John Matter found unacceptable. The group Sugar Loaf, who had a hit in 1970 with “Green-Eyed-Lady” was tentatively booked for a 1972 show at Matter’s. John changed his mind when he saw the special demands on the contract that he received from the group. The band was asking for specific food, two bottles of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, an expensive and difficult —-to- obtain sound system for the evening, and other demands. Deciding that he was giving more than he was getting in return, he refused to book the band. A few other headliners appeared in the Seventies, but for the most part the dances featured local country, old- time, and rock bands.
John installed disco-style lighting surrounding the dance floor, along with a multi-speaker sound system. “Disco” music was dominant in the late 1970s, and helped to shift the public’s focus away from live music and towards recorded music at dances. People in the 1980s began to hire disc jockeys for their musical entertainment instead of bands, and the number of live performances at Matter’s and other ballrooms continued to decline. In 1998, the great majority of wedding dances at Matter’s feature recorded music rather than live bands.
On August 31, 1998, Matter’s Ballroom was a charter inductee into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As a ballroom, Matter’s was recognized for its early and lengthy commitment and support of rock and roll performers.
Many of the bands that have performed at Matter’s during the last 20 years have signed their names on the wall in the backstage dressing room. Often these groups left messages for other groups, and the generally male-dominated live music culture can be seen in the sometimes obscene scrawls that they left behind. These wall writings reflect the variety of acts that Matter’s presents: polka, rock, old time and country bands.
Matter’s continues to host public dances featuring local and regional musical groups, and is often used for banquets, annual meetings, and fund-raisers.
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Conclusion
Most ballrooms that once provided Americans with a wide variety of entertainers are long gone. Lon Gault’s book Ballroom Echoes (1989) is a fascinating history of dozens of ballrooms coast to coast. This book reads like a collection of interesting architectural obituaries. Many beautiful and ornate ballrooms captivated the public in the 1940s, struggled through the 1950s, and finally met the wrecking ball in the 1960s. Only a very few ballrooms remain.
An explosion of home-entertainment options currently presented Matter’s and other providers of group social activities with increasing competition. The VCR, the Internet, and satellite dishes at rural homes are all changing our society. People don’t gather together to drink and dance as they did in years past. Matter’s survival will depend on community use and engagement.
Matter’s Ballroom is still in business for many reasons. By far the most important reason for its longevity is its unbroken ownership by the same amiable and community- minded family.
Matter’s is surviving well. Decorah is home to a rare and precious commodity: a ballroom in great shape with an excellent dance floor. Matter’s continues to be a wonderful place to dance, a cheerful, sprawling ballroom with some remaining small reminders of its beginning as an apple barn.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Echoes from the past. (1997, September 3).
Decorah Journal. Echoes from the past. (1998, October 15). Decorah Journal.
Gault, Lon A. (1989). Ballroom Echoes. Andrew Corbet Press
Gene Vincent show advertisement. (1957, August 7). Decorah Journal.
Hart, Bill. (1980, January 17). Red Book Notes. Decorah Journal.
Human Disease. (1999). Microsoft Encarta 99. [CD ROM].
Johnny Cash. (1999). Microsoft Encarta 99. [CD ROM].
Martin, Phillip. (1994). Farmhouse Fiddlers: Music and dance traditions in the Midwest. Mount Horeb, WI: Midwest Traditions, Inc.
Matter’s Ballroom Home Page. (1998). available at www.NBEA.com/Matter’s.htm
Ouren, Robin. (1998). The town on the hill: A history of Waterville, Iowa. Waterville, IA: Paint Creek Press.
Popular Music. (1999). Microsoft Encarta 99. [CD ROM].
Rock Music. (1999). Microsoft Encarta 99. [CD ROM].
The summer dance tour. (1987, January 31). Program from Easter Seal benefit dance. Des Moines, IA: Easter Seal Society of Iowa.
Welk, Lawrence. (1971) .Wunnerful, wunnerful: The autobiography of Lawrence Welk .Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Winner’s Circle. (1998, October). The Quarter Racing Journal 49-52.
Wrestling match advertisement. (1936, December 10). Decorah Journal.
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