5 reasons Li’l Wally is the ultimate bad boy of Chicago music 

Li’l Wally Jagiello, the King of Chicago Polka, might be gone, but he’s not forgotten. This Saturday, punk-polka scowlers The Polkaholics celebrate his memory at Quencher's with a performance of Wally!, founder Don Hedeker’s rock opera telling the late Jagiello’s torrid life story. The more we learn about the man who lamented there’s “No Beer in Heaven” and “I Wish I Was Single Again,” the more we’re convinced Li’l Wally was Chicago all-time musical badass. Here’s why:

1. Wally partied hard.
Plenty of Chicagoland musicians raged heartily, from South Sider Chaka Khan to late Blues Brother John Belushi, but few held a candle to Li’l Wally’s big thirsts. By age 10, already a two-year veteran of polka bands, Jagiello was getting drunk up and down Division Street, then known as “Polish Broadway,” a string of bars from Ashland Avenue to Damen Avenue including Gold Star, which reportedly housed a brothel upstairs at the time.

2. Wally did it his way.
Chicago has a tradition of independent labels, from Chess and Vee Jay in the ’50s to today’s Drag City and Thrill Jockey, but no one was more D.I.Y. than Wally. After a stint on Columbia Records in the ’40s, the concertina player decided he didn’t want to take direction from anyone and started his own label, ultimately self-releasing more than 100 LPs of polka madness. Like the Chess brothers, he wasn’t always the squarest businessman. “In the mid-’60s, Wally had to move to Florida because he’d burned all his bridges,” says Hedeker. “He took credit for everything and stiffed a lot of musicians. Even in the ’90s I still met guys who held grudges, saying they’d never play with him again.”

3. Wally liked ’em young.
R. Kelly may have developed a reputation for wooing youngsters when he married Aaliyah when she was 15 and he was 27. Polkaholics, a documentary shot during Li’l Wally’s 1999 visit to Chicago, shows Jagiello, 69, relentlessly pursuing much, much younger barmaids.

4. Wally predicted goth.
Chicago was a hub for goth and industrial music in the ’80s, but it was old news for Jagiello. As a teen, he moonlighted in a Division Street funeral parlor, and after long nights boozin’ up and down the strip, he’d reportedly break in to sleep it off in one of the caskets.

5. Wally lives!
In an attempt to appeal to the Chicago jock majority, musicians like Billy Corgan do whatever they can to ingratiate themselves to sports fans: attending countless games, hanging out with players, and singing at during the Cubs’ seventh-inning stretch. Wally earned his sports immortality by writing “Let’s Go Go-Go White Sox” for the 1959 American League Champs. The song was brought back by the 2005 World Series team and has been played at every home game since.