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Fellow Echo columnist Diana Mavetz Petrich recently posted a complete history of the BopCats. This music group, which started in the fifties, featured many Ely musicians during its decades of performing. Among them was Ed Steklasa, an amazing veteran musician who still performs in the area and who provided the chronology that Diana compiled.
Also among those BopCats was the son of a local musician known for her powerful soprano voice, her violin virtuosity, and her effective music teaching and directing techniques. Yes, that’s Josephine Shepel Luthanen, my mother.
I was privileged to be a member of the BopCats during the 80s -- a stint I remember fondly.
The experience was one of two that I treasure for the joy and sense of belonging that comes from being with a coordinated and effective team. (The other was being a member of the Ely HS Timberwolves basketball team in the 60s.) Teams assembled by corporate fiat during my work career didn’t have the same sense of cohesion.
During my membership in the BopCats we played some memorable gigs. One of the first I was involved with was at the National Home (upstairs of what is now NAPA Auto Parts). The place was crowded and rocking with about 200 spirited locals. I think we repeated that gig two or three times in the next year. Great fun.
Another was a summer engagement at Burntside Lodge. Summer of 85? Not sure. Anyway, we played every Sunday night from Memorial Day through Labor Day that year. A great venue for our little group. Lonnie and Lou allowed us to store our gear in a back room at the lodge so setup and teardown were easy. I had an inboard/outboard on the lake in those days so I commuted to the Lodge across Burntside each Sunday and navigated my way home after dark.
We played a party at the Hotel Duluth -- I think it was for the St Mary’s nurses annual bash. Loved the ambience there. Jerry Fink was on the drums that night. Another was, I think, a nurses convention in the Judy Garland ballroom in Grand Rapids. Large, appreciative crowd. We had four sets of outfits and we changed them at each intermission.
Ed came up with the idea of dressing us in groomsmen outfits. We had a couple of jackets, a couple of turtlenecks, and blousy white shirts so we could mix up our look many ways.
Back to venues, we played some bar gigs. Mugga’s in Eveleth, Giants Ridge, El Toro in Cotton, the Long Branch in Winton, and of course Dee’s and Portage in Ely. Several others I don’t recall.
Class reunions, weddings, holiday parties. Such fun.
It’s a thrill to be with a tight group that performs as a unit. One glance to the other three and a song smoothly gets extended a second bridge and verse. A solo familiar intro, e.g. Do Wa Diddy Diddy, and the others are there with you.
And speaking of Do Wa Diddy Diddy, how many times in your life can you utter a string of syllables like that and have it make sense, let alone entertain a roomful of people? Nobody can do the Shinga- ling like I do, nobody can do the Skate like I do, nobody can do the BOOG-A-LOO like I do, nobody can do the Philly like I do ... Oh man, the fun.
And when it’s time for a belly rubber, it’s rewarding to see couples embrace and sway to “Sealed With a Kiss.” I got to play the harmonica on my DX7 synthesizer and sing harmony while they shifted left and right.
My favorite to sing? I guess it was “Runaway,” the Del Shannon classic. “I wonder -- I Wah Wah Wah Wah Wonder.” Now I wonder how I ever did those falsetto passages. The organ solo was fun, too. “At the Hop” was a close second. Well you can rock and you can roll and you can stomp and you can stroll it at the hop.
I didn’t keep track of how many gigs we played in the 80s. In 2001 we got back together for a private party on a deck at a Burntside cabin then played a couple of nights at Portage Bar. That was the last time I was a BopCat. Portage is closed now, live music is less common than in past decades, and I can’t sing Runaway in any key let alone in A anymore.
But the memories of having been part of that team for those years is an enduring treasure. Thanks Diana for assembling Ed’s memories and uplifting this writer.
And I mean it from the bottom of my boogety, boogety, boogety shoe.
Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.
