Author: admin

By Larry Shurilla

Sometimes our dreams don’t come true. Well, at least sometimes things don’t quite turn out the way we planned, another dream comes along and that’s the life we live. Who’s to say which dream was better? Who’s to say which path was best? Who’s to say.

When we look back at the life we’ve lived, will we see a moment that changed everything? A fork in the road? A path less traveled? Back in the late 1930’s a Cudahy girl with a velvety voice and big band dreams had a choice that made all the difference in the world. At least for me and my siblings it did. That singer was my mom.

When something from 80 years ago reaches out from the past and grabs your heart today, well, that’s something to talk about.

So let’s talk. Here’s the story.

From the mid 1930s through around 1948, Russian immigrant, Phil Spitalny, and his Orchestra crooned the airways of American radio every Sunday night in what was billed, “The Hour of Charm.” What made this particular orchestra so unique was that it was made entirely of women, except for its conductor, Phil, of course. In the no-nonsense talk of the day, Phil once said, “Give me women to work with every time . . . They’re more cooperative and they don’t waste their emotions on much except their music.”

After performing with his all-female orchestra for a time, Phil decided to expand his act and add female singers. He held nationwide auditions and here is where my mom comes in! Having been raised in a musical family in Cudahy, Wisconsin, Ruth Ruddy was blessed with a beautiful, sultry singing voice. I know because growing up I was blessed with lullabies and impromptu singing as she stroked my back at bedtime, put stuffing in the turkey, or was painting portraits and whimsical landscapes in our den. Ruth was such an artist-poet, painter, sculptor and singer. She had it all and a family with six kids, but excuse me for getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to the late 1930s.

As Ruddy family lore goes, Ruth’s mother, Louise, once had a local radio show somewhere in Wisconsin where much singing and playing was conducted on a hometown scale. The Ruddy house was always a place to hang-out and jam. Even Ruth’s brother Bill went on to become a successful jazz guitarist and play the Milwaukee scene professionally for many years. When Ruth was about 20 years old, she felt the performing itch and went to WTMJ in Milwaukee to make some audition records for Spitalny’s All Girl Orchestra. What I wouldn’t give to hear her sing those big band ballads of the 30’s and 40’s, sung in her prime! Just wait on that one.

Of all the pictures that get lost in the shuffle of life, this one did not. Here’s a picture of Ruth during that very audition at WTMJ.

Phil Spitalny would be considered a hard businessman by today’s standards. Once under contract, he held his performers to a strict and rigid routine, requiring five to six hours of practice a day and the women had to pledge not to leave and get married without giving six months’ notice! I guess it’s kind of hard for us to understand this type of ultimatum in the 21^st Century, but back in the post-World War II, Leave It To Beaver era, most women stayed at home and raised a family. A conductor couldn’t book gigs and radio shows a year in advance with half of his orchestra running down rice coated church steps!

As corroborated by Ruth’s sister, Faye (Ruddy) Campbell, after listening to Ruth’s audition recordings, Spitalny offered Ruth a contract to sing with the All Girl Orchestra! A dream come true! A big stage for a big voice and the opportunity of a lifetime. But there happened to be another offer on the table. You see, a certain Marquette University track star and returned World War II B-17 war hero had also noticed the suave beauty from Cudahy and proposed a life together.

So there it was, the moment in time I was talking about earlier. A moment that determines destiny. Ruth had the offer of a husband and the promise of a family on one hand and Phil Spitalny’s All Girl Orchestra on the other. Ruth was always such a kind, meek, loving woman-my mom. She wasn’t at all like her big sister, Lois, who was gregarious and the life of the party. Lois would’ve grabbed that contract and ran all the way to New York with it. Ruth? No way. She would’ve hated all that attention. Well, that is truly a question that no one but Ruth can answer, but she did make the audition record. And she also said yes to the flyboy-Bob Shurilla, my dad.

So why all the fuss now? Yeah, it’s a good story, but that all happened some 80 years ago. Yes it did, but sometimes the past can reach out and in an instant pull you right back from iphones and Facebook to Philco radios and The Saturday Evening Post.

It was a Friday in August of 2017. My sister, Kim, (actually we all call her “Sissy”) was having dinner at a downtown Milwaukee, Italian restaurant with her husband, Don, when a longtime family friend, Paul “The Kahuna” Finger, ran up to her, pulled Sissy aside and the conversation went something like this:

“Kim! You won’t believe what’s happened? It’s a miracle!”

“What, Kahuna? What’s going on?”

“You know I collect old 78 records, right? Well, I read about this estate sale in Elm Grove from a former TMJ employee and it sounded like there would be a lot of old records. I went to the sale and sure enough there were stacks of old 78s, the metal kind coated with plastic acetate. I flipped through a bunch of them, all without sleeves, and left with a big stack for a couple of bucks. I went home and started listening to them. I must’ve been listening for a couple hours and was kind of sleepy and then it happened! I hear a woman say, ‘My name is Ruth Ruddy and I’m going to sing George Gershwin’s Embraceable You.’ And there it was, Kim! It was your mom, Ruth, singing that song! She also sang another song called, ‘I Love You!’”

Most people knew my mother as Ruth Shurilla. The Kahuna was so close to my brother, Mark, (also a Milwaukee musician) that he knew her maiden name, Ruddy. Sissy was astonished! What are the chances? A stack of old 78s? Listening and hearing, “Ruth Ruddy?” Knowing who that was? The odds of this happening are astronomical, but it seems if a message is meant to get through, it gets through.

Not long after their meeting, Kahuna brought the records over to Sissy’s house. He just so happened to bring the records on the day of a family reunion. Picture the scene. Faye, the oldest living member of the Ruddy family was there in Sissy’s backyard, along with Ruth’s other children, Kevin, Danny, Shawn, Larry and their spouses, Rosebud, Janet, Linda and Kathy. Faye’s daughters, Colleen and Maureen were there along with two of Ruth’s nieces, Noelle and Neani. You might say it was like one of those gatherings at the old Ruddy house in Cudahy and the jam session was about to begin.

For an acetate recording to survive 80 years is a miracle. For it to be in the middle of a stack of records you just happen to pick up at an estate sale is a miracle. To  recognize a voice and a name spoken into a microphone 80 years prior, is a miracle. But the real miracle was about to begin. Here we were, a family gathering of my mother Ruth’s closest surviving relatives, about to hear her sing to us once more.

As Kahuna placed the phonograph needle on the old 78 and the scratchy grooves came alive in the speaker, ever so gently we all heard the beautiful, unmistakably smooth Ruth Ruddy voice warm our hearts once more singing, “Embraceable You.” That was a song Ruth was still singing around the house weeks before she passed at age 90 in 2010.

And now my patiently reading friend, if you’ve made it thus far on this magical musical tour, you deserve to hear the voice you’ve read so much about. Let me introduce to you, Ruth Ruddy. The best singer Phil Spitalny’s All Girl Orchestra almost had and the remarkably talented woman that sang us to sleep many a night and filled our home and childhood with song.

After listening to Kahuna play those songs, a tear-filled Sissy hatched a plan to get those fragile recordings into a format that would endure and her family and friends could enjoy forever. As Kim soon learned those old acetate albums were only meant to be played a few times before they would deteriorate into a garbled mess. The race was on to save those recordings!

As fate’s hand continued to reach out to us, Kim’s good friend and neighbor, Ann Hughey, heard the story about the records and how Sissy wanted to give them to her family for Christmas. Ann suggested that her husband, Brandon, (who just so happens to be an avid record collector and has expertise in transferring acetate 78 records into mp3 format), make her some audio CDs for Christmas! Ann told Kim this is precisely the kind of thing that thrills him most in life-to figure out how to and then restore antique recordings to a modern playable format. Could Sissy have ordered a more perfect assistant to make this gift happen?

I won’t go into the extremely delicate song restoration process, but suffice it to say that a hundred things could’ve gone wrong to upset the music permanently, but instead, a hundred things went right. On Christmas Eve, 2018, (Christmas Eve was always the traditional time for Christmas celebrations in Ruth’s home), Brandon walked into Sissy’s house, full of family and friends, and presented her with 12 CDs of Ruth’s two audition recordings with Ruth’s radio picture on the covers! Brandon was introduced to a thunderous applause, the songs were played, and once more Ruth was with us on Christmas Eve like she had been for so many years before. To quote one of my mother’s poems, “They’re closer at Christmas, those dear ghosts from the past…”

Thank you, Kahuna, Brandon, and Sissy for making all this possible. Ruth touched each of you in a special way to bring her voice and message to life.

Permit me the luxury of adapting some words from the great Robert Frost, whom my mother loved so well:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

I took the one more traveled by

And that has made all the difference.”

For my siblings and I and the entire baby-boomer generation, thank you, Mom Ruth (that’s how she always signed those birthday cards that she never missed). Thank you for using your talents and love to raise us. To help us see the world with an artists’ brush. To feel life like a poet and to hear through your song the melodies of nature. Thank you for tucking that love note in a stack of 80-year-old 78s, neatly placed for us to find while we’re apart for a while. The nation may have had one less Peggy Lee to adore, but your legacy of love has and will affect generations to come. We love you so, Mom Ruth.

Before you go, Mom, could you please sing to us one more time? Just once more, to last till we meet again…