Jimmy Sturr has been turning out his Vegas-styled pop versions of polka music since the 1960s, recording well over a hundred albums over the years, generally taking a big band approach to his arrangements, which means plenty of horns to go along with the accordions and fiddles. He has done as much as anyone to modernize the polka, even flirting with rock forms at times, but the polka is a fairly change-resistant form and
Sturr is far from being a bold innovator, choosing at all times to stay firmly in the middle of the road, even as he occasionally nudges the polka into some surprising corners. There's very little of that nudging happening on
Come Share the Wine, however, and while
Sturr makes a couple of quirky choices in material, most notably an instrumental polka version of
Jeanine Deckers' (otherwise known as
the Singing Nun) 1963 hit "Dominique," he isn't about to stretch things too far here. He tackles a straightforward rendition of the standard "Red Wing Polka," produces two versions of the title tune "Come Share the Wine," one labeled pop and one labeled polka (both suffer from lackluster vocals), and really hits his stride on the woefully short (particularly since it's the best cut on the album) "Fiddles & Bows," a blazing instrumental featuring
Frank Urbanovitch on fiddle that playfully quotes
Jimmie Driftwood's classic piece of Americana "The Battle of New Orleans." It's clearly the high point on
Come Share the Wine, and for a moment
Sturr actually is innovative, his band sounding like a delightful horn- and fiddle-driven corner string band gone wild and free. Alas, it lasts under two minutes, and
Sturr and company promptly veer back into the well-traveled middle lane for a polka version of the title tune. ~ Steve Leggett