The outfits span genres: A silver, sequined dress donned by jazz pianist Jeanne Arland Peterson stands in one corner. A hand-painted leather coat worn by seasoned country singer Sherwin Linton hangs in another.
But the instruments within the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame give away its oom-pah-pah roots.
Organs and accordions. Concertina after concertina. One ornate squeeze box, played by polka legend Syl Liebl, landed in this modest museum via Dodie Wendinger's lap. She ran the Hall of Fame for three decades, collecting artifacts and stories.
"My sweet man here, he's gone," says Wendinger, 71, smiling at a black-and-white photo of Liebl and his wide grin. When Liebl was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 1993, he rented a tuxedo for the occasion. He was long retired by then, his fingers crumpled. But upon receiving his award, he called for his concertina. Wendinger fetched it from his trunk. "He was the only concertina player I knew who could — in the middle of the song — flip the concertina over and keep on playing." That night, the crowd on its feet, "those crumpled fingers did something."
She lowers her own hands, remembers the rest of the story: Years later, Liebl asked her to come by his place. They were visiting when, "all of a sudden, he came and put his concertina on my lap," Wendinger says. She asked him: "What are you doing, Syl?" And he told her: "I want the Hall of Fame to have that." So now it sits in a glass case here in New Ulm, alongside photographs and press clippings.
Polka legacies bump up against rock icons in the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm, pop. 13,000. This city, known for its German immigrants and Glockenspiel clock tower, was once nationally recognized as a hotbed for old-time music and the social dance bands that played it. Volunteers founded the Hall of Fame in 1988 in order to honor legends like John Wilfahrt, better known as "Whoopee John," or "Daddy of the Concertina," one of the country's most famous polka bandleaders. The first five inductees were all dead, all old-time.
But over the years, they've inducted musicians and musical groups from classical to jazz, polka to pop.
"You don't get people to come for the dead ones," says Wendinger, who stepped down from her executive director gig years ago but on this Monday morning popped in to handle some paperwork. "And I don't like to wait until they're gone."