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Friday, May 7, 2021
ountry C
cres A
Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
Volume 8, Edition 23
PHOTOS BY ANNA HAYNES
John “Hans” Pattison walks along with some of the geese he raises, April 16 on his property along the Sauk River outside of St Cloud. Pattison sells goose eggs and live geese, but chooses not to butcher any birds himself.
A Blasmusik kind of guy Variety is spice of life for Pattison
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John “Hans” Pattison stands proudly with the bell of his tuba April 16 at his home near St Cloud. Pattison has played the tuba his entire life, and still loves the German brass-band music that he played throughout his career.
BY SARAH COLBURN | STAFF WRITER
T. CLOUD – For more than six decades, John “Hans” Jay Pattison has been blowing away on his tuba to the delight of audiences across the Midwest. He played on the mall in Washington D.C. at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration and he’s taken center stage at countless weddings, anniversary parties, ballroom dances, county fairs and even funerals. Pattison – known musically as Jolly Jay, to his friends and family as Jay, to his German friends as Hans, and if he were ever to get in trouble with the law, as John – specializes in traditional Blasmusik, German for brassband music. It’s joyful music, dance music, celebratory music, polka music. The music has been his lifeblood, his passion, his career and his mainstay for more than 50 years. Born in Houston, Texas where his dad was with FBI intelligence, his family moved to Minnesota after WWII. He was raised on a Stearns County farm and Pattison helped on the family land when he wasn’t in front of audiences. In his later years, he’s raised and sold geese and chickens. From the time he was 13, through high school, a two-year stint in the Navy, and back on the family farm, Pattison has never strayed from the bass horn – better known as the tuba. No matter what he was doing to put food on the family table, the tuba has always been a part of his life – a big, shiny, bold, brass part. “My grandma would hum these folk songs, the tunes played here in this area; the older songs are folk songs turned into dances, waltzes and polkas, and many of them have words or melodies,” he said.
Pattison page 2
This month in the
ST R COUNTRY: Publications bli ti The newspaper of today is the history of tomorrow.
(Watch for the next edition of Country Acres on May 21)
5
Animals we love
6
From sod house to greenhouse Lowry
7
Sod houses on the prairie Diane Leukam column
12 Learning to teach Holdingford
22 A case of bring a stinker Herman Lensing column
16 For each tractor a story Rice
23 Noxious weed mitigation a team effort Stearns County
21 Country Cooking