Groucho Marx undistinguished vaudeville singing group billed as "The Four Nightingales". The brothers Julius, Milton (Gummo Marx) and Arthur (originally Adolph, but Harpo Mark from 1911) and another boy singer, Lou Levy, traveled the U.S. vaudeville circuits to little fanfare. After exhausting their prospects in the East, the family moved to La Grange, Illinois, to play the Midwest. After a particularly dispiriting performance in Nacogdoches, Texas, Julius, Milton, and Arthur began cracking jokes onstage for their own amusement. Much to their surprise, the audience liked them better as comedians than as singers. They modified the then-popular Gus Edwards comedy skit "School Days"
The Matys Brothers their hands) and began recording polka music for the Sunnyside and Select labels during the late 1950s and early 1960s. "Rummy Polka" was a hit for them in 1959, and the Matys Brothers scored their biggest hit in 1963, "Who Stole the Keeshka?" In the 1960s and 1970s, the brothers, John, Walt, Emil and Gene, toured the west coast. They appeared in the 1960s at The Showboat in Las Vegas, The Holiday Hotel downtown Reno, NV, and The Commercial Hotel in Elko, Nevada. The brothers also incorporated comedy into their act, some rehearsed, but most of them did not. Some