Vintage Brew: "Our Team is leading the Hit Parade"

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In this installment of his long-running series, Paul Tenpenny shares a story from lockdown, where he helped bring old music back to life....

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"Our Team is leading the Hit Parade"
1936 Brewers song has been revived after 84 years
by Paul Tenpenny
(Tencentz@aol.com)
Copyright 2026 Tencentzports
Printed with permission of the Author

In the cloistered year of 2020, I was asked by Joel Willems, Curator of Milwaukee’s Chudnow Museum if I could help with a baseball exhibit at their museum during the upcoming baseball season. It was a pretty quick yes, having shared my enthusiasm and collections in the past for several exhibits in both Milwaukee and Madison. Memorabilia from the Old Milwaukee Brewers, the Milwaukee Braves and the current Milwaukee Brewers was housed in three display cases.

The exhibit was well received despite restrictions placed on us all with the Covid precautions, and ran until the end of the baseball season.

We recorded an interview on the exhibit and later, a live Zoom SABR event was hosted by the Museum that summer.

While dismantling the exhibit, one of the artifacts was my copy of the sheet music for the Brewers' 1936 anthem “Our Team’s Leading The Hit Parade” and I told Joel of my desire to hear the song. No one had a recording of it, and I had tried in vain for years to get someone to perform and record the music.

The Museum’s player piano happened to have the Wisconsin Badgers' “On Wisconsin” cued up, that got us both talking about old time music and the little-known history of this 1936 celebratory song. This song had been sitting around for 84 years in silence. Why not give it a try?

I asked again and through Joel, I now had someone willing to try.

We made a copy of the music and Joel set out to find someone to perform it.

The rest of the story is "history."

After a couple of attempts failed, the 3rd time was the charm as he found a former volunteer and teacher, Leah Duckert-Kroll from West Bend. She was able to muster up not only a pianist but vocalists too.

We now have a time machine back to the 1936 Milwaukee Brewer baseball team and this wonderful song, including some great film footage from Borchert Field that year.

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Editor's Note: We are once again indebted to Paul, who has done more than anyone else to bring the Brews' history to life. Literally, in this case. Bravo!

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