For more than 30 years, Eddie Blazonczyk's Versatones have dominated the dynamic Polish polka scene centered in Chicago. Blazonczyk's creative contributions and the magnitude of his impact on the American polka tradition have been likened to those of B.B. King on blues and Bill Monroe on bluegrass. It was he who forged the "Chicago-style" (often called "hop style"), a form so immensely popular that for millions of Polish-Americans it is synonymous with polka.

The son of immigrants from the foothills of the Tatra Mountains in Poland, Eddie comes from a background rich in the song, dance, and fiddle traditions of that rural region. He absorbed this music from his parents and other performers who played in the taverns operated by his father in Chicago and later in Wisconsin. Consciously creating his own polka style, Blazonczyk combined Polish folksongs and older regional polka styles with American popular and country music. He founded the Versatones in 1963, and within a few years their distinctive sound - a concertina trading leads with a pair of parallel or unison trumpets, an accordion doing "bellow-shaking" to provide rhythm, electric bass, drums and harmony vocals - became the model for many Polish-American polka bands. Since their first album in 1963, the Versatones have made more than 50 recordings, garnered ten Grammy nominations and won a Grammy award in 1986 for their "Polka Celebration" album. The group has received hundreds of awards from the International Polka Association, and in 1970, at the age of 30, Blazonczyk was elected to the I.P.A. Hall of Fame. In 1998, he was awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship. The band typically plays over 200 performances a year.

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