Louie & His Old Time Band

“Louie” was Bernard (Ben) Alfred Scheel, born in 1905 to Eugene Valentine and Marie Frances (Syring) Scheel, a couple of German immigrant stock, in Honey Creek, about 15 miles north of San Antonio. Ben was the oldest of five children (born nine months after his parents’ marriage), and had one adopted sister. Both his father, Eugene, and his grandfather, Fritz Scheel, were members of the Spring Branch Band (est. 1881), and Ben became a trumpet player in the Lone Oak Band of New Braunfels (est. 1927). Around that time he married his first wife, Margaret Lux, and their daughter, Leatrice, was born in 1929. The Lone Oak Band, directed by Edgar Daum, contained four members of the Friesenhahn family, which Ben’s Aunt Mathilda Scheel had married into. There were also two members each from the Reininger, Hofmann, Kneuper, Voigt, and Schwab families. Edmund Friesenhahn later joined Ben’s own band, “Herr Louie and his Little German Band” (est. 1937). From 1937 through 1939 the band played venues in and around San Antonio: Steve’s Place, Engle’s Place, Luxello Hall, K. T. Hall and the Beethoven Home. They also had a 15-minute afternoon radio time slot on KONO-AM of San Antonio billed as “Herr Louie Band”. As the 1940s progressed, the band was more often advertised as “Louie and his Old Time Band”, as it was known on several singles on the Globe label around 1945, and 18 sides recorded for Imperial Records in the late 1940s. In addition to the Imperial recordings, Louie and the Old Time Band made four recordings for Mercury and about a dozen recordings that were issued and reissued in various couplings on the Martin and Humming Bird labels in the 1940s and 1950s. At the time of the band’s 10th anniversary in early 1947, members included: Herr Louie, baritone horn; Edmund Friesenhahn, drums; Max Richter, trumpet; Richard Schraub, clarinet; Henry Schraub, trumpet; Alphonse Fey, bass horn; and Walter Biesenbach, alto horn. The band continued to entertain into the late 1950s. “Louie”, AKA Bernard (Ben) Alfred Scheel passed away at the age of 82 in San Antonio in July of 1988. His wife of over 20 years, Lucille Anita (Moeller), had passed away just a month earlier.