Wheezy Wonders Hit Right Chords With Audiences

Silver revolver in hand, white hair under a cowboy hat, 82-year-old Helen Gundlah struts the stage belting out her rendition of “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” As the number ends, she slams her pistol down atop the upright piano, following the lyrics’ directive to “lay that pistol down.”

Her audience, senior citizens attending a free lunch program at the Leo P. Turner Senior Center in Cudahy, chuckle and sing along over bowls of vegetable soup.

Hers is one tough act.

But it is all part of the cabaret presented by what has got to be the Southeast area’s only senior citizen kazoo band, the Wheezy Wonders.

“You can really get a sound out of a kazoo if you play it right. Believe me,” said Gundlah, who is also the group’s conductor. “That’s how we got our name.”

Gundlah’s seven-member group--three kazoos, lead guitar, piano, keyboardist and director--is a fixture at senior citizen centers, convalescent homes and service organizations, entertaining their peers about once a week with tap-dancing routines and numbers like “School Days” that they all recognize and miss.

“I like the words,” said Benny Montoya, 73, a volunteer at the Cudahy senior center. “It reminds me of the old days.”

If the show’s elements are familiar to many of the seniors, they should be. The Wheezy Wonders have been playing the Southeast circuit for 18 years. Still, their kazoos, shaped like trumpets and saxophones, need fresh tunes, and Gundlah searches for numbers to brighten the program.

One recent addition is “Achy Breaky Heart.” The Grammy Award-nominated song’s catchy refrain is not all that excites Gundlah. “Ooooooooh, that Billy Ray Cyrus is a hunk, I want to tell you,” she said.

Some of the Wheezy Wonders have been playing music or performing for more than 60 years; each has a story about how they “entered the music business.”

Dolly O’Halloran, for example, toured as a child with her mother in the USO. “I’ve been singing since I was 3 years old,” she said. “When I married, my husband was very, very jealous of my performing, so I quit, but I started again when he died.”

Members seem most proud of their lead guitarist, and the only male in the group, Chief Wah-Nee-Ota, 76. A hereditary chief of an Oklahoma Seminole tribe, Wah-Nee-Ota said he came to Los Angeles in 1937, played parts in 100 films and performed with singing stars from Elvis Presley to Roy Orbison.

The Wheezy Wonders’ ranks have thinned since their first performance in 1975. Then, the volunteer group was almost three times as large and played 10 gigs a month.

“We were a lot younger then,” Gundlah said. Many members have died, including a fiddler, a banjo player and Gundlah’s husband, the band’s drummer. Gundlah says she has trouble recruiting volunteer replacements.

Requests for performances are fewer these days, but the members seem to earn the respect and appreciation of their audiences.

“I don’t know how she does it,” said Bebe Hancock, 70, of Bell Gardens after witnessing Gundlah’s tap routine. “I thought, ‘That lady really shakes her thing . . .’ People at their age, they give up, you know?”

Not the Wheezy Wonders.

“If I’m by myself, the old memories sneak in,” Gundlah said, “And I get sad and that’s not good. That’s where Billy Ray Cyrus comes in.”