Ode To Joy: ‘Brass Bonanza’ Unites And Excites Whalers Fans, And Is Back In Spotlight – Hartford Courant

Mike Rotman has heard the song at sporting events all over the country.

Rotman, who grew up in Windsor and lives in Southern California, wears the distinctive blue-and-green of his childhood team when he's at a game. And invariably, folks who see the Whalers logo offer a few bars of that famous little diddy.

"Everywhere I go somebody always sings 'Brass Bonanza' if I'm wearing a Whalers shirt, no matter where in the country I am," Rotman said. "It's insane, man. I'm a little embarrassed by it. I don't look for attention. But people just know it, no matter where I am."

What do people around the country know about Hartford? Sports fans know the Whalers, who departed for North Carolina 20 years ago.

And unlike most professional sports franchises, the Whalers have a soundtrack. The franchise left, but the song remains.

Interest in "Brass Bonanza" has spiked with news that the song's composer died on July 4 in Brussels. Jacques Ysaye, also known as Jack Say, was 94.

His song originally was titled "Evening Beat" and was sold to a musical library. In 1976, Whalers announcers Bob Neumeier and Bill Rasmussen who would later create ESPN used the song as a bridge on the team's season highlight LP.

Whalers executive George Ducharme later told The Courant's Jeff Jacobs that he was looking for a song to get people out of their seats. When he heard "Brass Bonanza," he was hooked.

"Three notes and everybody knows what it is," Ducharme said in 2003. "It's a marketing dream."

All these years later, people still know what it is.

"The song was synonymous to the team," Howard Baldwin said Tuesday. "You think of the song and you think of the team and winning because it was always played after a goal and a win."

Baldwin, one of the founders of the franchise, moved the World Hockey Association team from Boston to Hartford in the mid-1970s. He was always looking for unique ways to sell the team in the new market and the fight song proved to be gold.

Hartford Courant file photo

Not that it was always popular, even within the team offices.

"The hockey guys resisted it a bit in the beginning but then embraced it," Baldwin said. "The visitors hated it."

The song would endure through the 1980s, acting as background music for a generation of hockey fans. Players joked about the song opponents mocked it but it caught on and became part of the scene at the old Civic Center.

Greg Malone spent a few seasons with the Whalers in the 1980s and his son Ryan later played in Hartford as a member of the AHL Wolf Pack. Ryan Malone's memory of Hartford as a 5-year-old kid?

"Obviously, the Hartford Whalers' anthem, the fight song," Malone told The Courant in 2014.

Malone hummed the song. He also told a story about mimicking the song after scoring a goal when he and his brother played indoor hockey with a rolled up sock.

By the late '80s, kids all over Connecticut were humming the song after scoring a goal in street hockey. Rotman's friends at Syracuse University would sing the song after he scored in foosball as a college student in the late '80s and early '90s.

"There was a lot of pride in it," Rotman said. "It was our identity."

Yet in 1992, new general manager Brian Burke replaced the song with a foghorn after the Whalers scored.

"I did it because there were players who were embarrassed by it," Burke later told NHL.com. "An NHL team with a fight song, they were embarrassed by it."

Burke would leave the Whalers for a job with the NHL and "Brass Bonanza" returned. But the team left in 1997, leaving Hartford without a major league franchise.

Still, everything surrounding the franchise lived. The logo endured and the colors, adopted by the Eastern League's Hartford Yard Goats, remained tied to the market.

And as Whalers Nation grew and moved around the country, the song was not far behind. The song became part of the playlist at Fenway Park in the early 2000s, mainly because Enfield native Megan Kaiser was in charge of the ballpark's music.

College bands began playing it. At Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., the song was used at football games because the team was coached by Connecticut native and Trinity graduate J.B. Wells and South Windsor native Marc Zirolli was in charge of the public address system.

That was 14 years ago. The song is now played at college hockey games, at Dunkin' Donuts Park, at high school events, at weddings and on ringtones throughout New England.

Actually, make that ringtones across the country. Rotman, a writer, producer and director whose credits include "Politically Incorrect" and "South Park," has been in Los Angeles since the early 1990s, but he continually returned for Whalers games and will be at Dunkin' Donuts Park for Whalers Alumni Weekend.

Yes, his ringtone is "Brass Bonanza."

"It's just a known entity," Rotman said.

Rotman is the founder of the web-based entertainment network Streamin' Garage and has tried to incorporate the song into his work. He did use former Whalers radio voice Chuck Kaiton, so there is some strong Hartford hockey presence on his site. Kaiton, incidentally, is expected to be in Hartford Saturday for Whalers Alumni Weekend.

When Jacobs tweeted news of Ysaye's death Sunday, Rotman offered this response: "The greatest composer to ever live. No one has touched my life more."

He's not alone. For fans of a certain age, the song is like the soundtrack of a childhood. It's quite a legacy.

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Ode To Joy: 'Brass Bonanza' Unites And Excites Whalers Fans, And Is Back In Spotlight - Hartford Courant