John Stankovic (b. Nanticoke, PA, May 4, 1936) was the first child of a coal miner and bread truck driver father with a third grade education who arrived in the U.S. a child in 1911 first to Pittsburgh before his family settled in the anthracite coal mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County. His mother Anna (nee Shambora) was a garment worker. (Both families were likely from southern present-day Czechia near the Slovak and Austrian borders - historical Moravia.) Stanky acquired his nickname in the first grade and took up the accordion at the age of 9. After a couple years of high school, he drove a junk wagon, collecting and reselling refuse, and playing baseball, falling just short of a career with the Cleveland Indians. The band he formed in his teens with his violin-playing younger brother was initially called the Tip-Toppers, but because most of the band worked in the mines and often appeared publically in miner’s caps and jeans, their local audience generally referred to them as Stanky and the Coalminers, and they carried that name onward from the time they started recording in 1960 for Bernie Witkowski’s (b. New York City 1913; d. 1986 Hillside NJ) Stella label. His most ardent supporter was his wife Dorothy (“Dottie” b. May 31, 1942 in Nanticoke), who managed his musical career from the time of their marriage in 1962 onward. She oversaw the family business of booking shows (including, eventually, scores of alcohol-heavy cruise ship appearances), releasing dozens of recordings (including LPs, cassettes, CDs, and a VHS tape, mostly on their own Stan-Dot label from about 1975 onward), a decades-long show on WVIA public television, and the publication of his memoir in 2006. She also created much of his album artwork. He was inducted in the Polka Hall of Fame in 2019. He continues to perform as of this writing and remains in his native Nanticoke.

This roughly chronological collection draws heavily from the first five superb LPs by the band as wells as a some of the latter records into the mid-80s.