The music didn't die when Ralph Herman passed away Monday at age 70. It lives on in his sons, grandsons and band mates of more than 50 years, the Rhythm Playboys.

Herman, a lifelong resident of Pleasantville, was a founder and the front man of the Rhythm Playboys, a popular local dance music band that got a jump-start playing on local television in the early 1960s. They traveled - and will continue to travel - regionally and nationally, playing in halls, polka festivals and anywhere people like to dance.

The band's last "home" concert was Feb. 22, which was also Herman's birthday, at the Palladium in Osseo. It was a fitting venue for Herman's final Wisconsin performance. The band played the next day in Caledonia, Minn.

"For whatever reason, it was in the air that night," said Ralph Herman's son Ryan, who has played with the band full time for the past 10 years. " 'It's best the band's ever sounded.' I heard that a lot that night."

After Ralph's son Robert and three of Ralph's grandsons surprised him with a birthday violin performance, he jokingly said, "I can retire now."

If music wasn't the most important thing in Ralph's life, it ranked right up there, family members said.

During the week, Herman was a busy and successful farmer.

After serving in the military, he returned to Pleasantville and purchased the family farm. He bought additional farms over the years and was a livestock dealer. Family members say he was always busy and always working.

"He was busy all week with that stuff, and no matter how bad it was on the farm that week, when it was time to get onstage, everything was good," Ryan Herman said.

Ralph and his brother Norman Herman grew up in a musical family. Their uncle played accordion while the brothers got their hair cut by their aunt. The instrument fascinated Ralph.

"My father bought me a used accordion for $35," he said in a 2002 interview with the Leader-Telegram. "I got so I could play it a bit."

The band began as the Pleasantville Playboys in 1954 and included Ralph on the accordion, Norman on lead guitar and first cousin Don Maug of Eau Claire on banjo.

Ralph's father, Rudolph Herman, had to accompany them at the time because they were too young to get into some of the venues.

Playing nightclubs - while still teenagers - barn dances and private parties, the band's popularity grew until 1955 when it was suspended for three years while several members served in the military.

As a prize for winning a talent contest in Winona, Minn., in 1959, the group received a recording session in Kentucky and cut a 45-rpm record with four songs.

A short time later, the general manager of WEAU-TV (Channel 13) in Eau Claire invited the Playboys on television. The Rhythm Playboys taped segments on Tuesday nights at the station. Performances were put into noon newscasts on the Farm and Home Show. They signed up to do 13 weeks but stayed for almost five years.

"He was very good man, a good businessman, a good front man and my very best friend," Maug said.

The Rhythm Playboys will continue with their scheduled bookings, playing without their leader for the first time tonight at the Moose Lodge in Eau Claire.

That's the way Ralph would have wanted it.