Vail Oktoberfest Mainstay Bavarian Helmut Fricker Still Performing at Age 90

It’s that time of year, when revelers across the globe, regardless of German heritage, don dirndls and lederhosen, wield extra large beers and decide that accordions and horns create the greatest music on earth.

Bavaria might be the birthplace of Oktoberfest, but ski towns throughout the United States have latched onto the celebration and there is arguably no greater rendition on this side of the Atlantic than in Bavarian-inspired Vail, Colorado. No small part of the Vail Oktoberfest’s authentic draw is its Bavarian-born mainstay, Helmut Fricker, who helped launch the Colorado ski town’s very first Oktoberfest 54 years ago.

“I was all by myself,” recalled Fricker, who moved to Colorado from Germany in 1969. “I didn’t have the band. Still, 50 people showed up. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was a good old time. The next year, I brought the whole band. Now, it’s 13,000 people.”

An Oktoberfest history

Originating in Munich on Oct. 12, 1810, when all citizens were invited to celebrate Prince Ludwig of Bavaria’s wedding to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen, the inaugural Oktoberfest involved several days of feasting, beer-drinking and horse-racing. According to history.com, the celebration was so popular that it returned the following year and every year since, snowballing into an all-out festival highlighting Bavarian culture, with live oompah music, dancing in traditional garb, games, eating pretzels, bratwurst and strudel, and more beer-drinking. A few years in, the city of Munich took over Oktoberfest and moved it to September, aiming for longer, warmer days.

Helmut Fricker’s history

Raised in Germany’s Black Forest during World War II, Fricker’s house was riddled with bombs and bullets after the war began. Although he was hit by shrapnel (and still has the scar on his head to prove it) and the house crumbled to the ground, everyone survived besides the family cat. When Fricker was 3 years old, his father was coerced into joining the Third Reich. Although an involuntary soldier, he was captured and sent to a Siberian prison camp. After the family’s home was destroyed, Fricker, his mother and siblings spent a couple of years pushing their belongings from town to town sleeping in barns. After the war ended, the family returned to its small village. Fricker’s world was not all hardship, however. The young boy began studying bookbinding and discovered his love for music. A soldier friend of his father’s visited the family from time to time with an accordion. He began teaching Fricker how to play. It was immediately apparent that the young Bavarian was a born musician.

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Having not heard any word from or about Fricker’s father for many years, the family believed he had died. Then, miraculously, in 1950, 11 years after he had been summoned to fight for Hitler, Fricker’s father showed up. Delighted to see his son’s newly discovered musical aptitude, he cobbled together enough money and bought him his first accordion. Fricker was 14.

“He bought it for 50 bucks and paid five dollars a month for it for a year. My mother was mad,” Fricker recalled. “She said, ‘we could buy some eggs for that.’”

Neighbors and acquaintances began hiring Fricker to sing and play at birthdays and weddings. He joined the YMCA Brass Ensemble, who gave him a tuba to play and locations around town and beyond to perform, which he reached by the only means he could afford – a bicycle.

Working as a professional musician and bookbinder for many years, Fricker started a family of his own and decided to bring his skills, along with his wife and two young children, to Colorado. They arrived in the summer of 1969.

“I woke up, saw the mountains, the flowers, the trees and I said, ‘I’ll never leave here again,’” he said.

Before gathering the small crowd of revelers with nothing more than his accordion during that first Vail Oktoberfest back in 1972, Fricker played trombone in an Oktoberfest band in Germany during the 1950s. He also helped launch Denver’s inaugural festival in Larimer Square downtown.

“I met merchants down there about getting together for Oktoberfest. The lady I talked to originally was from Munich. She talked to the City of Denver. She blocked off Larimer Square. The mayor came and opened the Oktoberfest. I didn’t have lederhosen. I rolled my pants up and stood at the microphone. They had 250 people. Now they have 30,000.”

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Once moving to the Vail Valley, Fricker settled in. When he wasn’t playing music – at Oktoberfests, weddings, funerals and any other occasion that called for oompah – he continued working as Colorado’s last bookbinder – using tiny steel tools, paint, and gold dust to restore 200-year-old bibles to their original condition and building one-of-a-kind photo albums and memory books from scratch, even making his own paper.

He occasionally still tackles a bookbinding project, but music remains his most prominent hobby – playing the accordion, trombone, alpenhorn and his own vocal cords as a skilled yodeler.

He believes no festival outside of Germany matches the ambiance – and scenery – of Vail Oktoberfest.

“The setting is beautiful, because you see the Gore Mountain Range from the plaza and you have the Bavarian restaurants – Lancelot and Pepi’s – right there,” he said. “It’s a family affair. They have Bavarian dancers, polka dancing, a bier stein lifting and competitions, prizes. You have a good time. You drink beer.”

When asked what sets Vail’s Oktoberfest apart from others around the U.S., organizer Brian Nolan said. “we have Helmut.”

“We are in a Euro-designed village. We try to stay true to the traditional music. No cover bands for us. And, we have keg bowling.”

Vail Oktoberfest lands in Lionshead Village Sept. 11-13 and Vail Village Sept. 18-20.

Fricker and his band, The Rhinelanders, perform at least once a day from Friday to Sunday at both festivals.

The Bavarian also made the rounds at the Beaver Creek Oktoberfest earlier this month. He helped launched that festival 27 years ago and a permanent statue of him graces Beaver Creek Village.

“Somebody said I look a little stiff,” he joked. “Don’t rub my belly.”

Although September’s festival season is his favorite time of year, Fricker operates on a mindset of living every second to the fullest.

“I have fun every single day, not just for Oktoberfest.”