RUPERT - Introductions for the Art Hieb Quartet are simple.

On drums, Art Hieb. Piano? Art Hieb. Accordion and harmonica? Hieb and again, Hieb.

The 79-year-old Rupert resident sits in the middle of a contraption of his own design and plays all four instruments at the same time. It's a solution he came up with after having a hard time finding people to make music with him.

Hieb has played accordion most of his life. He and wife, Dorothy, love nothing more than to hear a lively polka. He loves it even more when the accordion is accompanied by piano, harmonica and drums.

So he built a one-man band.

He sits in the middle. To his left is an electronic keyboard with four separate foot pedals, each one controlling a chord. Artificial fingers press down on the keys.

In front of his mouth is a harmonica, and to the front and left a bass drum operated by a foot pedal.

In any case, music is a big part of the family.

He and his sister and sister-in-law formed a polka band, and they played weddings, polka festivals, parties, dances and weddings. In the Dakotas, there are even polka masses in the Catholic church.

"It's the regular hymns, but we just put them to a polka beat," Hieb explained.

When his brother, Ted Hieb, passed away, the family gave him a polka funeral.

They were invited to perform at locations from Elko and Laughlin, Nevada to Denver, Colorado and some Wyoming towns. They've even been back to Hague, N.D. to play for a family reunion. Rupert resident Hildegard Holy, Hieb's sister, went along, taking her accordion. When a friend heard they were traveling there for a family reunion, he asked them to play. An ad placed in the local paper billed them as "Art Hieb and the Idaho Polka Kings."

"People remembered us from when we moved away in 1941," Holy recalled. "Since there were so many of us, we left a big gap in the school. These friends of ours rented the hall of the Catholic church and ran ads in the local paper."

He left the farm, near Strasburg, at age 15 to move to Idaho. The family of eleven children and their parents worked hard all summer, but in the winter there was more time for music and fun. The combination taught him skills that went into his finest creation -- his music machine.

The trouble was, sometimes he couldn't find other musicians to join him. He got a lot of invitations to play, but thought it sounded better with a piano, harmonica and drums.

Hieb has been designing farm equipment since he was old enough to be allowed into the machine shop. Sprinklers and tractor-drawn equipment were some of the things he modified to simplify his chores.

"Anything to make it a little easier," he says with a North Dakota-German lilt.

One year he was working on a combine. The wrench slipped, and Hieb fell to the ground, injuring his shoulder. It bothered him for a long time.

Then one evening he and Dorothy were sitting around a fire at a campground. A woman got out an accordion and began to play. The music was a pleasure, but later he was chatting with her and learned something that would help him a great deal. She said her doctor had recommended she play the instrument to exercise her injured shoulder.

"When we got home, I got out that old accordion I had in the closet," Hieb said. "At first, boy that hurt! I could just play for maybe ten minutes. But after a few weeks, I could play longer and longer. Now my shoulder is fine, and there were no doctor bills or nothing for all that therapy. Just a lot of fun."

Because the contraption is very heavy and awkward, Hieb doesn't play it much except at home. He and his wife, Dorothy, have quite a time setting it up. That's the reason he doesn't accept many invitations these days. But he has fond memories of the dances.

"Anyway, at our age, it's nice to relax," he said with a smile.

"You can always tell which crowds are going to dance, and which crowds are there to visit," Dorothy said. "And you can spot a North Dakota crowd. They're the ones where 90 percent of the people know how to do a fast waltz. It's just like ice skating. Beautiful."

Dorothy and Art Hieb agree that polkas are good for the family. In the Dakotas, polka is for all ages.

"One night, the dance we were playing for was the same night as the senior prom," said Art. "After the prom was over, the teenagers started showing up in their fancy clothes and dancing the polka. By the time the night was over, there were little pieces of cloth on the floor where their heels had caught in their dresses. But all the generations were there, dancing together."

Times-News correspondent Coreen Hart can be reached at 436-1186 or by email at jimnreenie@safelink.net.