Only one question was asked when Joe Eisenbeis applied for a job at the German Insurance Bank (now Liberty National Bank and Trust Company) 53 years ago. “Can you speak German, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut?” “Yah,” the 15-year-old boy answered. And he was in.

Eisenbeis worked at the bank from that day until his retirement a few days ago. His latest position was in the bond department.

The bank’s president did all the hiring in those days, and Eisenbeis had been sent to him by the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Church, where Eisenbeis had been studying German in a Saturday school.

Became Runner

Getting the bank job meant Eisenbeis was moving up to a $5-a-week job as runner (a combination messenger and office boy) from a $3-a-week job as a printer’s devil (a printshop apprentice).

He recalls that in those days, when a note was paid, the cashier would put the note on a butcher's meat block at the bank and hit the note with a hammer. The hammer’s head had the word “Paid” protruding in such a way that the note would be perforated by the blow.

The bank had only one vice-president then, Charles C. Vogt. “The vice-president spent most of his time somewhere else working as resident manager of the American Tobacco Company, and stayed at the bank only while the bank’s president or cashier were out to lunch,” Eisenbeis recalls.

Never Had Desk

In all his years at the bank, Eisenbeis never had a desk. He stood at a counter or at a window. There was a tall stool behind him, but he seldom used it. “Younger people need desks; but I never did bother about it,” he says. He has never been away from the bank because of sickness; but he has “taken time off many a day to fill musical engagements – the bank has been very nice about that.”

While other employees of the bank went to night school and studied such things as economics, Eisenbeis took singing lessons, or piano lessons, or clarinet lessons. He still takes singing lessons and he still plays the piano; but he seldom touches the clarinet. His voice teacher is Mrs. Ellen Lawrence Burke of New Albany. Eisenbeis is tenor soloist at the Crescent Hill Methodist Church. He was a member of the Highland Presbyterian Church choir 35 years.

When he was 9 years old and was living at Logan and Lampton, Miss Jennie Summers, his teacher at the Third Ward School (now the Nicholas Finzer School) gave him a note to take to the Christ Church Cathedral organist and choirmaster, Horatio Browne. As a result of the note, Browne gave the boy singing lessons, three times a week and put him in a children’s choir at the cathedral.

Years later Eisenbeis organized “the first musical radio program in Louisville.” He explains that “when WHAS was just starting, it was glad to have our hour-and-a-half long Liberty Bank music program, and didn’t charge the bank anything; but later we had to pay for time.”

For years, Eisenbeis sang on radio, as a member of the Greater Louisville Ensemble, a quartette which was sponsored by the Greater Louisville First Federal Savings and Loan Association.

He intends to spend the next two years sorting out the music in his attic – it’s full. He also will continue singing in choirs and at weddings and funerals and other places.

Sometimes Eisenbeis thinks he might have made more money out of printing than out of banking; but he’s sure neither provide as much pleasure as a career in music.

No Illusions

However, he has no illusions about music being an easy road to riches. “Franz Schubert,” he says, “set such beautiful poetry to music, and when he died all he left was a dirty pair of socks – his entire belongs weren’t worth $12.

“And Mozart – just think Mozart, poor fellow – it was raining so hard the day he was buried that they just dumped him in the first hole they came to, and now nobody knows exactly where he is buried.”

Mr. and Mrs. Eisenbeis live at 225 Franck. They have two daughters, and Eisenbeis says the daughters “can sing rings around me.”

One, Mrs. Dorothy Potter, is a soloist at the Highland Presbyterian Church. The other, Mrs. Grace Langenhop, is a member of a church choir in Ames, Iowa.

This article was printed in the Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, on November 16, 1958, and was written by Sol Schulman.