[3] He and his younger brother Emil and Simon Garcia formed the Hawaiian Serenaders and performed locally.

[4] Influenced by Milton Brown and Bob Wills, Hofner became a singer in a band that played what was later called Western swing, a combination of country music and jazz.

[3] This band had a surprise hit with Floyd Tillman's melancholy honky tonk song "It Makes No Difference Now" with Adolph singing.

During World War II, he and his band were hired by the Burt "Foreman" Phillips chain of dance halls to perform around Los Angeles under the name Dolph Hofner and His San Antonians.

In order to accommodate their sponsor, Pearl Beer, the Hofners recorded the original version of "Farewell to Prague", which had been known in the old country, instead of the more recent Czech-American "Shiner Beer Polka", the same song with the word "Prague" ("Prahu") changed to "Shiner".

In the mid-1980s, Hofner and the Pearl Wranglers were filmed at 'The Farmer's Daughter' dance hall for the British Channel 4 series "The A to Z of C & W".