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Lawrence Welk

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Lawrence Welk
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(born March 11, 1903, Strasburg, N.D., U.S. — died May 17, 1992, Santa Monica, Calif.) U.S. bandleader and television performer. Born in a German-speaking village in North Dakota, he did not learn English until he was 21. He played the accordion and formed two musical groups that opened for bands and orchestras in the Midwest. Welk moved to Los Angeles, where his television program The Lawrence Welk Show (1955 – 71), which featured band music with vocalists, dancers, and instrumental soloists, became a huge success. The show was dropped by the network, but Welk continued it as Memories with Lawrence Welk (1971 – 82) after he was able to sign contracts with more than 250 independent television stations in the U.S. and Canada. Known for his unpretentious warmth and his trademark phrase "Wunnerful, wunnerful," he played light, nostalgic "champagne music" and featured smiling performers such as the Lennon Sisters.

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Biography: Lawrence Welk
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The music performed by Lawrence Welk (1903-1992) and his Champagne Music Makers alternately has been admired and reviled for the bandleader's insistence on inoffensive subject matter emphasizing American patriotism and traditional Christian values and arrangements emphasizing melody over improvisation and technical skill.

Lawrence Welk had been performing music professionally for more than 35 years before garnering national exposure as host of his own television program in 1951. Four years later, Welk's local Los Angeles program was picked up by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), bringing his particular brand of music into millions of American homes twice a week for 15 years. The network subsequently canceled the show when executives determined that Welk's program was not attracting a younger demographic viewing audience coveted by advertisers. Welk rebounded with a syndicated program following the same format as his network telecasts and recognized even greater financial success. Reruns of the popular series continued to be broadcast weekly on Public Broadcasting as late as 2000, a testimony to the enduring appetite of a large portion of the American television-viewing public for wholesome entertainment.

Born in a Sod Shack

Welk was the sixth of eight children born to German immigrants Ludwig and Christina Welk. The Welks arrived in the United States after an exile in Russia and, after a long trip by ox-drawn cart, settled on a land claim in Emmons County, North Dakota, in 1893. Welk was born on March 11, 1903, in Strasburg, North Dakota. The family lived in a wood-sided sod home and earned their livelihood through farming. The Welk family spoke only German, schooling their children in a parochial school staffed by German-speaking nuns.

Welk's education was cut short when he suffered acute appendicitis when he was ten years old. The prolonged recovery from the resulting appendectomy and subsequent peritonitis allowed Welk to abandon school and focus on farm work, fur trapping, and teaching himself to play his father's accordion. The elder Welk earned extra money by performing at local barn dances, and his son soon followed in his footsteps. As Welk recalled in his autobiography Wunnerful, Wunnerful, "My earliest clear memory is crawling toward my father who was holding his accordion. I can still recall the wonder and delight I felt when he let me press my fingers on the keys and squeeze out a few wavering notes." When he was 17 years old, Welk made a deal with his father that committed him to continue working on the family farm until his 21st birthday in exchange for a $400 accordion. In addition, Welk promised to give his parents all the monies earned with his new instrument.

A Long Musical Internship

In 1924 Welk left home with three dollars pinned to the inside of a new jacket, his accordion, a thick German accent, and an extremely limited grasp of the English language. He toured with such bands as the Jazzy Junior Five, Lincoln Bould's Chicago Band, and George T. Kelly's Peerless Entertainers. Welk recalled that Kelly "taught me all he knew about show business, traveling, booking, and how to get along with all kinds of people." After leaving the Peerless Entertainers, Welk formed a quartet with drummer Johnny Higgins, saxophonist Howard Keiser, and pianist Art Beal. This lineup became known as the Lawrence Welk Novelty Orchestra and, later, the Hotsy Totsy Boys and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra.

In 1927 the band decided to relocate to New Orleans to escape the early and harsh winters of North Dakota. The band never made it farther than Yankton, North Dakota, however. The quartet auditioned for local radio station WNAX, and the success of the audition's live broadcast netted them a contract for a regular radio program featuring the orchestra's music and commercials for hog tonic and other agricultural products.

The band was able to parlay its radio success with live performances and appearances throughout the Midwest, necessitating the purchase of a tour bus for the expanding entourage. While in Yankton, Welk met and courted Fern Renner, a nurse working in Yankton's Sacred Heart Hospital. The pair married in 1931 in Sioux City, Iowa. By the mid-1930s, Welk moved the orchestra's base of operations to Omaha, Nebraska.

Champagne Music

In 1938 the orchestra garnered major performance exposure for a concert at the St. Paul Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where, according to a legend perpetuated by Welk, the group's music earned the descriptive "Champagne Music" from a listener who pronounced that the orchestra's music was "effervescent, like champagne."From that time forward, the band was billed as The Champagne Music of Lawrence Welk. During the 1940s, Welk and his band performed as the house orchestra at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. After a successful decade in Chicago, Welk moved what he called his "musical family" to Southern California, where a 1951 late-night appearance on television station KTLA became the springboard for his later national fame.

Found Television and Chart Success

Response to his band's first televised performance in 1951 led to Welk's increasing popularity among southern Californians. In 1955 ABC debuted The Dodge Dancing Party, which was renamed The Plymouth Show Starring Lawrence Welk in 1958 and The Lawrence Welk Show in 1962. The show's mixture of instrumental music, songs performed by a variety of staff singers, and dance numbers was so successful that Welk's program was soon broadcast twice weekly.

Throughout the program's network run, Welk ignored contemporary trends in the music industry while assisting the launch of several careers, including surf guitarist Dick Dale, jazz musician Pete Fountain, country singer Lynn Anderson, and the Lennon Sisters singing act. While other variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show featured performances by Elvis Presley, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, the music selected for Welk's program relied heavily on traditional Tin Pan Alley and Big Band standards that endorsed Middle American values, patriotism, and morality. Such was his adherence to this approach that one of Welk's "Champagne Ladies," Alice Lon, reportedly was fired after displaying too much knee to the television viewing audience while singing a song perched atop a desk.

In fact, Welk was known as a very rigid taskmaster, requiring that the members of his musical ensemble rehearse constantly and follow what he perceived to be virtuous lives. He also abjured musical arrangements that he deemed "too fussy" or complicated favoring instead music that emphasized a song's melody more than its rhythm. "Our fans told us with cheers and applause and requests that they liked 'our' music, music with a heart, a beat, music you could remember and hum, that brought back memories." Welk also commented, "I'm not a creative kind of musical director in the sense that I come up with something entirely fresh and unusual. I think my usefulness lies in evaluating somebody else's ideas and adapting them."

The songs performed on his program were introduced in Welk's trademark accent and vocal mannerisms, which betrayed his inability to pronounce the letter "D" and his difficulty with certain English pronunciations. Several of his trademark phrases - "Wunnerful, Wunnerful" and "Ah, One-uh an-uh Two-uh" - became part of the national lexicon. Welk's program also served as an effective promotional device for the hundreds of albums his 45-piece orchestra recorded during the 1950s and 1960s. While most of these recordings were remakes of compositions from other writers, Welk scored a number-one hit in 1961 with a harpsichord instrumental titled "Calcutta" and another moderate hit with "Baby Elephant Walk."

Became Pioneer in Syndication

Welk's refusal to allow most rock 'n' roll and pop songs on his program and his insistence that his performers dress modestly and groom themselves according to Eisenhower-era standards resulted in Welk's program becoming a source for ridicule by many comics as the epitome of "square" conservatism. The truth, however, was that ratings for Welk's program remained consistently high. Despite this fact, the ABC network cancelled the program in 1971 in an effort to attract more youthful audiences, reasoning that more advertising revenue could be generated from a younger demographic.

Tremendously wealthy from real estate transactions and music publishing (he owned all the publishing for the songs of Jerome Kern), Welk considered retiring. Don Fedderson, Welk's producer, however, suggested that Welk continue to produce the program independently of ABC and offer it to stations to broadcast prior to their network prime-time schedule. Fedderson suggested offering the program free to any station desiring to broadcast it in exchange for reserving five minutes of national advertising that Welk's producer would solicit. The results were dramatic: When the Lawrence Welk Show debuted as a syndicated program in September 1971, it appeared on more than 200 stations, more than ABC's total number of affiliates at the time.

Welk continued to produce new programs for syndication until his semi-retirement in 1982. New programs edited from his 11 years of syndicated programs and 16 years of network television continued to be broadcast on Public Broadcasting stations since 1987. Following his death on March 17, 1992, in Santa Monica, California, from pneumonia, Welk's heirs opened the Lawrence Welk Theatre and Resort in Branson, Missouri, where many of the television program's stars performed.

Books

Knopper, Steve, editor, Music Hound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide to Martini Music and Easy Listening, Visible Ink Press, 1998.

Welk, Lawrence, with Bernice McGeehan, Ah-One, Ah-Two: Life with My Musical Family, G. K. Hall, 1975.

Welk, Lawrence, with Bernice McGeehan, Wunnerful, Wunnerful!, The Welk Group, 1971.

Periodicals

Forum (Fargo, North Dakota), May 16, 1999.

Online

AllMusic.com,http://www.allmusic.com/ (February 21, 2002).

The German American Corner,http://www.germanheritage.com/ (February 21, 2002).

"Lawrence Welk," Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Members,http://www.horatioalger.com/ (February 21, 2002).

"Lawrence Welk," Red Hot Jazz,http://www.redhotjazz.com/(February 21, 2002).

"Lawrence Welk: Post-Modernist," Jeffrey Zeldman Presents,http:www.zeldman.com/ (1995-2001).

Artist: Lawrence Welk
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Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Pop Artists

Similar Artists:

Fred Waring, Mantovani, Sir Jimmy Shand, Kay Kyser, Harry James, Les Brown, Ray Anthony, Moms & Dads, Paul Whiteman, Billy May, Nelson Riddle

Followers:

Oesch's die Dritten

Performed Songs By:

Jerry Browne, Carl Sigman, Cole Porter, Mitchell Parish, Johnny Mercer, Irwin Levine, Alan Jay Lerner, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Norman Gimbel, Duke Ellington, Hal David, Hank Cochran, George Cates, Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern, Andy Razaf, Jimmy Webb, Richard Rodgers, Irving Mills, Eddie Edwards, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, Henry Mancini, Myron Floren, John Hartford, George Gershwin

Formal Connection With:

Ted Auletta, Frank Scott
See Lawrence Welk Lyrics
  • Born: March 11, 1903, Strasburg, ND
  • Died: May 17, 1992, Santa Monica, CA
  • Active: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s
  • Genres: Easy Listening
  • Instrumental Pop, Polka, Big Band Instrument: Bandleader, Accordion
  • Representative Albums: "16 Most Requested Songs," "In Concert," "22 All Time Big Band Favorites"
  • Representative Songs: "Bubbles in the Wine," "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out t," "Ain't She Sweet"

Biography

It may or may not be true that Lawrence Welk is the most popular easy listening artist of all time, but it's difficult to think of anyone who is more prominently associated with the genre. Welk's long-running TV variety show was a huge success in its time, and remains an enduring favorite in reruns. And while Welk recorded prolifically, his true musical legacy was built through the doggedly innocuous, wholesome aesthetic of his show. He was an unlikely television star -- his thick German accent and on-camera stiffness would have been crippling liabilities for many other hosts. Yet Welk was beloved in spite of -- or, perhaps, because of -- those limitations, mainly because he knew his audience and paid close attention to what it wanted. In the process, he created a stable of familiar performers whose regular appearances were eagerly anticipated by his viewers. Demanding and particular, Welk put them through rigorous rehearsals, and aggressively enforced the inoffensive, nonthreatening tone that made the show so palatable for viewers of all ages. For people who considered themselves remotely hip, that tone made Welk's name synonymous with sanitized entertainment, and an easy target for derision. He and his acts were often dismissed as hopelessly square, by turns fluffy or sentimental, and reflecting an idealized purity that didn't really exist anywhere. He also drew criticism for the extreme scarcity of minority performers on the show, seemingly another symptom of its kowtowing to white-bread Middle America. Yet that essential conservatism helped give The Lawrence Welk Show an amazingly lasting appeal; after it lost its network slot, it spent more than a decade in syndication with greater success than ever, and found new life when its reruns became the chief source of revenue for many public television stations across the country. Welk was born on March 11, 1903, in the small, heavily German town of Strasburg, ND. His parents had fled the unrest in Alsace-Lorraine, the disputed border region between Germany and France, and settled on a small farm on the outskirts of town. One of eight children, Welk dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work on the farm, and spoke almost nothing but German up until his teen years. He learned to play polka music on his father's accordion, and at age 13, he began performing professionally at local dances and social events. Four years later, he convinced his father to buy him his own accordion; in exchange, he promised to work on the farm until he was 21, and to give all his musical earnings to the family up to that point. Upon turning 21, Welk took up music full-time, playing in various polka and vaudeville-style bands around the area. He eventually formed his own quartet, the Lawrence Welk Novelty Orchestra, and in 1927 decided to head south to New Orleans in search of work. On the way, the group stopped in Yankton, SD, and was offered a one-week deal to perform on local radio; they were such a success that they were signed to a permanent contract. Welk's band stayed headquartered in Yankton for the next ten years, playing both locally and all over the Midwest; they went through several name changes, including the Hotsy Totsy Boys, the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra, and the Biggest Little Band in America. In 1937, Welk moved the group to Omaha, and it soon grew into a ten-piece outfit, playing swinging dance music in the so-called "sweet band" style. A 1938 gig at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh prompted one fan to compare Welk's light, bubbly music to champagne, and Welk adopted the tag from then on, describing his sound as "champagne music." In 1940, at the height of the big-band era, Welk secured a booking for his group at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago; it proved such a success that Welk moved his family to Chicago and wound up with a ten-year residency there. The waning popularity of big bands subsequently forced Welk to go back on tour to make ends meet. In 1951, he made a successful appearance on a late-night TV show in Los Angeles. The idea of working in television captured his imagination, and led him to move to L.A. the following year. The Lawrence Welk Show made its national debut in 1955 as a midseason replacement on ABC. Over the next few years, it amassed enough of a following to become one of the network's most popular shows, making catch phrases out of Welk's oft-repeated "wunnerful, wunnerful" and "ah-one and-a two." Its trademark visual style was built around low-budget cardboard props, bright pastel colors, and bubble-blowing machines. Welk played the roles of host and bandleader, populating his play list with pleasant arrangements of well-established standards and pop hits. The emphasis was always on songs his audience would already recognize, though he and musical director George Cates did showcase comic novelty songs and the polka music Welk had grown up with as well. Welk built up a solid base of recurring featured performers, the best known of which included accordionist/assistant conductor Myron Floren, ragtime pianist Jo Ann Castle, singing group the Lennon Sisters, Dixieland clarinetist Pete Fountain, Irish-style singer Joe Feeney, tap dancer Arthur Duncan (the show's lone African-American regular), dancer and former Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess (who went through a succession of female dance partners), and a featured female singer dubbed the Champagne Lady. Welk established his reputation as a hard-nosed disciplinarian early on. He never allowed comedians to appear on the show, for fear of an off-color joke slipping through, and he refused alcohol and cigarette products as sponsors. In 1959, he fired the first Champagne Lady, Alice Lon, for displaying too much leg during a telecast. Irate viewers wrote in to protest the firing, and Welk tried to hire her back, but she would have none of it; her replacement was Norma Zimmer, who remained with the show for quite some time. Burgess' female dance partners were subject to the same kinds of whims, and Fountain -- arguably the most talented regular -- reportedly left over what Welk felt was an inappropriately jazzed-up Christmas song. More problematic for some modern-day viewers might be the show's watered-down handling of ethnicity; while not really offensive for its time, some of the ethnic theme shows would be considered embarrassing by today's standards, and dancer Duncan's mannerisms came in for criticism as the civil rights era dawned. Meanwhile, Welk had been managing a productive career as a recording artist. He had released records in his early days, but naturally he hit a whole new plateau once he had the power of television behind him. Between 1956 and 1963, 19 of Welk's LPs reached the Top 20, and ten of those made the Top Ten. Welk achieved his greatest popularity on record with the Dot label during the early '60s, spearheaded by the smash instrumental hit "Calcutta," which became his only number one -- and, for that matter, Top Ten -- single in 1961. The accompanying LP of the same name also reached number one, and five more albums -- Last Date, Yellow Bird, Moon River, Young World, and Baby Elephant Walk and Theme From the Brothers Grimm -- climbed into the Top Ten over the next two years. Although Welk never equaled that run of success, he continued to chart albums on a regular basis up through 1973. In 1971, ABC canceled The Lawrence Welk Show, feeling that its target audience was growing too old to appeal to advertisers. Welk quickly secured a syndication deal that placed his show on over 200 stations around the country, and kept right on producing it up through 1982. As the '70s wore on, many of the old performers retired or moved on, to be replaced by similar acts that essentially followed the show's long-established blueprint. But even if there were fewer individual standouts, the show still filled an audience niche that otherwise went largely ignored. Following his retirement in 1982, Welk settled in Santa Monica, CA, and soon established a combination resort/retirement community, the Lawrence Welk Country Club Village, in Escondido. He also acquired a vast music publishing catalog, as well as other real estate holdings. Starting in 1987, some public television stations began airing reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, to the delight of an elderly viewing base. As the '90s wore on, public TV came to rely more and more on The Lawrence Welk Show as a staple moneymaker during pledge drives, thus ensuring its continued availability and popularity well after Welk's passing: he died of pneumonia on May 17, 1992. The band he once led continued to perform at the Champagne Music Theater in Branson, MO. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide
Actor: Lawrence Welk
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  • Born: Mar 11, 1903 in Strasburg, North Dakota
  • Died: May 17, 1992
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '70s-'80s
  • Major Genres: Music

Biography

For 26 years, Lawrence Welk and his orchestra's light and bubbly renditions of popular and standard songs could be heard every week on network television. Welk's show was aimed squarely at older middle-American sensibilities and was filled with a mixture of squeaky-clean, fresh-faced young singers and dancers, smiling musicians in polyester suits and older, more established performers such as the Lennon Sisters.

Welk was born one of eight children in a homestead near Strasbourg, ND. While still in grade school, a lengthy illness permanently curtailed his formal education, but provided him with the opportunity to pursue his interest in music. As a young man, Welk played accordion at local gatherings. He eventually founded a small band, which he called the Biggest Little Band in America. The band gained attention in 1935 when they began performing on a South Dakota radio station. Listeners compared Welk's music to sipping champagne and that is how it came to be known as "Champagne music." Welk and his Champagne Music Makers toured the country, playing at some of the top hotels and resorts until the early '50s when they began appearing on KTLA television in Los Angeles. The show continued to be produced through the mid-'70s. In the '90s, shows were repackaged and shown as nostalgic retrospectives on public television and other sources. In addition to contributing his music, Welk, with his peculiar and thick Germanic accent (his parents hailed from Alsace-Lorraine), also contributed to the American lexicon with his distinctive "wunnerful, wunnerful." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Lawrence Welk
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Lawrence Welk

Lawrence Welk during a taping of "The Lawrence Welk Show"
Born March 11, 1903(1903-03-11)
Strasburg, North Dakota
Died May 17, 1992 (aged 89)
Santa Monica, California
Occupation Musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario
Spouse(s) Fern Renner (August 26, 1903 - February 13, 2002)
Children Shirley, Donna and Lawrence, Jr ("Larry")
Website
Welk Musical Family

Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, hosting The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large number of radio, television, and live-performance fans as "champagne music".

Contents

Early years

Welk was born in the German speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. He was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana Welk, ethnic Germans who emigrated to America in 1892 from Odessa, Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire.[1]

The family lived on a homestead, which today is a tourist attraction. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year under an upturned wagon covered in sod.[citation needed]

Lawrence Welk decided on a career in music, and convinced his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400.[2] He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. Any money he made elsewhere during that time, doing farmwork or performing, would go to his family.

A common misconception is that Welk didn't learn English until he was 21. In fact, he began learning English as soon as he started school. The part of North Dakota where he lived had been settled largely by Germans from Russia; even his teachers spoke English as a second language. Welk thus acquired his trademark accent, a combination of the Russian and German accents. He took diction lessons in the 1950s and could speak almost accent-free, but he realized his public expected to hear him to say: "A-one, an-a-two". When asked about his ancestry, he would always reply "Alsace-Lorraine, Germany," from where his forebears had emigrated to Russia.

Early career

Having fulfilled his promise to his father, Welk left the family farm on his 21st birthday to pursue a career in music. During the 1920s, he performed with the Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, and George T. Kelly bands, before starting his own orchestra. He led big bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra.[3] His band was also the station band for popular radio station WNAX, in Yankton, South Dakota. In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[4]

Although many jazz musicians scorn Welk, he did one notable recording in that style in November 1928 for Indiana based Gennett Records. "Spiked Beer" featured Welk and his Novelty Orchestra.

During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band, specializing in dance tunes and "sweet" music. Initially, the band traveled around the country by car. Too poor to rent rooms, they usually slept and changed clothes in these cars. The term "Champagne Music" was derived from an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, when a dancer referred to his band's sound as "light and bubbly as champagne." The hotel also lays claim to the original "bubble machine", a prop left over from a 1920s movie premiere. The band performed across the country, but particularly in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band began a 10-year stint at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, regularly drawing crowds of nearly 7,000.

His orchestra also performed frequently at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s. In 1944 and 1945, Welk led his orchestra in many motion picture "Soundies", considered to be the early pioneers of music videos,[citation needed] and the band had its own syndicated radio program, sponsored by "The Champagne of Bottle Beer" Miller High Life.

The Lawrence Welk Show

Main article: The Lawrence Welk Show

In 1951, Welk settled in Los Angeles. That same year, he began producing The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA in Los Angeles where it was broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach. After becoming a local hit, the show was picked up by ABC in Spring 1955.

During its first year on the air, the Welk hour instituted several regular features. To make Welk's "Champagne Music" tagline visual, the production crew engineered a "bubble machine" that spouted streams of large soap bubbles across the bandstand. Whenever the orchestra played a polka or waltz, Welk himself would dance with the band's female vocalist, the "Champagne Lady". His first Champagne Lady was Jayne Walton Rosen (real name: Dorothy Jayne Flanagan). Jayne left Welk's show after her marriage and later pregnancy. After Welk and his band went on television, she appeared as a guest on the show, where she sang Latin American songs and favorites that were popular when she was traveling with the Welk band. Novelty numbers would usually be sung by Rocky Rockwell. Welk also reserved one number for himself, where he soloed on his accordion.

Welk's television program had a policy of playing well-known songs from previous years, so that the target audience would hear only numbers with which they were familiar. Rarely, in the TV show's early days, the band would play tunes from the current charts, but strictly as novelty numbers. Two examples occurred during the same broadcast, on December 8, 1956: "Nuttin' for Christmas" became a vehicle for Rocky Rockwell, dressed in a child's outfit; and Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" was sung by violinist Bob Lido, wearing fake Presley-style sideburns).

Welk never lost his affection for the hot jazz he had played in the 1920s, and when a Dixieland tune was scheduled, he enthusiastically led the band.

The type of music on The Lawrence Welk Show was almost always conservative, concentrating on popular music standards, polkas, and novelty songs, delivered in a smooth, calming, good-humored easy listening style and "family-oriented" manner. Although described by one critic as "the squarest music this side of Euclid",[cite this quote] this strategy proved commercially successful, and the show remained on the air for 31 years.

Much of the show's appeal was Welk himself. His unusual accent appealed to the audience. While Welk's English was passable, he never did grasp the English "idiom" completely, and was thus famous for his "Welk-isms," such as "George, I want to see you when you have a minute, right now", and "Now for my accordion solo, Myron, will you join me?" His TV show was recorded as if it were a live performance, and was sometimes quite free-wheeling. Another famous "Welk-ism" was his trademark count-off, "A one and a two..." which was immortalized on his California automobile license plate that read "A1ANA2". This plate is visible on the front of a Model A Ford in one of the shows from 1980.

He often took women from the audience for a turn around the dance floor. During one show, Welk brought a cameraman out to dance with one of the women and took over the camera himself.

Welk's musicians were always top quality, including accordionist Myron Floren, concert violinist Dick Kessner, guitarist Buddy Merrill, and New Orleans Dixieland clarinetist Pete Fountain. Though Welk was occasionally rumored to be very tight with a dollar, he paid his regular band members top scale - a very good living for a working musician. Long tenure was very common among the regulars. For example, Floren was the band's assistant conductor throughout the show's run. He was noted for spotlighting individual members of his band and show. His band was well-disciplined and had excellent arrangements in all styles.[citation needed] One notable showcase was his album with the noted jazz saxophonist Johnny Hodges.

Welk had a number of instrumental hits, including a cover of the song "Yellow Bird". His highest charting record was his recording of "Calcutta". Welk himself was indifferent to the tune, but his musical director, George Cates, said that if Welk did not wish to record the song, he (Cates) would. Welk replied, "Well, if it's good enough for you, George, I guess it's good enough for me."[cite this quote] Despite the emergence of rock and roll, "Calcutta" reached number 1 on the U.S. pop charts in 1961, and was recorded in only one take.[citation needed] The tune knocked the Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" out of the #1 position, and kept the Miracles' "Shop Around" from becoming the group's first #1 hit, holding the record at #2.

Welk's insistence on wholesome entertainment led him to be a somewhat stern taskmaster at times. For example, he fired Alice Lon, at the time the show's "Champagne Lady", because he believed she was showing too much leg.[5] Welk told the audience that he would not tolerate such "cheesecake" performances on his show; he later tried unsuccessfully to rehire the singer after fan mail indicated overwhelmingly that viewers disagreed with her dismissal. He then had a series of short-term "Champagne Ladies" before Norma Zimmer filled that spot on a permanent basis. Highly involved with his stars' personal lives, he often arbitrated their marriage disputes.[5]

The Lawrence Welk Show embraced changes on the musical scene over the years. The show featured fresh music alongside the classics for as long as it existed, even music originally not intended for the big band sound. During the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, the show incorporated material by such contemporary sources as The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, The Everly Brothers and Paul Williams, albeit in Welk's signature "Champagne" style. Originally produced in black and white, the show was recorded on videotape starting in 1957, and it switched to color for the fall 1965 season. In time, it featured synthesized music and, toward the end of its run, early chroma key technology added a new dimension to the story settings sometimes used for the musical numbers. Welk referred to his blue screen effect in one episode as "the magic of television".[citation needed]

During its network run, The Lawrence Welk Show aired on ABC on Saturday nights at 8 p.m. (Eastern Time). In fact, Welk headlined two weekly prime time shows on ABC for three years. From 1956 to 1958, he hosted a show titled Top Tunes and New Talent, which aired on Monday nights. The series moved to Wednesdays in Fall 1958 and was renamed The Plymouth Show, which expired in May, 1959. During that time, the Saturday show was also known as The Dodge Dancing Party. ABC cancelled the show in the spring of 1971, citing an aging audience. Welk graciously thanked ABC and the sponsors at the end of the last network show. The Lawrence Welk Show continued on as a first-run syndicated show on 250 stations across the country until the final original show was produced in 1982.

Personal life

Lawrence Welk at ground breaking for the new Union Bank in Santa Monica, California, 1960

Welk was married for 61 years, until his death, to Fern Renner, with whom he had three children. One of his sons, Lawrence Welk, Jr., married fellow Lawrence Welk Show performer Tanya Falan; they later divorced. Welk had many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One of them, grandson Lawrence Welk III, who usually goes by "Larry Welk", is a reporter and helicopter traffic pilot for KCAL-TV and KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. One of his great-grandchildren, Nate Fredricks, reportedly enjoys the same love for music as his great grandfather did and plays guitar in a band.

Known as an excellent businessman, Welk had investments in real estate and music publishing. Welk was the general partner in a commercial real estate development located at 100 Wilshire Blvd in Santa Monica, California. The 21-story tall white tower is the tallest building in Santa Monica, and is located on the bluffs overlooking Santa Monica Bay. It was informally named "The Lawrence Welk Champagne Tower".

Welk enjoyed playing golf, which he first took up in the late 1950s, and was often a regular at many celebrity pro-ams such as the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

Welk became a minister in the Universal Life Church.[6] He was also a confidant of southern gospel singer Jimmie Davis, a Baptist who was twice elected governor of Louisiana.

Later years

After retiring from his show and from the road in 1982, Welk continued to air reruns of his shows which were repackaged first for syndication and starting in 1986 for public television. He also starred in and produced a pair of Christmas specials in 1984 and 1985.

Welk died from pneumonia in Santa Monica, California in 1992 at age 89 and was buried in Culver City's Holy Cross Cemetery.

Honors

In 1961, he was inducted as a charter member of the Rough Rider Award from his native North Dakota.

He served as the Grand Marshal for the Rose Bowl's Tournament of Roses parade in 1972.

In 1994, he was inducted into the International Polka Music Hall Of Fame.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6613-1/2 Hollywood Blvd.

In 2007, he became a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana.

Legacy

Welk's band continues to appear in a dedicated theater in Branson, Missouri. In addition, the television show has been repackaged for broadcast on PBS stations, with updates from show performers appearing as wraparounds where commercial breaks were during the original shows. The repackaged shows are broadcast at roughly the same Saturday-night time slot as the original ABC shows, and special longer Welk show rebroadcasts are often shown during individual stations' fund-raising periods. These repackaged shows are produced by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority.[7]

A resort community, developed by Welk and promoted heavily by him on the show, is named for him. Formerly known as "Lawrence Welk Village," the Welk Resort and Champagne Village are just off Interstate 15 north of Escondido, California, about 55 miles (89 km) northeast of San Diego. Lawrence Welk Village was where Welk actually lived in a rather affluent "cottage". The resort is open to the public and contains two golf courses, dozens of upper class timeshares, and a theater containing a museum of Welk's life. The Welk Resort Theatre performs live Broadway musicals year round.

His organization, The Welk Group, consists of his resort communities in Branson and Escondido; Welk Syndication which broadcasts the show on public television and the Welk Music Group, which operates record labels Sugar Hill, Vanguard and Ranwood. From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, the Welk Group was known as "Teleklew" in which tele stood for television and klew was Welk spelled backwards.

The "Live Lawrence Welk Show" makes annual concert tours across the United States and Canada featuring stars from the television series, such as Ralna English, Mary Lou Metzger, Jack Imel, Gail Farrell, Anacani and Big Tiny Little.

Welk's variety show has been parodied twice on Saturday Night Live. Each time, he has been portrayed by Fred Armisen.

See also

Books

All books written with Bernice McGeehan and published by Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), except where indicated:

References

  1. ^ US Cnsus, 1910, Emmons Co., North Dakota
  2. ^ www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu
  3. ^ "Lawrence Welk's Novelty Orchestra". http://www.redhotjazz.com/welk.html. Retrieved 2009-04-06. 
  4. ^ "MacPhail History". http://www.macphail.org/history.html. Retrieved 2009-04-06. 
  5. ^ a b "Maestro of bubbly is gone: Lawrence Welk dies at age 89," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 19, 1992, p. A1.
  6. ^ "Welcome: Universal Life Church Monastery". http://www.themonastery.org/?destination=fellowshipMinisters. Retrieved 2009-04-06. 
  7. ^ John Leland. "Old Fans Still Bubble Along to Lawrence Welk," The New York Times, September 11, 2004. Accessed 12-23-2007.

External links


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From Today's Highlights
March 11, 2006

I just had an idea that went right over my head.
- Lawrence Welk

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