| LAWRENCE
WELK (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Lawrence Welk
(March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was a musician, accordion player,
bandleader, and television impresario, hosting “The Lawrence Welk
Show” from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large
number of radio, television, and live-performance fans as “champagne
music.” He is a 1961 inductee of North Dakota’s Roughrider Award.
Lawrence was born in Strasburg, North Dakota, as one of nine
children to Catholic, German-speaking immigrants from the French
portion of Alsace-Lorraine, via Odessa, Ukraine.
The family lived on a homestead outside of town, which today still
stands as a tourist attraction. The first year they lived there,
they spent the cold South Dakota winter underneath an upturned wagon
covered in sod.[citation needed] Never intent on being a farmer,
Welk became interested in a career in music, convincing his father
to purchase a mail-order accordion for $400. He made a promise to
his father that he would continue to work on the farm until he
turned twenty-one; in exchange, he would work on the farm and any
money he made working elsewhere, whether doing formwork or putting
on a show, would go to his family.
Welk didn’t learn English until he was 21 because he always spoke
German at home. To the day he died, he spoke with a noticeable
German accent. When he was asked about his ancestry, he replied
always with “Alsace-Lorraine, Germany”; this is explained in his
autobiography, entitled “Wunnerful, Wunnerful!”
On his twenty-first birthday, Welk, having fulfilled his promise to
his father, left the family farm to pursue a career in music. During
the 1920s, he first performed with the Lincoln Boulds and George T.
Kelly bands, before starting his own orchestra. He led big band
engagements in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. These bands
included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum
Orchestra.[citation needed] 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.
During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band, specializing in
dance tunes and “sweet” music. 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 band performed in many places across the country,
particularly in the Chicago area. In the early 1940s, the band began
a regular 10-year stint at the Aragon 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. From 1944 to 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 Miller High Life
Beer.
In 1951, Welk settled in Los Angeles, California. 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 being a local hit, the show was picked up by ABC in the spring
of 1955. Welk’s television program had a policy to play well-known
songs and tunes from previous years, so that the target audience
would only hear numbers that they were already familiar with. Very
occasionally, in the TV show’s early days, the band would play a
tune from the current charts, but strictly as a novelty number
(“Nuttin’ for Christmas” became a vehicle for comic singer Rocky
Rockwell, dressed in a child’s outfit; Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be
Cruel” was sung by violinist Bob Lido, wearing fake Elvis Presley
sideburns).
Welk never lost his affection for the hot jazz he’d played in the
1920s, and when a Dixieland tune was scheduled, he would
enthusiastically lead the band.
The type of music on “The Lawrence Welk Show” was almost always
conservative, concentrating mostly 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,” this strategy proved commercially
successful, and helped it stay on the air for 28 years.
Much of the show’s appeal was Welk himself. His unusual accent
appealed to the audience. (On one 1955 show, he mentioned Danny
Thomas’s series, “Mek Room fur Deddy.”) 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.” His TV show was recorded as if
it was a live performance, and was sometimes quite freewheeling.
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 ladies from the audience for a turn around the dance
floor. During one show, Welk brought a cameraman out to dance with
one of the ladies and took over the camera himself.
Welk’s musicians were always top quality, including accordionist
Myron Floren 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 Welk’s
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.”
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.
However, Walk’s insistence on wholesome entertainment led him to be
a somewhat stern taskmaster at times. For example, he fired Alice
Lon, the original “Champagne Lady,” on the air after she crossed her
legs on a desk. Welk told the audience that he
would not tolerate such “cheesecake” performances on his show. He
often arbitrated marriage disputes for his stars.
“The Lawrence Welk Show” embraced changes on the musical scene over
the years. The show continued to feature 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, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, The Everly
Brothers and Paul Williams, albeit in Welk’s signature “Champagne”
style. The show, which was originally produced in black and white,
was recorded on videotape starting in 1957, and it switched to color
for the fall TV season that started in September of 1965. In time,
it would feature synthesized music and, toward the end of its run,
early chroma key technology would add a new dimension to the story
settings sometimes used for the musical numbers. He referred to his
blue screen effect in one episode as “the magic of television.”
During its network run, “The Lawrence Welk Show” aired on ABC on
Saturday nights at 8 p.m. (Eastern Time). In fact, Lawrence
headlined two weekly prime time shows on ABC for three years. From
1956 to 1958, he hosted a show entitled Top Tunes and New Talent,
which aired on Monday nights. The series moved to Wednesdays in the
fall of 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. However, it continued on as a syndicated
show on 250 stations across the country (including many ABC
affiliates, but at an earlier time), until the final original show
was produced in 1982.
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.,
ended up marrying fellow “Lawrence Welk Show” performer Tanya Falan
(they later divorced). Welk left 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.
Known as an excellent businessman, the maestro, thanks to wise
investments in real estate and music publishing, was the second
wealthiest entertainer in Hollywood, the wealthiest being Bob Hope.
Today (2007) as one travels from Victorville to San Diego on I-15
one passes by many properties that Welk either owned at one time or
helped develop.
He 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.
After retiring his show and from the road in 1982, the maestro
continued to air reruns of his shows, which were repackaged first
for syndication and starting in 1986 for public television. Welk
also starred and produced a pair of Christmas specials in 1984 and
1985.
He died from pneumonia in Santa Monica, California in 1992 at age 89
and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
His 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 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.
A resort community, developed by the maestro and promoted heavily by
him on the show, is still named for Welk. “Lawrence Welk Village” is
just off Interstate 15 north of Escondido, California, about 55
miles northeast of San Diego. Lawrence Welk Village is where Welk
actually lived in a rather affluent “cottage”. There are many other
homes like this in this community in which notables such as John
Wayne lived or came to stay to get away from San Diego or Los
Angeles, as well as folks from his show who lived there, not to
mention people in the Hollywood area who also owned or have owned
property there. The Village has strict security; in addition, the
Lawrence Welk Museum resides on a public access street also named
after him, Lawrence Welk Drive.
His organization, The Welk Group, consists of his resort communities
in Branson and Escondido; Welk Syndication, which is responsible for
broadcasting 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 the actual stars from the
television series such as Ralna English, Mary Lou Metzger, Jack Imel,
Gail Farrell, Anacani and Big Tiny Little.
The Welk family homestead in Strasburg is now a popular tourist
attraction in North Dakota |
