The show was on the air until 1982, you realize. It was SO anachronistic when I was growing up.
I was delighted to watch a bit of it a few months ago at my mom’s senior citizen facility. The Lawrence Welk Show began on radio in 1949 and switched to television in 1951. It’s music for cotillions, where no one breaks a sweat when they dance. In the 30s, as he gained a following in the mid-west (especially Chicago), his sound was dubbed “Champagne Music” (an idea reinforced by his use of a bubble machine on his tv show).
This would be the aesthetic he would cleave to until his dying day. There can be no more eye-opening illustration of the fact that “big band” and “swing” are not synonymous than Welk’s orchestra, which played light, pretty, tuneful, and very WHITE dance music with very little (if any) jazz to it. Upon reaching majority (the mid 1920s) he formed a local big band. Raised on a farm, he persuaded his father to buy him a mail order accordion, which he spent his entire youth paying off. Welk didn’t learn English until he went to school. He was raised in a pocket of German immigrants in a remote area of North Dakota, a place so rural and isolated there was no need for anyone to learn English. The answer proves to be quite interesting. He was supposedly American, but somehow he had that accent.
For example, what was that accent (we wondered)? “Wunnerful, wunnerful!”, “senk you, senk you,” “An’ now the luffly Lennon Sisterss!” and (as he counted off a number) “…a-one, an’ a two!”. (I’ve since come to better appreciate Sinatra and Dean Martin).īut like I say, Welk, was the pinnacle, a well-spring of mystery. When I was a kid, Welk was the gold standard for “Old People Music We Just Didn’t Understand.” It was a long list that also included the likes of Liberace, Doc Severinsen, Dinah Shore, Robert Goulet, Kate Smith , and all of those embarrassing, nauseating guys from the Rat Pack. Today is the natal day of that unfathomable 20th century phenomenon known as Lawrence Welk (1903-1992).
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