American orchestra leader Lawrence Welk was born one hundred twenty-one years ago, on March 11, 1903, the son of German immigrants from Odessa, in what is now Ukraine. Welk’s Wikipedia page tells the story of the family’s first winter, living in an overturned wagon buried in earth, and of young Lawrence’s leaving school in the fourth grade to help on the family’s small farm. (but, But, BUT!! I hear you shout. Young people have never had it so hard as does the current generation!! Amirite?)
Welk made a deal with his father, to the effect that if Ludwig Welk would buy him an accordion, he–Lawrence–would work on the family farm until he was 21, and that any money he made from his musical performances would, before that milestone, go to the family. He kept his word.
He then hit the road, and for the next fifteen or so years, played with various bands and orchestras, before forming his own orchestra and enjoying a successful run on a North Dakota radio station.
His music might, today, be considered “elevator music,” with a lightness of touch that was quite different from some of the more raw forms of jazz from contemporary artists; in fact, the phrase most closely associated with Welk was coined after a performance at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh (it’s now owned by a conglomerate, but I’ve been there many times over the past fifty years. Lovely, elegant, place), when one of his dancers referred to his music as “light and bubbly as champagne.” Welk himself said, of the “champagne music” moniker,
We still play music with the champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. We place the stress on melody; the chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. We play with a steady beat so dancers can follow it–Bob Thomas, Ellensburg Daily Record
Welk’s success as an orchestra leader continued to grow throughout the thirties, forties and fifties, and in 1953 he was engaged to finalize an accordion course at the US School of Music in New York City. It’s described in Wikipedia as “the oldest home study music school chartered by the Board of Regents in New York State with a total worldwide enrollment of over one million students.” This reminded me (upcoming personal story) of Hemy’s Royal Modern Tutor for the Pianoforte, which must have been something similar for the piano, starting with “five finger exercises,” and progressing from there. I struggled at home with it for several years myself. But–by gum–by the end of my studies, I could bang out Rule, Britannia (IIRC, it was on the last page) with the best of them!)
By then, Welk had been engaged to host The Lawrence Welk Show on a Los Angeles TV station. A few years later, the program was picked up by NBC, where it ran with original programming until 1971, and then in syndication for several more years.
My family discovered the show shortly after we arrived in the States in October of 1963. I was a little over nine years old, and we’d never owned a television set, but we picked up a thirteen inch black-and-white one not long after we got here. I know we must have obtained it before November 22, 1963, because I remember being deeply aggrieved that a local celebrity, Bozo the Clown, lost out his own show to Walter Cronkite, the afternoon that JFK was assassinated.
Mum loved Lawrence Welk, and we tuned in every week. (She wasn’t bereft of a bit of cynicism at all the schlock that went along with his persona, nor at that of his value as “old lady bait”; in much the same way as she always watched Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve program, while never referring to him as anything other than “Guy Lumbago.”)
And–my goodness–what schlock it was, all the way from the opening “champagne” bubbles, to the performers, to Welk’s regular “wunnerful, wunnerful,” (he didn’t learn to speak English until his early twenties, and retained a lifelong strong accent) after each performance.
It was a different time. And (in spite of what you often hear), most of it was a kinder, gentler time. I sometimes wish we could go back and fix just the parts that were broken, and keep the rest.
From March 11, 1983:
Lawrence Welk died of pneumonia at the age of 89 on May 17, 1992. He was survived by his wife of sixty-one years, three children, and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Thanks for the memories. (To muddle things a bit.)
Rest in peace.
