Welk Lawrence

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Welk Lawrence

Welk Lawrence (LeRoy) American orchestra leader and accordionist; b. near Strasburg, N.Dak., March 11, 1903; d. Santa Monica, Calif., May 17, 1992. When big band music was at its height in the 1930s and 1940s, Welk led a successful territory band in the Midwest. After the Swing Era waned in the late 1940s, Welk prospered, launching a local television show in Los Angeles that joined a national network in the mid-1950s and continued to broadcast into the 1980s, bringing with it substantial recording success. Welk’s light, sweet dance style was appropriately dubbed “champagne music/’ and his ingratiating manner as a master of ceremonies endeared him to millions of faithful viewers long after his contemporaries had disappeared.

Welk’s parents, Ludwig and Christina Schwahn Welk, were natives of Alsace-Lorraine who immigrated to the U.S. in 1892, settling on a farm in N.Dak. Due to the family’s European background, their isolation on the farm, and Welk’s brief schooling, he did not learn to speak English until he was an adult and always spoke with a German accent. Welk’s father played the accordion, and Welk took to the instrument as a child, turning to it more seriously at age 11 while recovering from appendicitis. When he was 17 his father bought him an expensive accordion on the understanding that he would work on the farm for four years while turning over his earnings as a musician to the family; he kept the bargain and left home on his 21st birthday.

Welk formed his first band in the summer of 1925. In 1927 he moved to Yankton, S.Dak., where the four-piece Welk’s Novelty Orch. appeared on local radio station WNAX and began to build a following. By 1930 he had signed with a national booking agency and toured in many parts of the country. He married nursing student Fern Renner on April 19, 1931; they had three children.

Welk’s orchestra remained a moderately successful territory band until 1937, when he began to try to reach a larger audience. He gained residencies at several major hotels, starting with the St. Paul in St. Paul, Minn. At the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, where he opened on New Year’s Eve, 1938, and had a national radio hookup, he adopted the band name Lawrence Welk and His Champagne Music to describe his light, danceable sound. He also acquired a theme song, “Bubbles in the Wine” (music by Welk, lyrics by Frank Loesser).

Welk had been recording for many years, starting when he paid for his own session with Gennett in the 1920s and cut the single “Spiked Beer”/“Shanghai Honeymoon.” Now signed to Vocalion, he reached the hit parade for the first time in February 1939 with “Annabelle,” returning in April with “The Moon Is a Silver Dollar” (music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Mitchell Parish).

In 1940, Welk moved his base of operations to Chicago and took up a residency at the Trianon ballroom that lasted ten years. He scored his next Top Ten hit in May 1944 with “Don’t Sweetheart Me” (music by Cliff Friend, lyrics by Charles Tobias). In 1945 he teamed with Red Foley for “Shame on You” (music and lyrics by Spade Cooley)/“At Mail Call Today” (music and lyrics by Gene Autry and Fred Rose), which topped the country charts in November.

Welk launched his own weekly radio show on the ABC network on June 1, 1949; it ran for two years. Leaving the Trianon in 1950, he toured the West Coast, debuting at the Aragon ballroom in Santa Monica and on a local television station on May 2, 1951. He scored another Top Ten hit with “Oh, Happy Day” (music and lyrics by Don Howard Koplow and Nancy Binns Reed) in February 1953.

The Lawrence Welk Show debuted nationally on the ABC television network on July 2, 1955. Although the Swing Era was a memory and rock ’n’ roll was coming to the fore, Welk, with the charm of his heavily accented introductions and pleasant music, became vastly successful. Lawrence Welk and His Sparkling Strings, the first of 42 chart albums, became a Top Ten hit in 1956, and before the year was out Welk had returned to the Top Ten with the LPs Bubbles in the Wine, Say It with Music, and Merry Christmas. He also had a second show on ABC, Lawrence Welk’s Top Tunes and New Talent for three years starting in October 1956.

Welk’s records stopped charting after 1957, and he switched record labels, to Dot Records, by 1960, with dramatic results. Last Date returned him to the Top Ten of the LP charts by early 1961, and “Calcutta” (music by Heino Gase) became his biggest hit single ever, topping the charts in February 1961 and going gold, as did the accompanying album, Calcutta! The LP earned a 1961 Grammy nomination for Best Performance by an Orchestra, for Dancing. Welk’s four subsequent LPs, Yellow Bird (1961), Moon River, Young World, and Baby Elephant Walk and Theme from The Brothers Grimm (all 1962) also reached the Top Ten, and his albums continued to chart regularly up to 1973, with 1966’s Winchester Cathedral also going gold.

Although Welk’s program was never among the most popular on television (it was rated among the top 25 shows only during the years 1965-68, never ranking higher than 12th), it attracted a steady audience, and when ABC canceled the show after 16 years in 1971, it did so more because of demographics than because of any fall-off in viewership. Welk was able to continue on television by organizing his own syndicated network; in fact, the show ran on more stations than before, and it went on another 11 years, finally concluding in 1982, although reruns still appear. Welk retired from performing after a concert in San Francisco in June 1982. He maintained his business interests, including the Welk Group of record labels, which acquired the classical/folk label Vanguard in 1986. Welk died of pneumonia at the age of 89 in 1992.

Writings

(all written with B. McGeehan): Wunnerful, Wunnerful! The Autobiography of L. W.(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971); Ah-One, Ah- Two! Life with My Musical Family (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974); My America, Your America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976); L W.’s Musical Family Album (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977); This I Believe (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979); You’re Never Too Young (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1981).