Lawrence Welk is in re-runs on PBS. It’s on right now. I’m trying.
I hated that show as a kid and, it seems, I hate it now.
I could, at least, Sing Along With Mitch. Usually.
Now I gotta go turn on some ZZ Top to purge my poor old soul. 
Peace,
mangeorge, a sharp dressed man.
The Bubbles
They do nothing!
LW always had top-notch musicians. Unfortunately, their talent was usually wasted accompanying kitschy singers and dancers with poor arrangements.
Lawrence Welk presents Planet Rock
(I kid… I kid because I love)
I kinda like this modern spiritual.
At the time, I looked at the dancers and musicians and saw college kids with the squarest hair and clothes imaginable. Didn’t they know there was a revolution going on? Long hair, groovy clothes, rock n roll music, dope? Looking back, though, they were attractive kids making a living at their art, on television, and probably got all the Free Love they could handle when the cameras weren’t rolling. They knew what they were doing.
Yup, pure dreck. Hated it then, hate it now, a learning to hate PBS for providing airtime for such crap.
This is how clueless the guy was: we went to see Benny Golson (old time jazz sax musician) a couple of weeks ago. He played a number called “Take The ‘A’ Train”, which is a very well-known jazz piece by Billy Strahorn, who Golson knew, and he told us all the story of how the piece came to be written.
So he tells us he’s at his momma’s home and she’s a Welk watcher. Welk comes on to introduce a number: "Now I know you’re all goina lika this nexta number. It’s a jazz composition called “Take A Train”.
I begged my (widowed) mom for guitar lessons when I was about twelve. I got the accordian. Thanks to this guy, I think.
He was good though. So many musicians are. So many arraingers aren’t.
Ok, whoever posted that “One Toke Over the Line” link, you owe me, because I did the face plant so hard that I’m one cerebral hemmorhage over the line.
Sometimes I wondered if ol’ Larry was quite a few tokes over the line.
There is no way to overstate this clip’s awesomeness. I mean gayness.
OMG. It’t shows like this that allow me to understand why Chines guys go nuts with cleavers in public schools.
My problem with Lawrence Welk, and it took me a while to figure this out, is that there’s great technique, but no passion. For God’s sake, put some energy, or effort, or sweat, or some part of yourself into your art. If you can smile all the way through every song, and finish with not a hair out of place, then you’re just not trying hard enough.
Is there a clip of him firing this performer on air?
Only the strongest can watch Welk. It is a show for warriors.
What are you going on about. The heat just rolls off the screen in waves. Waves I tells ya.
Bah! All you snide critics obviously have never seen this Lawrence Welk performance.
Lawrence Welk has been such a fat target for so long that he hasn’t been worth taking shots at for years. His reputation as an old-fashioned cornball was already well-known when Stan Freberg recorded this parody50 years ago.