Wow, he’s gettin old! I was afraid he was still in Lodi. 
Seems like I recall a book about ten years ago that detailed the behind the scenes shenanigans backstage at LW. Don’t recall any specific revelations, though.
I grew up on Lawrence Welk, in the sense that we had one TV and my parents controlled it. And they watched it every week, first on ABC, then in syndication, and finally on PBS. And here’s the big secret.
They didn’t like it that much either. So why did they watch it? Because all the big band music they really liked, Glen Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, etc., was long gone by then. Welk, for all his blandness, was the last gasp of the songs they liked, with the arrangements they liked, that they could actually hum along to. And, whether we admit it or not, some of the talent on the show really was good.
So they stayed loyal to Larry. And if they were still alive, they’d still be watching, and sending their checks to their local PBS station.
A classic Hee-Haw moment with guest stars Johnny and June Carter Cash.
Pretty much.
That’s exactly what it was like back then. We went from kids arguing about to which Lennon sister was the prettiest to WTF is that garbage still doing on TV as teenagers.
If the news got too depressing, your grandparents could just switch the channel to the way things ought to be.
Actually, lissener, I think your description from another thread works even better for The Lawrence Welk Show:
The One Toke Over the Line one is PURE genius! I was HOWLING at the Micky Mouse one…This show looked like something that would be improved by getting high.
I agree with your explanation of why the generation that came of age during the heyday of people like Miller, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Duke Ellington ended up watching Lawrence Welk: of all the big band leaders from the 30s and 40’s, he was the last man standing. Everybody else was either dead or retired.
It’s all pretty sad if you think about. It’s all the more depressing when you consider that the “hipper-than-thou” baby boomers are probably going to spend their golden years listening to some type of pablum-equivalent to the rock n’ roll they grew with as will people in my Generation X age group [shudder].
I’m trying to figure out what that “pablum equivalent” would be.
From my experience in the radio biz, what I can tell you is that there’s a distinction to be made between the “music freaks” of my generation (I’m one of them) and everyone else.
The music freaks are still actively engaged…even if they have to work harder at finding contemporary music to get excited about and ultimately find that too much effort to make, they still want the real deal from our era, and buy the reissues and unreleased stuff of the music they treasure. I can’t imagine them accepting some watered-down version of rock ‘n’ roll…even in their golden years.
The non-music freaks – those for whom music is simply a pleasant background diversion and nothing more – still want to hear “the rock ‘n’ roll they grew up with,” but it’s a very narrow segment of it. These are the ones who, amazingly to the rest of us, don’t mind hearing the same 250 songs played over and over and over again on Oldies stations (and indeed object to hearing anything that is unfamiliar to them – “play something we know!”).
To me, these are the groups to be distinguished. I have a hard time imagining even this second group accepting a Lawrence Welk version of rock ‘n’ roll as they age.
My first job out of college was with an FM station that featured Lawrence Welk, Billy Vaughn and that caliber of “easy listening” music. It was hard to listen to that stuff. My little 3-hour jazz show on Saturday afternoons was my only reason to stay as long as I did. Less than a year. That station folded not long after I left there. Obviously LW and BV and their ilk weren’t the happening thing even in the early days of FM.
If push came to shove I could name another fifty orchestras and bands of the era that were doing roughly the same sort of harmless music. None beat Welk for soulless Muzak though.
Ok, I’m going to be the dissenter.
I liked watching The Lawrence Welk show as a kid.
It was a Saturday night tradition. I would take my shower, and come down in my bathrobe and my mom would brush out my hair until it was dry enough to roll in sponge curlers for Sunday morning church.
We’d watch the show together and when the orchestra would play, I would try to pick out the different instruments and name them. I loved the trumpet player with the blue eyes, Myron on the accordian, the organ player, all of them.
I learned to love the old hymns because of Norma Zimmer. I checked out records on musicals like *Oliver! *and My Fair Lady and Oklahoma because I wanted to know what they were about after seeing someone perform a song from them.
I liked to watch Little Mary Lou dance with Mr. Welk during the champagne numbers. And then, since my Great Aunts and Grandmother would often attend the show - I would watch the audience dance to see if I could see them out there.
Was it rock 'n roll? Nope. But I think I have a broader appreciation of all types of music because of growing up and watching the *Lawrence Welk *show with my mom.
Never said I was one of the cool kids. And I do look at the reruns on PBS and giggle sometimes at the hairstyles and song technique and all that. But I also have happy memories and don’t find it annoying at all.
Just a different side of the coin.
Me too to all of the above.* I should have said so earlier. I watched it in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I now find it almost unbearably corny, but not in an annoying way.
By the way, some of the early recordings of “Lawrence Welk and His Hotsy-Totsy Boys” are not at all bad, although that band name was perhaps an omen.
.
- Except for the curlers. Yow!
Thanks! Nice to know I’m not alone.
The curlers were a rite of passage I think. The whole beauty = pain initiation.
+1 Watched it as a kid, and I still record the PBS reruns.
Dick Dale looks more like Welk that Welk Jr.
I loved the comment on YouTube that said something like “I think this is what caused the Manson killings”.
Lawrence Welk started his radio career in the house next door to where I grew up (Yankton, SD) and it is still one of the highlights of the town.
My great uncle and his family’s business was in costume construction/sewing and they did the costumes/outfits for the Lawrence Welk show. He still tells stories about how they used to have to tell LW and the designers to tone down the designs as they were too complicated to make or would look awful if done to specifications. This is a man who still drives his pink cadillac while wearing his pearl? khaki? three-piece suits proudly.
My entire extended family loved LW, grandparents, aunts & uncles and I can’t watch because it brings up too many sad memories of beloved people in my life who are gone. When my grandfather died five years ago at age 93 that was the last program he watched. So when I am channel flipping and stumble upon LW on PBS I almost break down and cry.