Myron Floren, accordion player for Lawrence Welk, dies of cancer at 85.
I’ll confess to not knowing a great deal about the man, and have never seen an episode of the Lawrence Welk show, but I knew who Myron Floren was.
He even gets mentioned in the Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) story Rage. The main character, Charlie, is forced to wear a suit to a birthday party, and comments that he looks like Myron Floren.
When I saw the headline (“Accordion player for Lawrence Welk dies”), my first thought was, “Not Myron Floren!”
Yanno, I’m gonna take advantage of the anonymity of this board and admit – I watch the Lawrence Welk Show way more often than anyone under the age of 90 needs to watch it. There are a variety of reasons for this, and I will be happy to provide them if they would make anyone feel better. I do want to emphasize that that is the only hour in any given week that I listen to music that sounds anything like that.
That said:
The current version runs on PBS with a different member of the band providing an intro, and with that person doing little bits where the commerical breaks originally fell. The break bits are usually “what I’m doing now” (here I am onstage in Branson/at the VFW hall/at the big family reunion last year), pix and info about the person’s kids, etc.
Myron Floren was the guest host a month or so ago, and was clearly sadly out of it. His four daughters appeared with him and did most of the talking. (One of his daughters is a shrink out in California – and the only one of the four not to talk quite a bit about her husband and kids – I wasn’t entirely sure what I should infer from that.) They did talk a lot, quite lovingly, about what a great dad he was, but for the most part he just sat amongst them nodding and smiling. It was quite sad.
Plus I have Myron Floren’s Disco Polka on vinyl.
Dammit, the man needs a Doper remembrance, and if that means my coming out of the Lawrence Welk closet, so be it.
“The Lawrence Welk Show” has had no new episodes since 1982 and it’s surprising to think how much time has passed since Mr Welk’s death in 1992.
Perhaps there are many others like myself who think that Myron Floren died many years ago.
Oops, yeah, I left that little piece out of my explanation – the commerical breaks that they segue through are the ones in the original shows – mostly from the '70s – which had appeared on commercial TV.
One thing that must be mentioned is that Myron could PLAY that squeezebox like nobody’s business. His musicianship was of a kind entirely absent in popular music today: pure shiny-pants, metronomic, not-a-hair-out-of-place technically virtuosic perfection. I’m sure the guy would sooner have thrown underpants at his grandmother than committed a clinker on camera.