The other day I stumbled upon Lawrence Welk on PBS and my heart was flooded with memories. My parents and grandparents beloved aunts and uncles would watch on Saturday nights when I was a kid, that was their show and their music. Now at age 45 almost all of my family are gone and to tell you the truth I could not watch the show for more than a few minutes before tears welled up I was filled with much nostalgia and feelings of great loss.
So those of you are about my age do you have similar memories or reactions to seeing good old Lawrence Welk.
Yeah - I used to absolutely hate it when my parents would turn it on. Tho I still don’t care for the Irish tenors, I must admit it is better than the vast majority of what else is on.
47.
My mother, aged 95, and her boyfriend still watch Lawrence Welk. I just can’t tolerate it. The arrangements are awful.
When I was in high school, I was in a trio. We did borrow some harmony ideas from the quartet The Lennon Sisters. But when you were that age in the Fifties, you were expected to be sweet.
It wasn’t the songs on the show that I objected to. It was the way they were presented.
As a 42yo musician and unlettered music historian, I’m coming at this from a personal and socially irrelevant direction - but here goes.
When I watch Welk, I lament the loss of “big tent”, variety-style entertainment that TV and music used to engage in: songs you assumed everyone would know and at least sort of like, some of them going back 50-75 years; musicianship on orchestral and band instruments and in trained voices; the idea that popular music could use a large orchestra that played in different styles and combos, and even use staged vignettes with costumes and sets.
Of course, all that was getting less and less relevant every year even in the 60s and 70s. The Champagne Music was a tight little family of do-as-I-say, dumb-simple Protestant values. It existed inside a bubble of reactionary conservatism that wouldn’t have been possible without rock and the rise of the youth and counter cultures.
The question is, what would poor old Lawrence have done if rock never had taken over? Would he have been stuck playing hotels and ballrooms in the winter wheat belt all his life? Would he have only made it to Lotusland when the time came to retire or open up a chain of German restaurants?
I was exposed to Welk regularly as a child, too - when spending weekends with my great-aunt, born in 1898 and musically undiscriminating (she always called my saxophone a cornet). Back then I saw the show simply as stale, soggy and full of unpleasant flavors, like the leftover banana bread Aunt Mary served up after play time.
I look back and realize that Welk wasn’t so much the music of a generation as he was the music of a generation past its prime. The doubleknits, the white chandeliers and electric organ solos, the tacky conservatism, all of that was just as much a part of it all as the positive musical values, and probably more to the point. The rest was more or less left over.
Exactly (one of) my point(s). They hadn’t killed off the basic musicality of the idiom, or the legacy of orchestral pop. They were doing their damnedest, though, and the thing was, they probably had no idea. I don’t think it was a cynical enterprise for anybody but the sidemen and the crew.
The musicians were generally top-notch and some were world class. I’m thinking of Pete Fountain and Henry Cuesta on clarinet, Jo Ann Castle on ragtime piano, and some brass players whose names I don’t recall.
Occasionally, the band would be allowed to let loose and they could really wail, this mostly happened on the oldest shows rather than later on in the series.
I’m 40 and I have a few vague memories of watching Lawrence Welk with my Grandfather and remember them fondly, but not for the reasons you’d might expect.
My Grandfather was a piano player, arranger and swing band leader who looked upon Welk’s music with disdain but, nevertheless, regularly watched. However, he did so solely to make fun of everything from the music, to the wardrobe to the hairstyles. Nobody else could stand to watch with him but I found his rants immensely entertaining even though I didn’t really understand a lot of what he was talking about. I wish I could really remember what his specific complaints were about the music, although I think the word “soulless” was uttered frequently.
I’m 44 and I hated LW. I hated that whole day, whatever it was. Sunday? LW, Hee Haw, and something else. Can’t remember. Hated that day. It was mom’s day to punish us with her shows. Probably why I took up reading and drawing and a few other pastimes. Lawrence Welk evening was a total write-off.
Hal Blaine, legendary drummer, says people have gotten Welk all wrong- that Welk, like many older big bad leaders, really WANTED to play rock music himself, but ultimately felt trapped by the demographics of their biggest fans.
When I watch the shows I wonder if the performers had gigs beyond the show where they pursued the kind of music they truly loved. Anyone with the true love of music must have felt awfully stifled on LW.
Iowa Public TV runs a 1950s Guy Lombardo show before Welk on Saturday evenings, and as stereotyped as Guy was, at least his show was all band, imitating a supper club experience. The good thing about Guy was his style never changed - the band of 1955 sounded all but identical to the band of 1935. You like it or you don’t, but even then it was pleasantly simple and under-produced.
59 here, and remember it all too well. It was there when our grandparents got the first television in the family (1956) and we would be invited to come watch on Sunday night. At that stage, anything at all on TV was marvelous, but by the time we got our own TV the following year, it was already starting to pall.
Now I equate it with Fifties cooking (first, open a package of Bisquik…). That is, occasionally worth a nostalgic look, but only for a couple of minutes.
And, as an exercise in surrealism, recall that in 1961, the Welk song “Calcutta” was number one on the pop charts and (Ghu help us) number ten on the “black singles” chart.
This is the same year as Elvis’ “Little Sister,” Del Shannon’s “Runaway” The Dovell’s “The Bristol Stomp” and Dion’s “Runaround Sue.”
Of course, it was also the year of Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight? by Lonnie Donegan, so there you go.
I watch it somewhat regularly, needless to say with a fair amount of postmodern bemusement. The strictures of racial and gender roles are presented utterly unselfconsciously; the music is cheesy and diabetic-shock-inducing; the technicolor clothing is indeed freaky and psychedelic. I do spend a fair amount of time wondering about the young people, especially – would they rather have a different career, or did they find this a wonderful refuge from a mass culture they were totally alienated from? I suspect the latter, because of the utter lack of irony amongst the performers.
Why do I watch? It’s the only place on TV I can count on seeing seeing some tap-dancing.
I feel pretty much the same. Great memories. But I couldn’t watch for more than a few minutes either - but also because I don’t really enjoy the music. The memories are good, but not good enough to watch for a long time…