By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. It’s a Saturday night in 1955, and you’re
looking for entertainment. You want it bright, cheerful, positive, and
free; the kind of program that taxes you intellectually not at all… but
makes you smile with feel-good music delivered by feel-good people. You
spin the dial and find a guy called “Lawrence Welk” and his Champagne
Music. You give a listen… you like what you hear and thence forward
every Saturday night is dedicated to the ultimate feel-good- guy
Lawrence Welk, so expert at creating just the soothing ambiance you
need.
This is the man and his music we’re celebrating today. Go now to any
search engine and find his signature tune “Bubbles in the Wine”. Lay
back, enjoy, and leave the cares of the real world far, far away… Born
March 11, 1903 in Strasburg, North Dakota…
Lawrence Welk is arguably the most celebrated individual ever from
the rolling hills and punishing climates of North Dakota. And he hated
every single aspect of the state that remembers him so fondly now.
He hated Strasburg, a German-speaking community in the middle of nowhere.
He hated his father Ludwig… he hated his mother Christina… emigrants
who started life in Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of imperial Russia…
arriving in America in 1892…
He hated the sod house in which he grew up.
He hated farming, its backbreaking, never-ending chores and obligations.
He hated the bleakness of it all… and so he bided his time,
daydreaming about a place over the rainbow that was anywhere other than
where he was. A place where there were happy people, people with a song
in their heart and some insistent, cheerful melody on the brain. He knew
such a place existed… and he was sure he would find it.
His ticket out was a mail-order accordion. It sold for $400, a
fortune in those days. He borrowed it from his unrelentingly pragmatic
father, who essentially indentured him to the farm he hated until his
21st birthday or until this headstrong son paid off this astronomical
sum. Part of the deal was that Lawrence take on extra paying work on
other farms, too, every penny to go to his father. He did, with
vengeance in his heart…
Punctilious in his obligation, young Welk on the occasion of his 21st
birthday left everything he knew and hated, turning his back resolutely
on his detested past. He and his accordion never looked back; they
couldn’t. They had burned every bridge and outraged every familial tie.
Failure was not an option…
There was hardship ahead…. lots of scheming and hopeful connivances…
even days of despair as he strove to find his way…. But every moment
that was less than perfect became the fuel to create this always happy,
always perfect place of his imagining.
Welk in those early days of the 1920s was a blur of activity. He
performed with bands lead by Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, George T.
Kelly… and led the big bands of the dancing Dakotas, the Hotsy Totsy
Boys… and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. Then he did what he’d always
been destined to do… he created his own band and started to craft the
lighter-than-air sound that made him rich and famous worldwide. It was a
style scoffed at by learned folks, discriminating folks, folks of
hubris, condescension and arrogance… but a style embraced by the
millions who knew a good thing when they heard it.
A ball of energy, always immaculately turned out, his dancing pumps
oiled and shined, baton at the ready… and the celebrated smile about to
be delivered with mega- watt brilliance, this was the Lawrence Welk of
WNAX Radio, Yankton, South Dakota… and beyond… Always an optimist in hot
pursuit of perfection and the better life he took time to study at the
MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from which he
graduated in 1927.
This was the height of America’s gift to the world, the Jazz Age when
a gyrating generation showed their disapproving parents how a body in
motion could move in hepped up ways, contorted, nimble, thrilling to
watch, soaring to dance. You probably never knew, or even imagined, that
the Lawrence Welk of your memory in November, 1928 cut a popular
ragtime record with his Novelty Orchestra, for Indiana-based Gennett
Records. It was called “Spiked Beer” and it moooooooooved!
But jazz was not his metier; dance tunes and “sweet” music was… and
he became a recognized master of an undemanding, smoothie sound that
attracted real people, too often burdened by their difficult realities,
especially during the Great Depression Welk and his trademark sound
helped an often desperate, despairing nation get through… whistling and
dancing, forced to move on, move out, move up… optimists all, down
perhaps for a minute, but wisecracking as we got back on feet set in
motion by the facile tunes of young Mr. Welk.
He kept Amerca dancing in the dark days America needed to dance more
than ever… let’s hope that his parents (now a distant memory for
Lawrence) came to recognize the swan they had brought forth amongst the
chickens… maybe even on one-never-to- be-forgotten night dancing at the
Farmstead to his lolly-pop confections, and smiling… If so, it was the
only time champagne in any form entered what is now called the Ludwig
and Christina Welk Farmplace, an attraction you can visit when next in
Strasburg.
The Lawrence Welk Show.
In 1951, after cutting several records (including Spade Cooley’s
popular “Shame on You” in 1945) and appearing in many motion pictures,
where his increasingly inimitable sound became the perfect background
for what were then called “Soundies”, Welk moved to Los Angeles, the
most superficial metropolis on earth, where they welcomed him with open
arms and where he launched The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA radio, where
it was broadcast live from the Aragon Ballroom at Venice Beach. What a
piquant image that is… the smoothly oiled muscular bodies on the beach….
the even smoother sound of Lawrence Welk emanating from on high like so
much star dust.
The show was a great hit… and was the proximate cause the ABC network
picked up Welk for national distribution in June, 1955. It was here the
family of Walt and Victoria Lauing, my maternal grandparents, enter the
scene. It is because of them and their obsession with Lawrence Welk and
his sound that I wrote this article at all, for they and millions like
them were the reason he succeeded.
Walt and Vic, young and attractive, were South Dakota people, who
probably heard Welk in his early days. By the time I was 10 or so (1957)
they had imbibed a lifetime of champagne music. Minutes before the
program began, every child present was hushed and bribed to stay that
way… and all was ready for the imperial entrance of Walt and his lady,
recliners at the ready. No sound but the bubbles in the wine was even
allowed or tolerated for the next 60 minutes. The congregation was
ready… the Maestro could commence.
I laughed, of course, and derided, as youngsters of smart-aleck
tendencies will do but amongst the cascading effervescence there was
love, veneration and gratitude. He was their sound…
That was why my grandmother wrote away for tickets to the program
when she and Walt flew to California to see my mother, their daughter,
and family . You see she meant to dance with Welk on air. Every week she
saw a myriad of other blue-haired ladies stand in line for the chance
of whirling in her favorite’s arms on nationwide television. My
grandmother wanted that, too…
And so one Saturday night we witnessed her televised struggle to get
to the head of the queue, only to discover that the other ladies were as
determined as she was… and despite our cheers, she failed.
She didn’t blame her idol, of course; it wasn’t his fault he was so
popular and desired. But we all felt it keenly. It was probably the only
time he ever let a fan down, until in 1982, when as the nation’s oldest
television host, he at last retired, age 79. His legacy and bouncing
music live on in the Lawrence Welk Museum, Escondido, California. I’m
sure the spirits of Walt and Vic visit… for he made them so very happy
for so very long.
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