Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 � May 17, 1992) was an American musician,
accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted the television
program The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known to his
large audience of radio, television, and live-performance fans (and critics) as
"champagne music".[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Early career
3 Recordings
4 The Lawrence Welk Show
5 Personal life
6 Later years
7 Singles
8 Honors
9 Legacy
10 See also
11 Books
12 References
13 External links
Early life[edit]
Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota.[2] He
was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana (n�e Schwahn) Welk, Roman
Catholic ethnic Germans who immigrated in 1892 from Odessa, Russian Empire (now
Ukraine).[3][4]
Welk was a first cousin, once removed, of former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer
(Welk's mother and Schweitzer's paternal grandmother were siblings).[5] Welk's
paternal grandparents, Moritz and Magdalena Welk, emigrated in 1808 from Alsace-
Lorraine to Ukraine.[6]
The family lived on a homestead that is now a tourist attraction. They spent the
cold North Dakota winter of their first year inside an upturned wagon covered in
sod. Growing up speaking German and English, Welk left school during fourth grade
to work full-time on the family farm.[3][7]
Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order
accordion for $400 (equivalent to $4,886 in 2017)[8][9] He promised his father that
he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. Any
money he made elsewhere during that time, doing farmwork or performing, would go to
his family.[10]
Early career[edit]
On his 21st birthday, having fulfilled his promise to his father, Welk left the
family farm to pursue a career in music. During the 1920s, he performed with
various bands before starting his own orchestra. He led big bands in North Dakota
and eastern South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the
Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra.[11] His band was also the station band for the
popular radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. In 1927, he graduated from the
MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[12]
Welk in Chicago, 1944
Although many associate Welk's music with a style quite separate from jazz, he did
record one notable song in a ragtime style in November 1928 for Gennett Records,
based in Richmond, Indiana: "Spiked Beer", featuring Welk and his Novelty
Orchestra.[13]
During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that specialized in dance tunes and
"sweet" music (during this period, bands which played light, melodic music were
referred to as "sweet bands" to distinguish them from the more rhythmic and
assertive "hot" bands of artists like Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington). Initially,
the band traveled around the country by car. They were too poor to rent rooms, so
they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. The term champagne music was
derived from an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, when a dancer
referred to his band's sound as "light and bubbly as champagne." The hotel also
lays claim to the original "bubble machine," a prop left over from a 1920s movie
premiere. Welk described his band's sound, saying, "We still play music with the
champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. We place the stress on melody; the
chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. We play with a
steady beat so that dancers can follow it."[14]
Welk's big band performed across the country but particularly in the Chicago and
Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band began a 10-year stint at the Trianon
Ballroom in Chicago, regularly drawing crowds of nearly 7,000. His orchestra also
performed frequently at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s.
In 1944 and 1945, Welk led his orchestra in many motion picture "Soundies,"
considered to be the early pioneers of music videos.[citation needed] Welk
collaborated with Western artist Red Foley to record a version of Spade Cooley's
"Shame on You" in 1945. The record (Decca 18698) was number 4 to Cooley's number 5
on Billboard's September 15 "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" listing.[15] From
1949 through 1951, the band had its own national radio program on ABC, sponsored by
Miller High Life, "The Champagne of Bottle Beer".
Recordings[edit]
In addition to the above-mentioned "Spiked Beer", Welk's territory band made
occasional trips to Richmond, Indiana and to Grafton, Wisconsin to record a handful
of sessions for the Gennett and Paramount companies. In November 1928 he recorded
four sides for Gennett spread over two days (one side was rejected), and in 1931 he
recorded eight sides for Paramount (in two sessions) that were issued on the
Broadway and Lyric labels. These records are rare and highly valued.
From 1938 to 1940, he recorded frequently in New York and Chicago for Vocalion
Records. He signed with Decca Records in 1941, then recorded for Mercury Records
and Coral Records for short periods of time before moving to Dot Records in 1959.
In 1967, Welk left Dot Records and joined its former executive Randy Wood in
creating Ranwood Records. Welk bought back all his masters from Dot and Coral, and
Ranwood became the outlet for all of Welk's many artists. They started with a huge
reissue of old Dot albums in 1968 to get them started on the right foot.[16][17]
Wood's interest was sold to Welk in 1979. In 2015, Welk Music Group sold the
Vanguard and Sugar Hill labels to Concord Bicycle Music while retaining ownership
of the Ranwood catalog. Welk's estate licensed the Ranwood catalogue to Concord
Music Group for 10 years.[18]
