Lawrence Welk

 

By Bruce Shawkey

This is an interview with Lawrence Welk from a 1954 issue of TV Guide Magazine:

Each week since July, 1955, a 54-year-old North Dakotan of Alsatian descent has been delighting some 40,000,000 TV viewers with a 27-piece band that, according to one affronted critic, "plays nothing but pure schmaltz." The schmaltz is, of course, more formally known as the Champagne Music of Lawrence Welk. "If music could he rated politically," another Hollywood critic has noted, "Welk would be about as far to the right of center as it's possible to get without colliding head-on with Wayne King." Welk himself, a stolid individual who likes to think carefully about a question and then answer it forth-rightly, doesn't object to being compared to Guy Lombardo and thinks schmaltz is not only here to stay but is profitable as well. (Referred to recently as a "Neanderthal Lombardo," Welk merely grinned amiably and said, "That is not possible. Lombardo is two years older than I am." "If I had to analyze our music in one word," Welk says, "the word would be 'melody.' Second in importance is a good beat. At least," he smiles, "I think we have a good beat. I know we play the melody." A man who played with Welk for 10 years comes up with the same word. "Melody," he says firmly, "is Lawrence's forte and always has been. He has a very simple theory. He says that if a man has written a melody that people like, then the people who are playing it should play it the way it was written." 

"What we play," Welk says carefully, "is what 26 years' worth of constant experience tells me the great majority of the audience wants to hear. I am constantly rubbing elbows with the people down at the Aragon Ballroom. My mail, all of it, is gone over very carefully. You know, some people in this business are shielded. Their staff won't let them see the bad letters, the critical ones. Well, those are the ones that get put on my desk first. We go over them very carefully. We analyze them. We are just as interested in what people don't like as we are in what they do like."

Welk learned to listen to the people some years ago when a new arranger advised him to "quit playing this ricky-tick, cornball music and get into something a little more modern." 

Rather dubiously, Welk gave it a whirl. "It was at the Aragon," he remembers. "I swung into the new arrangements but I didn't feel comfortable. In fact, I felt downright uncomfortable. Then I noticed that the people were hanging back. They always used to come up to the bandstand to talk to me. Finally I got down off the bandstand and started talking to them. They thought I had changed. They didn't like my music any more. So the arranger left and his arrangements left with him. "I have found that people like to hear the melody. Melody is something they understand. If they don't understand a piece of music, then they lose interest in it and won't listen to it. If they can dance to the music at the same time they are enjoying the melody, then they have the perfect combination. A fellow likes to hum the tune in his girl's ear while he is dancing. If the music gets too complicated, he can't do this and loses interest." 

Welk considers himself a showman and a businessman rather than a musician and is the first to admit that he is not the world's greatest accordion player. "I was bad to begin with," he smiles, and lately I have been getting worse. I have no time for practice. If you do not practice, every day, ceaselessly, your ability will deteriorate. But leading the band has always been my greatest pleasure. And I know how to pick my people to make me look good up there." Welk readily admits to having been influenced, in his earlier days, by such band leaders as Hal Kemp, Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. "Gradually," he says, "your own style begins to evolve." As for the other side of the musical fence, he professes not to understand it. "Take Stan Kenton," he says, picking his words with some care. "I have never met him nor seen him work, but I have heard his records. I do not understand this music. And I rather doubt that he understands mine. I do not understand Dave Brubeck. If my boys tried to play his kind of music, it would probably sound pretty bad. Frankly, I am still waiting for someone to prove to me that 'progressive jazz' is the coming thing. I think it is much too complicated for the average person to understand."

Welk's own personal preference in music is something he indulges very seldom. "I do not think it would be fair, either to the band or the audience, if I were to insist on playing only what I like myself," he says earnestly. His preference is expressed, however, in his recent album, "The World's Finest Music as Interpreted by Lawrence Welk." He made it with a 70-piece orchestra, predominantly strings. Among the titles: "Claire de Lune," "Stranger in Paradise," "Tonight We Love," "Till the End of Time." "Moon Love," "Isle of May." Predominant in his own record collection are the albums of Montevani, another string man. He also likes Paul Weston's music, feels that Andre Kostelanetz tends to "over-arrange." Welk has long since accustomed himself to the barbs of the more erudite critics and prefers to let the facts speak for themselves: two fully sponsored (Dodge-Plymouth), hour-long TV shows every week; a six-year, record-breaking personal appearance stand at the Aragon Ballroom in Ocean Park. California; 22 albums with a sale of over 1,000,000 copies; single record sales of over 20.000,000; an annual series of concert tours, and a gross income that approaches $4,000,000 a year. Possibly his greatest accolade showed up in a confidential survey of various automobile dealers designed to find out how the dealers felt they could improve their advertising. Recommended by salesmen for a rival car which already has its own TV personalities: "Hire Lawrence Welk."

Here is Welk's obituary from the Chicago Tribune:

Lawrence Welk, the band leader whose folksy charm and bubbly brand of ”Champagne music” shaped the longest-running show in television history, died on Sunday evening at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89.

Mr. Welk had been suffering from pneumonia in recent days, said Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk Group. With diligence, drive and a cheery ”ah-one an` ah-two,” the self-taught maestro became one of a handful of television entertainers who defined the viewing habits of a generation.

He rose from an immigrant farm family in a German-speaking hamlet in North Dakota to become one of the nation`s favorite entertainers.

The buoyant Mr. Welk presided over ”The Lawrence Welk Show” on ABC on Saturday evenings from 1955 to 1971, when the show was dropped because sponsors said its audience was too old, too rural and too sedate.

Undaunted, Mr. Welk signed up more than 250 independent television stations in the U.S. and Canada and kept the show on television for 11 more years. Repackaged as ”Memories With Lawrence Welk,” the show has been appearing on public television on Sunday afternoons since 1987.

Mr. Welk was a strict taskmaster, demanding from his performers hard work, thrift and self-discipline. He kept his musical family-stalwarts like the ”champagne lady,” Norma Zimmer, and the Lennon Sisters -- basically intact, at times even by arbitrating marital disputes. These are some of the professional precepts on which he insisted:

”You have to play what the people understand.”

”Keep it simple so the audience can feel like they can do it too.”

”Champagne music puts the girl back in the boy`s arms-where she belongs.”

"He was really on the pulse of his audience. We did three tours a year to find out what the people wanted to hear,” said Bobby Burgess, a dancer on the Welk show from 1961 to 1982. ”They had to be able to feel that they could dance along with us.”

Over the decades, Mr. Welk became, after Bob Hope, the second-wealthiest performer in show business, and his band and production company became the second-biggest tourist draw of Southern California, behind Disneyland.

Components of the multimillion-dollar Welk conglomerate include a large music library and ownership of the lucrative royalty rights to 20,000 songs.

Among them are the entire body of Jerome Kern`s work, which Mr. Welk bought for $3.2 million in 1970. The heart of the real estate empire was the Lawrence Welk Village, a 1,000-acre resort-and-retirement complex at Escondido, Calif., near San Diego.

The Welk dance band offered an easy mix of pop, swing, Dixieland, country, Latin, polkas and inspirational music. Detractors called it tinkly Mickey Mouse music dispensed to geriatric audiences.

Fans adored the sentimental show as a constant in a changing world and as a reassuring time capsule of a simpler, happier time.

Mr. Welk was born on March 11, 1903, in a sod farmhouse in the prairie village of Strasburg, N.D., one of eight children of the former Christine Schwab and Ludwig Welk, immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine, a region of France that was once part of Germany.

His father was a blacksmith turned farmer. The boy dropped out of the fourth grade to farm full-time until he was 21.

At night, his father taught him to play an inexpensive accordion, and from the age of 13 he earned money playing at social gatherings. At 17, he played in local bands and formed a group, the three-piece Biggest Little Band in America, to help inaugurate radio station WNAX in Yankton, S.D.

At 21, he announced he was leaving the farm for a life as a musician. "You`ll be back,” his father predicted. ”You`ll be back just as soon as you get hungry.”

At 24, he put together a six-piece band called the Hotsy-Totsy Boys. He also bought and operated a series of small businesses, one of which featured an accordion-shaped grill that served a product called squeezeburgers.

These projects failed, but his fortunes improved as he led bigger bands in ballrooms and hotels in bigger towns and on radio, mostly in the Midwest.

He then moved to Los Angeles, where his show was first telecast. In 1955, when he was 52, his coast-to-coast television program began its record run.

Still, he never overcame his shyness and used prompters to make even brief announcements. He rejected cigarette and beer advertising, hired no comedians for fear of off-color jokes and deleted suggestive lyrics from the orchestra`s material. His honors included playing at the 1957 inaugural ball of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Mr. Welk recounted his life and its lessons in several popular books written with McGeehan, including ”Wunnerful, Wunnerful!” (1971) and ”Ah-One, Ah-Two!” (1974).