He was a talented musician and a talented businessman. It has been the “cool” thing to make fun of anything middle class/white for decades, now. Folks need to quit “pizzing on the graves” of their forebears, whether it be polka/country/Welk music/whatever. Have some respect for some folks that were trying to entertain with at least a modicum of dignity and “class”, and actually had some talent to back it up. Back when the “adults” ran things....
Grandparents never missed it...we kids couldn't stand it of course.
Agree with the others though, it was a better time.
Yep. My grandparents never missed an episode.
"Allways speak the truth and you will never have to remember what you said before..." Sam Houston Texans, "We say Grace, We Say Mam, If You Don't Like it, We Don't Give a Damn!"
I have watched many a Lawrence Welk show. My mom and dad loved that show. It didn't think it was a bad show. I enjoyed it. It certainly was a different time in America. We also watched Hee Haw as well. That was probably my dad's favorite TV show.
kwg
For liberals and anarchists, power and control is opium, selling envy is the fastest and easiest way to get it. TRR. American conservative. Never trust a white liberal. Malcom X Current NRA member.
Welk, who paid the minimum union scale to his cast. "We worked at group scale, which was $110 a week, for 10 years," Kathy Lennon recalled. "After that he agreed to pay us solo scale, $210 a week.May 19, 1992
And he was cheap with the lighting too.... looked like an American soap opera or a Brit series.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. -Ernest Hemingway The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.-- Edward John Phelps
Many here probably remember him, but are unaware that he had two daughters: Anna 1, Anna 2.
Yeah - funny recall - and a bunch of other idiosyncrasies. I was working on big band jazz at the time and watched him quite a bit for a while - even though I thought the arrangements were very "square" - because the players in that band were excellent musicians. I remember cracking up when he introduced a tune "Now we are going to play that great Duke Ellington piece - Take A Train." Thanks for the thread.
In all seriousness though, the mention of Lawrence Welk brings back memories of when America was a better place. A time before everything on TV was 99% gay and interracial couples. I remember my folks tuning into The Lawrence Welk Show when I was a kid, I'm 52 now. If I'd known enough I might have thought it was corny, but I sure wish we had a lot more of that now than what currently occupies the airways. The America that Lawrence Welk inhabited is long gone.
I always believed, and have heard repeatedly that Lawrence Welk was as queer as they come. But I believe that of almost everyone who appears on television. Seems to me that the entire TV industry is/was built by the queers.
And there were TV shows that I liked as a kid. But I think all of the TV heroes did some strange stuff to get their part in any show...