Here's Where It Gets Interesting - North Dakota: The Wunnerful Lawrence Welk with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

In this solo episode, Sharon shares the prolific life and career of vintage musical icon Lawrence Welk. Welk, a household name, and host of his own show (that you probably only watched at your grandma’s house), was one of the wealthiest entertainers in the U.S before his death in the early 1990s. He came from humble beginnings, growing up on a farm in North Dakota with his German immigrant parents and several siblings. Over the course of his long musical career, Welk became the sound of an era; his “champagne music” stirring nostalgia in a generation who socialized at public dance halls and waltzed the night away. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. I have a really fun episode for you today. There's a lot of my own childhood memories tied up in what I want to chat with you about. And so I think this will be really fun. Let's dive into this episode about the great state of North Dakota. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Raise your hand. I can't see you, but I want you to raise your hand anyway. If you ever grew up watching the TV show Lawrence Welk, because I did. It was well off the air by the time I was a child, but my grandmother absolutely loved it. And we watched it in reruns. We watched it in syndication. And so I have to tell you more about Lawrence Welk, who at the time that he died in the 1990s, was one of the richest men in entertainment.

He was worth over $150 million. So let's start at the beginning. And we're going to trace how this man who did not even learn how to speak English until he was in his 20s, became one of the richest people in entertainment by the time that he died. So Lawrence Welk was the child of immigrants. His parents were ethnically German. They lived in the Alsace-Lorraine region of Europe, and they immigrated to Ukraine. And then in the late 1800s, his parents, Ludwig and Christiana Welk, came to the United States, and they settled in North Dakota. Lawrence Welk was the sixth child for the Welk family. They had eight or nine children, depending on which biography you consult. And his parents spoke no English, and so Lawrence was not raised speaking any English. And this actually was something that made him famous. It made him famous that his accent was very

pronounced. His English was very heavily accented with his like upper Midwestern German. When his parents came to the United States, they arrived with very little, as was true of many immigrants at that time. They arrived with very little. His father played the accordion and he brought an accordion with him. But his parents slept in an overturned wagon covered with sod. That was how poor his family was when they arrived in the United States. Their home was an overturned wagon covered with sod. And so Lawrence Welk grew up raised by a family of very hardworking immigrant farmers in the tiniest town imaginable. And by tiny, I mean it had a Catholic

church and a post office. That was what was in his tiny town of Strasburg, North Dakota, was a church and a post office, and it was surrounded by farms. Most of the community spoke German. And so his parents were able to get by without learning English initially because all of the other community members largely settled by German immigrants, German speaking immigrants from various parts of Europe. And he went to school in German. That's how many German speakers there were in his community. He only completed up through the fourth grade. When he was 10 years old, his family could no longer afford for him to not work on the family farm.

So he dropped out of school in fourth grade. I already mentioned that he did not learn any English until he was in his early 20s. One of the things he was well known for when he was speaking was he would compliment things and he'd say, oh, that's vunnerful, just vunnerful. And in fact, his later autobiography was called Vunnerful, spelled W-U-N-N-E-R-F-U-L. spelled W-U-N-N-E-R-F-U-L. His father played the accordion and Lawrence showed an aptitude for playing the accordion as a young boy. Lawrence earned money doing things like trapping weasels on neighboring farms. Weasels will eat your chickens, by the way. So he would trap weasels will eat your chickens, by the way. So he would trap weasels in exchange for money, and then he would take his money and he would buy mail order accordions because he loved to play, but he didn't have his own instrument. And he eventually became very frustrated

by the mail order accordions because they were so cheaply made and the internal components kept breaking and he really just wanted a better instrument. So when he was 17, he went to his parents and said, if you will loan me the money for a professional accordion, I will stay and work here on this farm until I am 21. I will earn the money by being of service to you until I have earned out the amount of money that you have loaned me. And his parents said, okay. So the amount of money that his parents loaned him when he was 17 was $400. dollars. And if you look at what $400 was in 1920 when Lawrence Welk was 17, it's the equivalent of almost $5,000 now, which that is a lot to loan a child today, right? But he made good on his promise. He worked on his parents' farm until he was 21, all the while getting better and better at practicing the accordion. He said in an interview when he was an older man, he said, I wanted a good accordion

because the reeds kept breaking from those cheap accordions at the time. I told my father if he would buy me the real good accordion, the best accordion that's available. I would stay on the farm until I was 21. And I waited four years for that day to come up. So he begins playing side gigs to earn more money while he's continuing working on his family's farm. They traveled around North and South Dakota via car, playing at little events, playing at little carnivals. He eventually joined up with a vaudeville troupe, and he would play his accordion while they were doing their little skits. He would pass out playbills. He would work at the concession stand. In one skit, he played a corpse, but he never had any speaking roles because his English was too heavily accented. He felt like people would make fun of him. People would not be able

to understand him. So he stayed in the background playing music and doing other jobs while his little vaudeville troupe toured around the Dakotas. So he eventually formed his own little orchestra. It had a drummer, a saxophonist, a pianist, and him playing the accordion. And there was a rotating cast of characters in quote unquote, his orchestra. Not what we consider an orchestra with like 20 violins, etc. But that's what he called it. And his orchestra was called the Hotsy Totsy Boys. And that just makes me laugh. I'm going to play you a little clip right now of Lawrence Welk. You can hear his voice, hear his heavily accented voice. This is him many, many years later, of course, as an adult, introducing his group as the Hotsy Totsy Boys.

Folks, believe it or not, there was a time when our orchestra was known as Lawrence Welk and his Hotsy Totsy Boys during those early barnstorming days through the Midwest. Some of our experiences were just about as funny as our name. We'd like to recall some of those early days. Boys, let's play. One and two and...

So in the later 1920s, Lawrence Welk graduated from music school in Minneapolis, and this really cemented his skill and position as a musician. He and his big band orchestra decided, like, let's go down to New Orleans. That's where big band is really heating up and is warmer than it is here in the Dakotas. But unfortunately, a snowstorm stopped their plans. They got stuck in Yankton, South Dakota. And that is ultimately where he stayed for almost a decade in South Dakota while he was playing more gigs, meeting people, etc. He eventually got a job, his big band orchestra got a job at a radio station, WNAX. And they played regularly on the radio station. Back during that time period,

people would actually come into the radio station and perform live. And so he did that. And there was one point where his band became so popular that they started getting sponsorships. And one of the companies that sponsored Lawrence Welk was the Honolulu Fruit Gum Company. So chewing gum at the time was like such a novelty. Like it's sweet and you just keep on chewing. What? There was like a really, really cool thing to have gum at the time. And so Lawrence Welk changed his band name to, temporarily, to the Honolulu

Fruit Gum Orchestra so that they could advertise for this contest that the gum company wanted to have. And they set up this promotional gimmick in the late 1920s, and they hosted a number of contests around the country in various towns. And it was a contest to crown Miss Honolulu Fruit Gum. And the way that you could vote in this Miss Honolulu Fruit Gum Contest was by bringing in your empty wrappers. And you got to vote by placing your empty wrapper in a box for the person you wanted to vote for. And so it was encouraging people to chew more gum so they could place more votes. And this was wildly successful. The Fruit Gum Company, wildly successful. It really started helping Welk's big band orchestra take off. And then eventually the ballroom managers, while they're doing their little tour in these various cities, the ballroom managers started getting mad. Can you guess why? Because there were too many gum wrappers and there was too much gum.

there were too many gum wrappers and there was too much gum. And so they only ran the gum company promotion one time because all of the ballroom managers were like, never again. You're ruining my ballroom. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests.

And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. While Welk was based in Yankton, South Dakota, oh man, you just heard my Minnesota accent come out there. He was based in Yankton, South Dakota. Oh man, you just heard my Minnesota accent come out there.

He was based in Yankton, South Dakota. He met his wife Fern, and she was a nursing student. They eventually got married after he, after she finished nursing school. They ultimately had three children. They had a very long marriage to each other. And so in the 1930s, Welk's band becomes more and more popular, and they begin touring the entire country. They toured New York, they toured Pittsburgh, they played a lot in Chicago. And one person at an event coined a term that stuck with Lawrence Welk for the rest of his career. And that was, his music is as light and bubbly as champagne. And Lawrence Welk just loved that term. And he started using the term champagne music to describe what he and his band were doing. He said, we 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 dancers can follow it. And this was really in contrast to some of the other big bands of the day, like the Benny Goodmans of the day, which played a style called hot music, where they were doing a lot more riffing and had a lot more jazz influence. So his national popularity, it just continued to grow and grow throughout the 1930s and 40s. As I mentioned, he played a lot in Chicago, Pennsylvania, New York City, Milwaukee. And for over a decade, he continued on with his big band tours. play in would have thousands of people that would come hear him play. They would dance. It was a great concert slash evening out. And Lawrence Wilkes' star continued to rise. So in 1945 and 1946, Lawrence Wilkes' band made something called soundies. Have you ever heard of soundies before? Think of a soundie like a three minute long music video jukebox.

And what would happen is they would put these machines into places like taverns, bars, nightclubs, etc. The machine is called a panoram. It costs 10 cents. And then it would start whatever soundy was next in the queue. And you could see both the video and hear the audio. Or at the time it was film, it was not a video. You could see the film and hear the audio of Lawrence Welk and his band playing and they recorded about 10 of these and then those 10 soundies would just go through in a loop rotation in bars taverns etc all over the country and so this again helped increase his popularity that maybe people who weren't familiar with him, when they saw these panoram machines, and they put a dime into it, then they could become familiar with Lawrence

Wilkes music. And these soundies were very technologically advanced, like a super cool thing that people really wanted to use. You can Google for soundies and see all the different musical acts that made these, where they were popular, what kind of things were played in nightclubs and bars via soundies. got a radio gig on ABC radio sponsored by Miller High Life Beer because they wanted to associate themselves with Lawrence Welk. They renamed themselves the Champagne of Bottled Beer. Lawrence Welk eventually realized that if he wanted to be a bigger player in the entertainment industry, that he needed to move to Hollywood. And so in 1951, he moved his entire band and his family to Los Angeles. And they settled in. They began playing gigs regularly at ballrooms throughout Los Angeles. They began making connections with players in the entertainment industry. And this is where the idea for the Lawrence Welk TV show was born. It started out just being broadcast on KTLA in Los Angeles for three years, from 1951 to 1953.

It was kind of a local show because he was so well known locally. And it was such a fantastic success. And Los Angeles was growing so exponentially that Paramount wanted to broadcast the show nationally. Unfortunately, Paramount got into some contract disputes, and they were having too much network feuding. It became really, really sticky. And his show did not air nationally on ABC until July of 1955. And when I say that the Lawrence Wilkes show was wildly popular, I mean, it was so wildly popular, y'all, that it ran for almost 20 years. Okay, Grey's Anatomy has not even been on for 20 years. So producers of the show really wanted to evoke this champagne sound. They wanted to like visually communicate, here's what to expect when you watch Lawrence Welk. And so they started out by using big soap bubble machines. So when the orchestra was playing, these giant soap bubbles

would just kind of float around the TV screen during the around the bandstand. And eventually the musicians became frustrated that they were having all of this soap buildup on their instruments. So they had to switch to glycerin based bubbles that did not leave a residue on their instruments. And then they would only cue the bubble machine sort of at the beginning of the show, in the end of the show. So the Lawrence Welk show knew who it appealed to. It did not try to go after the 18-year-olds of the day. It was not trying to book the biggest rock and roll acts. It was a variety show, but it really appealed to a certain demographic, which was mostly homeowners over the age of 45. People who had certain musical tastes,

certain musical values, certain viewpoints on life. The show had things like show tunes, polkas, waltzes, family-friendly novelty acts, Dixieland music. My grandmother loved this show. She loved it. My grandmother was a professional musician in Los Angeles during this time period. And she really appreciated the musicianship of the people who were on Lawrence Welk. I remember watching it with her many times. It was on syndication at that point and reruns when I was a child. And she would always comment on what a great clarinet player somebody was or what a great organist somebody was, or she would, she knew all these little tidbits about, ooh, that person Lawrence Welk found singing at a nightclub in Mexico, but her teeth were messed up. So Lawrence Welk said, I'd like to put you on TV. And she

said, oh, but I'm too self-conscious about my teeth. So Lawrence Welk paid to get her teeth fixed. Like my grandma knew all of those little insider secrets about who was on the Lawrence Welk show and she loved it. It had this sort of like Midwestern folksy energy that people of a certain generation really appreciated. There was one entertainment editor. I read like a review of his show that made me crack up. And it said that the Lawrence Welk show was the squarest music this side of Euclid. Of course, that's like a math pun if you're into puns. But it was. It was square, if you're into puns. But it was, it was square, meaning not hip. It was not hip. It was not cool. And it didn't try to be hip or cool. It was what it was. And it was unashamedly square.

It was unashamedly like, yes, we do have women in evening gowns. We do have accordionists, you know, like that was, it just was what it was. And that makes me look back on it fondly. I will not pretend that I was highly entertained by it as a child because I was not. I definitely wanted to be watching Nick at night when I was at my grandma's house. I did not want to watch Lawrence Welk. Although, like one of its big competitors at the time was American Bandstand. And American Bandstand had like Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beach Boys, the Jackson 5 and Abba. And, you know, like it eventually had, you know, like other rock acts, Cyndi Lauper, etc. Lawrence Welk show?

No, we're not booking any of that. What instrument can you play in a champagne style? We might book you, you know, the Lennon sisters. They were mainstays. The Aldridge sisters. Country singer Ava Barber, you know, like their style was just in market counterpoint to things that were happening elsewhere in the musical culture. And that continued to appeal to a certain demographic. The show had sponsors, many popular sponsors that were aiming to appeal to that over 45 homeowner set. You know, like Dodge Cars, Geritol Vitamins, which were vitamins for older people, Salmonex, which was like sleep medication, Aqua Velva. It had like laxative commercials,

appliance commercials, Paula Denture Cleaners, Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice, you know, like advertisers still want to sell products to older people. And the Lawrence Welk show made that audience accessible to them. One of the things that Lawrence Welk did well is he had very elaborate sets, very elaborate costumes. And it didn't just, it was not just a variety show where it's like, and now we're going to play the accordion for you. It really wanted to evoke this feeling that older crowd had of what it was like to be out dancing to a big band in, you know, the 1940s. And it did some recreations of radio show programming. And it really leaned hard into creating those feelings and emotions

for people who had experienced that at one time and wanted to experience it again. I remember thinking the costumes were pretty cool. Even though the show was lame to me at the time, I can look back and be like, those were quite the dresses. They did not skimp on their sets and costumes at all. So Lawrence Welk's home in North Dakota is now a tourist attraction. And the director of the tourist attraction said this about Lawrence Welk. I think he really stresses North Dakotans view of the world. We're true. We don't tell you false stuff. We aren't going to dance around the subject. You're going to get what we want to show you. And that is the ethics, that's the morals, that's the religious. We are who we are. And I think he really brought that

throughout his show. So in 1971, ABC dropped the Lawrence Welk show. And one of the big reasons I think this is fascinating is that a new rule was passed called the Primetime Access Rule. It was regulated by the FCC. And the idea was they were afraid that these three big networks of ABC, CBS, NBC were creating monopolies on TV programming. And they wanted to have local affiliates have more airtime to be able to air programs that catered to their local audiences. So networks were forced to drop large amounts of scheduled TV programs, and that included the Lawrence Welk Show, and it became known sort of by historians as this rural purge. TV shows that appealed to rural audiences were largely ones that were cut from the programming lineup. This is also why you see the rise of late night TV,

why you see the rise of SNL, The Tonight Show, etc. Because they had to withdraw programming from primetime and they needed to make up that advertising revenue somewhere else. So they were looking for other places to create new programs. So when ABC dropped the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971, Lawrence Welk formed his own production company. And he started airing his show on ABC affiliates around the country that wanted to carry it because basically they were turning over control of a certain amount of primetime hours to local affiliates. So he was like, fine, I'll make my show available to local affiliates. There are still a lot of people, particularly in rural America, who want to watch my show. So he

independently arranged a syndication deal that kept him on the air for 11 more years until 1982. So that means the Lawrence Welk Show premiered in 1955 and ran until 1982. And it is still being syndicated, especially on PBS. The Lawrence Welk Show runs on almost 300 PBS channels around the country. You can still watch it where I'm from. I'm going to play you a couple of little clips of the Lawrence Welk show before I wrap up because I have a few more fun facts, but I want you to hear him and I want you to hear what his band sounded like. sounded like. From Hollywood, the one, the only, Lawrence Welk and his champagne music. Presented by Dodge and your neighborhood Dodge dealer. So Lawrence Welk died in 1992 at age 89. He died of pneumonia. And I've already mentioned that he

died one of the richest men in entertainment. Some of that was due to his syndication deal, and some of that was due to the fact that he had wisely invested his money in things like real estate. He did have a couple of failed ventures, which I thought was funny. He actually had four patents. And one of them was a patent for a musically themed restaurant menu. Another was a patent for an accordion themed tray for serving food at a restaurant. Another was an accordion themed ashtray. And he actually had a failed restaurant venture where he was, burgers were being cooked on like an accordion-shaped grill, and he was calling them squeeze burgers. Ultimately, that did not go over.

But that did not stop him from amassing a tremendous amount of fortune. He was at his peak just behind Bob Hope as one of the richest entertainers. In today's money, it's well over $150 million that he was worth. His license plate read A1, A, N, A2. And if you read it, it perfectly mimics the way he started all of his conducting, which was a one and a two with his really, really cute accent. I'm going to play you one other little clip to close this out. You can find lots of Lawrence Welk videos on YouTube. I find them extremely charming and sentimental. It's one of those things that like will just put a little smile on your face if you're listening to it in the background while you're working. Go find some Lawrence Welk YouTube playlists and it absolutely will give you like a little uplift. It's champagne music. There's nothing to feel sad about when

you're watching or listening to Lawrence Welk. So I would love to know, did you guys grow up knowing about or listening to Lawrence Welk? That would, I'm very interested to see if you knew who he was before this podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I always love to have you along. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to

have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. Good night!