Record One
- Pennsylvania Polka
- Hoop De Do
- It's A Small World
- Julida Polka
- Tinker Polka
- Little Brown Jug / Skip To My Lou / Polly Wolly Doodle Medley
- Beer Barrel Polka
- The Happy Wanderer
- Clarinet Polka
- The Kit Kat Polka
- Emilia Polka
- Tavern In The Town / Hot Time In The Old Town Medley
Record Two
- Jenny Lind Polka
- Helena Polka
- Strip Polka
- Champagne Polka
- Muziky Muziky
- Baruska
- Just Because
- Friendly Tavern Polka
- Tic Toc Polka
- Double Eagle Polka
- Chihuahua Polka
- Achtung Los
24 Great Polkas
Lawrence Welk, and his accordionist, Myron Floren are as famous for Polka Music as any musicians in the United States today.
Via his nationally syndicated Television show and his network show which preceeded it for 16 years, Lawrence Welk has exposed an average of 40 million Americans a week to the Welk brand of wholesome entertainment. The Polka in particular has played an important part in these shows.
(from the original liner notes)
Produced by George Cates, Myron Floren, Lawrence Welk & Randy Wood;
Arrangements by George Cates, Myron Floren, Curt Ramsey, Joe Rizzo & Frank Scott;
Recorded at Annex Studios, Los Angeles
It may or may not be true that
Lawrence Welk
is the most popular easy listening artist of all time, but it's
difficult to think of anyone who is more prominently associated with the
genre.
Welk's long-running TV variety show was a huge success in its time, and remains an enduring favorite in reruns. And while
Welk
recorded prolifically, his true musical legacy was built through the
doggedly innocuous, wholesome aesthetic of his show. He was an unlikely
television star -- his thick German accent and on-camera stiffness would
have been crippling liabilities for many other hosts. Yet
Welk
was beloved in spite of -- or, perhaps, because of -- those
limitations, mainly because he knew his audience and paid close
attention to what it wanted. In the process, he created a stable of
familiar performers whose regular appearances were eagerly anticipated
by his viewers. Demanding and particular,
Welk
put them through rigorous rehearsals, and aggressively enforced the
inoffensive, nonthreatening tone that made the show so palatable for
viewers of all ages. For people who considered themselves remotely hip,
that tone made
Welk's
name synonymous with sanitized entertainment, and an easy target for
derision. He and his acts were often dismissed as hopelessly square, by
turns fluffy or sentimental, and reflecting an idealized purity that
didn't really exist anywhere. He also drew criticism for the extreme
scarcity of minority performers on the show, seemingly another symptom
of its kowtowing to white-bread Middle America. Yet that essential
conservatism helped give The Lawrence Welk Show an amazingly lasting
appeal; after it lost its network slot, it spent more than a decade in
syndication with greater success than ever, and found new life when its
reruns became the chief source of revenue for many public television
stations across the country.
Welk
was born on March 11, 1903, in the small, heavily German town of
Strasburg, ND. His parents had fled the unrest in Alsace-Lorraine, the
disputed border region between Germany and France, and settled on a
small farm on the outskirts of town. One of eight children,
Welk
dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work on the farm, and
spoke almost nothing but German up until his teen years. He learned to
play polka music on his father's accordion, and at age 13, he began
performing professionally at local dances and social events. Four years
later, he convinced his father to buy him his own accordion; in
exchange, he promised to work on the farm until he was 21, and to give
all his musical earnings to the family up to that point.
Upon turning 21,
Welk
took up music full-time, playing in various polka and vaudeville-style
bands around the area. He eventually formed his own quartet, the
Lawrence Welk Novelty Orchestra, and in 1927 decided to head south to
New Orleans in search of work. On the way, the group stopped in Yankton,
SD, and was offered a one-week deal to perform on local radio; they
were such a success that they were signed to a permanent contract.
Welk's
band stayed headquartered in Yankton for the next ten years, playing
both locally and all over the Midwest; they went through several name
changes, including the Hotsy Totsy Boys, the Honolulu Fruit Gum
Orchestra, and the Biggest Little Band in America.
In 1937,
Welk
moved the group to Omaha, and it soon grew into a ten-piece outfit,
playing swinging dance music in the so-called "sweet band" style. A 1938
gig at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh prompted one fan to compare
Welk's light, bubbly music to champagne, and
Welk adopted the tag from then on, describing his sound as "champagne music." In 1940, at the height of the big-band era,
Welk secured a booking for his group at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago; it proved such a success that
Welk
moved his family to Chicago and wound up with a ten-year residency
there. The waning popularity of big bands subsequently forced
Welk
to go back on tour to make ends meet. In 1951, he made a successful
appearance on a late-night TV show in Los Angeles. The idea of working
in television captured his imagination, and led him to move to L.A. the
following year.
The Lawrence Welk Show made its national debut in
1955 as a midseason replacement on ABC. Over the next few years, it
amassed enough of a following to become one of the network's most
popular shows, making catch phrases out of
Welk's
oft-repeated "wunnerful, wunnerful" and "ah-one and-a two." Its
trademark visual style was built around low-budget cardboard props,
bright pastel colors, and bubble-blowing machines.
Welk
played the roles of host and bandleader, populating his play list with
pleasant arrangements of well-established standards and pop hits. The
emphasis was always on songs his audience would already recognize,
though he and musical director
George Cates did showcase comic novelty songs and the polka music
Welk had grown up with as well.
Welk built up a solid base of recurring featured performers, the best known of which included accordionist/assistant conductor
Myron Floren, ragtime pianist Jo Ann Castle, singing group
the Lennon Sisters, Dixieland clarinetist
Pete Fountain, Irish-style singer Joe Feeney, tap dancer Arthur Duncan (the show's lone African-American regular), dancer and former
Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess (who went through a succession of female dance partners), and a featured female singer dubbed the Champagne Lady.
Welk
established his reputation as a hard-nosed disciplinarian early on. He
never allowed comedians to appear on the show, for fear of an off-color
joke slipping through, and he refused alcohol and cigarette products as
sponsors. In 1959, he fired the first Champagne Lady, Alice Lon, for
displaying too much leg during a telecast. Irate viewers wrote in to
protest the firing, and
Welk tried to hire her back, but she would have none of it; her replacement was
Norma Zimmer, who remained with the show for quite some time. Burgess' female dance partners were subject to the same kinds of whims, and
Fountain -- arguably the most talented regular -- reportedly left over what
Welk
felt was an inappropriately jazzed-up Christmas song. More problematic
for some modern-day viewers might be the show's watered-down handling of
ethnicity; while not really offensive for its time, some of the ethnic
theme shows would be considered embarrassing by today's standards, and
dancer Duncan's mannerisms came in for criticism as the civil rights era
dawned.
Meanwhile,
Welk
had been managing a productive career as a recording artist. He had
released records in his early days, but naturally he hit a whole new
plateau once he had the power of television behind him. Between 1956 and
1963, 19 of
Welk's LPs reached the Top 20, and ten of those made the Top Ten.
Welk
achieved his greatest popularity on record with the Dot label during
the early '60s, spearheaded by the smash instrumental hit "Calcutta,"
which became his only number one -- and, for that matter, Top Ten --
single in 1961. The accompanying LP of the same name also reached number
one, and five more albums --
Last Date,
Yellow Bird,
Moon River,
Young World, and
Baby Elephant Walk and Theme From the Brothers Grimm -- climbed into the Top Ten over the next two years. Although
Welk never equaled that run of success, he continued to chart albums on a regular basis up through 1973.
In 1971, ABC canceled The Lawrence Welk Show, feeling that its target audience was growing too old to appeal to advertisers.
Welk
quickly secured a syndication deal that placed his show on over 200
stations around the country, and kept right on producing it up through
1982. As the '70s wore on, many of the old performers retired or moved
on, to be replaced by similar acts that essentially followed the show's
long-established blueprint. But even if there were fewer individual
standouts, the show still filled an audience niche that otherwise went
largely ignored. Following his retirement in 1982,
Welk
settled in Santa Monica, CA, and soon established a combination
resort/retirement community, the Lawrence Welk Country Club Village, in
Escondido. He also acquired a vast music publishing catalog, as well as
other real estate holdings.
Starting in 1987, some public
television stations began airing reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, to
the delight of an elderly viewing base. As the '90s wore on, public TV
came to rely more and more on The Lawrence Welk Show as a staple
moneymaker during pledge drives, thus ensuring its continued
availability and popularity well after
Welk's
passing: he died of pneumonia on May 17, 1992. The band he once led
continued to perform at the Champagne Music Theater in Branson, MO.
(by Steve Huey from allmusic.com)
Most famous as a regular performer and assistant conductor on The Lawrence Welk Show,
Myron Floren was also one of polka's finest accordion players.
Floren was born of Norwegian parentage on November 5, 1919, in Roslyn, SD; although some sources list nearby Webster instead,
Floren's family actually lived on a farm in between the two towns, and Roslyn claims him as its own.
Floren
first heard the accordion at a neighbor's house party when he was seven
years old, and quickly talked his father into buying him one of his
own. He took several piano lessons, during which he learned to read
music, but as an accordion player, he was otherwise essentially
self-taught.
Floren
made his professional debut at the Day County Fair when he was only
eight. He later went on to study music at Augustana College in Sioux
Falls, where he earned extra money by giving accordion lessons (he would
eventually marry one of his students, Berdyne). In 1939,
Floren
got his own radio show on the local station KSOO, playing mostly polkas
and Scandinavian-style waltzes. He attempted to enlist in the Air Force
during World War II, but was turned down because of complications from a
near-fatal bout with rheumatic fever in his early teens; instead, he
joined the USO and entertained troops near the European front. In 1946,
he and his wife moved to St. Louis, where he performed regularly on
local radio with a country band called the Buckeye Four; he also made
his television debut locally in 1948.
In 1950,
Floren and his wife attended a performance by
Lawrence Welk, whom
Floren had admired since
Welk's days on South Dakota radio.
Welk had also heard of
Floren, and invited him on-stage to do a number.
Floren launched into a version of "Lady of Spain" that drew a loud ovation from the crowd, and
Welk offered him a job with his band.
Floren went on tour for the next year, until
Welk
settled the band into a regular local television spot in Southern
California. The Lawrence Welk Show was picked up nationally by ABC in
1955, and
Floren assumed a highly prominent role second only to the host himself.
Floren and
Welk were both accordion players who shared a taste for polka, and
Floren was featured on a polka number virtually every week; plus, he served as the
Welk band's manager and as an assistant conductor, directing the band when
Welk himself picked up his instrument. When ABC canceled the series in 1971,
Welk secured a syndication deal that kept the show on over 200 stations until 1982, and
Floren stayed for the duration of its run.
In the meantime,
Floren released a number of polka and waltz albums on the
Welk Music Group-run Ranwood Records label, including a popular collaboration with
Welk on
World's Greatest Polkas. After the
Welk show went off the air,
Floren
expanded his touring commitments, playing with big bands around the
country and making regular appearances at festivals and ethnic events.
He also performed frequently with the Jimmy Sturr Band. In 1998,
Floren
suffered a small stroke; although he recovered completely, his
treatment revealed the presence of colon cancer, for which he underwent
surgery. He was able to return to the road for a time, but further
health problems began to affect his ability to maintain such a busy
schedule.
(by Steve Huey from allmusic.com)
