“TV Guide” wasn’t the only one who misjudged the appeal of the North Dakota-born Welk and his brand of “champagne music”. “The Lawrence Welk Show” had its many distractors over the years–too square, not hip, corny as all-get-out. But his critics ended up eating crow: Mr. Welk and his hour-long musical variety series ran for 27 years and more than a thousand episodes–thanks largely to an older, core audience that found the show an oasis of familiarity at a time when music styles were changing very quickly. And when ABC canceled “The Lawrence Welk Show” after a 16-year run for the sin of attracting too many seniors, Welk simply sold the show to local stations and kept on rolling for another decade.

Lawrence Welk was born the son of Russian and German immigrant parents on March 11th, 1903. But he dropped out of school in the fourth grade; he didn’t learn to speak English until his 21st birthday. He tried his hand in such jobs as chicken farming, selling appliances and managing a hotel; he even attempted to sell hamburgers and chewing gum–all with no success. But in the 1920's, Welk found his niche leading a band that specialized in dance music and traditional songs; Welk’s popularity grew in the 1930's and 40's. What was supposed to be a six week engagement at Los Angeles’ Avalon Ballroom ran for ten straight years, drawing thousands of fans. (One booster in the 1930's compared Welk’s musical style to bubbly champagne; Welk later used the term “Champagne Music” to describe what he performed.)

In 1953, Welk and his “Champagne Music Makers” began appearing weekly on local LA television station KTLA. It was the local show’s popularity that led ABC to give Welk a try on national television; he appeared on the network as a summer replacement series in July 1955. Quickly, the show built a loyal audience and ABC brought Welk and his gang back in the fall, where he became a Saturday night institution.

Welk’s policy was simple: Play only music familiar with the audience and showcase the band and a stable of regulars. Best-known were “Champagne Lady” Alice Lon; a quartet of harmonious siblings known as the Lennon Sisters; singers Larry Dean and Joe Feeney; and a host of others who appeared during the early years on “The Lawrence Welk Show”–which was known for a time as “The Dodge Dancing Party,” after its automotive sponsor. (Cast members would do live commercials for Dodge cars and trucks on the show, sometimes even with musical numbers extolling the virtues of such Dodge features as “Torsion-Aire Ride” and “SweptWing Styling”.) And despite Welk’s thick accent and occasional verbal malaprops, viewers accepted the humble bandleader into their homes unconditionally. Proof came during the 1956-57 season when Welk and company soundly defeated NBC’s “Caesars Hour” with the brilliant Sid Caesar and his troupe. By the spring of 1957, Caesar’s show was cancelled, one of the first victims (but not the last) of Welk’s immense popularity.

Starting in October 1956, a second Welk series aired on ABC. “Top Tunes and New Talent” (sponsored by Dodge’s lower-priced stablemate Plymouth) also featured talented performers discovered by Welk and given national exposure; the spin-off show lasted through 1959.

Welk’s conservative outlook on music also extended to personal behavior. The bandleader required his performers to maintain a moral lifestyle; his policies eventually grated on some of his “musical family” members but few complained at first. Welk also kept running tabs on the popularity of his performers, a “fever chart” used letters from viewers to judge which acts were clicking with the home audience, and which ones were not. Those letters led to the departure of some Welk performers; many, however, stayed with the bandleader for many years. One singer who got the ax was Alice Lon; Welk complained about the length of the dresses she wore on the air, saying skirts just above the knee were not appropriate. Lon disagreed, but Welk let her go anyway. Outraged Lon fans quickly wrote Welk, disagreeing with his decision. In one of his few changes of heart, he asked Lon to return to the show; she refused. Welk also had very few minority performers on his show; tap dancer Arthur Duncan was the only African-American regular.

By 1960, Dodge ended sponsorship of Welk’s show, putting the bandleader in a panic. (Welk refused to be sponsored by cigarette or alcohol makers, as per his conservative outlook.) Fortunately, ABC found another sponsor in the form of the vitamin tonic Geritol (which was advertised for people with “tired blood”); Geritol and its parent company became Welk’s new sponsor and stayed with him through the end.

Another change came when Welk scored a number-one chart hit with the 1961 instrumental “Calcutta”. Its success showed the straight-laced bandleader that “good music” and a contemporary beat were not incompatible. Welk began to add more youthful singers on the show at the request of his son, who married series regular and singer Tanya Falan. And while you would never see one of his regulars perform hard rock or heavy metal, he accepted some of the slower and more thoughtful songs from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, along with their contemporaries of the 1960's. The show went to colour in 1965 and remained one of ABC’s highest-rated programs.

In 1968, Welk was dealt a double-blow when the popular Lennon Sisters left to pursue a career outside the show. Welk also fired probably his most-talented regular that year, clarinet player Pete Fountain, after he wanted to “jazz up” a Christmas song on Welk’s holiday show. On September 4th, 1971, the final “Lawrence Welk Show” aired on ABC. While still doing well on Saturday nights, the network felt its core audience was too old to attract new advertisers. Weeks later, Welk brought back his show–with most of his regulars and sponsor Geritol intact–to more than 200 stations across the country. There were virtually no changes to the format, but viewers liked it that way; “The Laurence Welk Show” kept rolling in syndication–with bigger audiences than many network series-- until the last original episode was taped in 1982.

Welk taped new introductions to many of those programs, which aired under the title “Memories With Laurence Welk”. At first, they were sold to individual stations; by 1987, the Welk shows found a new home on public television, where they became a hit with fans who watched the bandleader in his ABC days and newcomers who had just discovered Welk’s “champagne” harmonies. (The Welk shows are still used by individual public TV stations as a lure in their ever-constant fund-raising drives.)

As for Mr. Welk himself, he retired after the series ended and lived a quite nice life on publishing rights and wise real estate investments. He died of pneumonia on May 17th, 1992, leaving behind an estate reportedly worth $100 million

Many of his old regulars still perform across the country, and Welk’s band has made a home in the musical and tourist community of Branson, Missouri.

Lawrence Welk was philosophical about his success–and of the critical barbs he endured during his television career. In an interview for “TV Guide,” he summed up his feelings:

"All of us have a certain sensitivity. But fortunately, with age comes a little more understanding. A mellowness breaks through the wall of hurt feelings we build up through the years.... It's a bad hurt when you're first brought up to face the fact that you're being held up to ridicule. But those hardships are wonderful for us. They make us grow strong.”