Lawrence Welk

 Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992)

Welk was a musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted the television program The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large audience of radio, television, and live-performance fans (and critics) as "champagne music". During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that specialized in dance tunes and "sweet" music (during this period, bands which played light, melodic music were referred to as "sweet bands" to distinguish them from the more rhythmic and assertive "hot" bands of artists like Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington). Initially, the band traveled around the country by car. They were too poor to rent rooms, so they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. The term champagne music was derived from an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, when a dancer referred to his band's sound as "light and bubbly as champagne." In 1951, Welk settled in Los Angeles. The same year, he began producing The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA in Los Angeles, where it was broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach. The show became a local hit and was picked up by ABC in June 1955. As Welk's show mainly targeted older viewers, they seldom played recent music with which the audience might not be familiar. Welk had a number of instrumental hits, including a cover of the song "Yellow Bird." His highest charting record was "Calcutta", written by Heino Gaze, which achieved hit status in 1961.

Welk's insistence on wholesome entertainment led him to be a somewhat stern taskmaster at times. For example, he fired Alice Lon, at the time the show's "Champagne Lady," because he believed she was showing too much leg. Despite its staid reputation, The Lawrence Welk Show nonetheless kept up with the times and never limited itself strictly to music of the big-band era. During the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, the show incorporated material by such contemporary sources as the Beatles, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the Everly Brothers and Paul Williams, all arranged in a format that was easily digestible to older viewers. Welk completely retired from all public appearances in 1992 at the age of 89. He died on May 17, 1992 in his Santa Monica apartment, surrounded by his family. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, in Culver City, California.