Wunnerful, Wunnerful: The Champagne Music Thread.

[Stanley Doble]

I have heard from those who attended his live performances that the Welk band could swing harder than you would think.

Their first radio sponsor required them to draw it mild, and they soon developed a cornball fan base they never abandoned.

 

[Stanley Doble]

This is truly frighteningly shlocky syrupy stuff - so syrupy in fact, you'll get diabetes from watching it. I'm certain of it. My mum & dad were of the WW2/Depression generation and they loathed Welk and would audibly snort or utter an epithet if they saw him while flipping the channel.

The only man more annoying to me is Dick Clark. He is to RnR what Welk is to swing. The Deacon of Dreck.

If you think Welk is bad, better stay away from Liberace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flWOH9fm7S0

Hey, I warned you.

 

[Matt Crunk]

If you think Welk is bad, better stay away from Liberace.

This reminds me of meeting a kid once while on a camping trip with my grandparents. We (the other kid and I) were both about eleven or twelve at the time. This was the late '70s and I was a huge fan of the rock group KISS. So I pull out this photo album full of photos and magazine clippings I'd collected of the band. Well, this kid goes back to his camper and returns with a similar photo album dedicated to Liberace!! I kid you not. Then he starts describing what it's like at his concerts. I'm sure I looked at him like he had three heads or something.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother came of age during the early years of the "rock 'n' roll era," and she absolutely despised what people today consider "fifties music." She thought Elvis was a vulgar, disgusting lout. Her favorite artist was, and remains to this day, Liberace. The only time in her life she ever visited New York City was when she was eighteen -- and she made a point of seeing her idol perform at Radio City Music Hall, standing up and screaming in true bobby-soxer style with hundreds of other teenage girls.

She also still refuses to believe any of those stories you hear about Liberace. "They only say that," she insists, "because he was good to his mother."

Welk was always a favorite in our household -- we all enjoyed his program, not just the old folks. His was a classic Golden Era stage-show band that survived unscathed into the sixties and seventies.

There were many such bands in the Era -- the hot jitterbug bands were always a minority. Sweet bands were more common, and away from the East and West Coasts, and away from college towns, considerably more popular with listeners. If you look at the radio schedules of the day, the stylized sweet/show bands like Kay Kyser, Hal Kemp, Horace Heidt, Sammy Kaye, Blue Barron, Chuck Foster, Welk, and so forth, and the businessman's-bounce straight dance orchestras like Vincent Lopez or George Hall generally got more airtime than the hard-swinging outfits. In Chicago, for some reason, sweet bands were *always* more popular than swing.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I understand that at one time there were 28 Paul Whiteman Orchestras playing all over the US. Not sure how you would characterize Whiteman's music but he called it symphonic jazz, and was a top draw during the twenties and thirties.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Welk was always a favorite in our household -- we all enjoyed his program, not just the old folks. His was a classic Golden Era stage-show band that survived unscathed into the sixties and seventies.

When I read the word, "unscathed," Lizzie, the first thing that came to mind was Dale and Gail performing, "One Toke Over the Line" in the 70's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tdmaEhMHE