Lawrence Welk: Death of a Square (with special guest Fred Armisen)

nineteen seventies. That's when CBS, in search of a younger, more cosmopolitan audience, decided to cancel en mass the rural themed shows that had come to define it. Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, the Beverly Hillbillings, all of them bought the farm. These Ladida city folks don't want our kind around. As one actor put it, at the time, CBS canceled everything with a tree in it. Well, it turns out the

purge spread beyond CBS. Good Night Over at eight. The chief victim was the Lawrence Welk Show, hosted by the heavily accented bandleader and accordion player Lawrence Welk. Thank your Boyfriend Girl, A real dured number. Welk was anything but hip, and his variety show catered to the more senior set

who longed for the music and dancing of yesteryear. So this evening, our show is dedicated to our best friends, the senior citizens of the nation, and we starred with the song that should bring back a few memories one and two. But Fred Armison helped make Welk a household name for a whole new generation when he impersonated the Impressario on Saturday Night Live Now to take us out as a sister rack from the finger Legs making their wonderful Lawrence Welk Show debut. So I knew he would

be the perfect polka partner. Thank You, Thank You. The real Welk and his orchestra served up a soothing stream of bubbly champagne music starting in the nineteen fifties, and although he had built up a fiercely loyal fan base, ABC canceled Welk in nineteen seventy one. But just like the variety show he hall over at CBS, which survived

in syndication, the music didn't die. You see. After the purge, Welk and his musical family lived on, but They'll never takeaway champagne music that pus Lawrence Welk up his car. Could it be seen as something a little bit like and I'm not trying to make a shocking comparison, it's a little bit of like what the Grateful Dead did in that like just keep going, just keep going. This is definitely the first Lawrence Well Grateful Dead comparison ever.

But I think, but I totally hear what you're saying. Fred and I will spend this episode talking all things Welk. There will be laughs, polka, and some pretty crazy tangents. Jacqueline Smith stayed on the show the entire time. Charlie's Angels not Lawrence Walk because why not? From CBS Sunday Morning and Simon and Schuster, I'm Mo Rocca and this is mobituaries. This mobit Lawrence Welk. May seventeenth, nineteen ninety two,

Death of a Square. I remember my family watching, or my parents watching, but not in a way that was like we must watch Lawrence Welk. It was like in the room, in the living room, it was just on atmosphere on Yeah. Fred Armison and I each grew up watching Lawrence Welk in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't exactly a choice. In my case, my grandmother had it on when we went over to her apartment to visit on Sundays, and it's it's not like love or dislike or anything.

It's just I mean, this is a positive thing. It's like a sort of wallpaper, huh, colorful and relaxing. To get us in the mood for today's conversation, we traveled down memory lane by sampling some of Welk's greatest hits. There were the big orchestral numbers like this Stephen Foster Medley. Oh this is great, isn't this? Wouldn't this just bring your pulse right now? Let me let me fill your glass right now. Oh it's slowing, it's already slowing. I'm

so the world has just faded away. Indeed, the show had an almost sedative effect, not just the music, but also the look. Bubbles rolled over the opening credits, revealing a polyester and chiffon fantasia of powder blues, peaches, and cream tones. As the singers and dancers glided in and out of numbers. Chandeliers hung over a dance floor that filled with couples who seemed to emerge from out of nowhere. It felt like a wedding reception happening on another planet.

Now it's my great pleasure through his four young ladies that have grown so very very popular on our two shows, The Wonderful Wonderful Lennin Sisters, Mister Wealth called his company of singers and musicians his musical family. The Lenin Sisters, who literally grew up on the show, became big stars with their almost hypnotizing harmonies. Fucking SENI, wow, it's too so perfect. It's really nice, isn't it. It's so lush. Yeah,

it's funny that there. I'm guessing there was effects in a rock and roll people who thought it was uncool, but it's there's so many similarities, Like I think that I think the Beach Boys probably aren't that much different than this, right, It's like pet sounds for grandparents. Yeah,

it's very soothing. The Lenin's Sisters almost certainly inspired the sister act led by Kristen Wigg in Saturday Night send up of the Welk Show Sisters Do As Sisters Show, We're All Together, Sisters, you were telling me about um when on Saturday Night Live, When do they say, we wanted to sketch about Lawrence walk The fun thing about S and L is that they don't really prepare you

for these things. It's really you know, we have this night of writing and then you show up at the table and right before you sit down, someone says, hey, we have you as David Lee Roth. WHOA okay. So you kind of quickly look up and that's kind of fun. You're like, I think you know, they cast you because they think you might be able to look like that person. But it's kind of fun to do some quick research and go like what was he like, or maybe to

go by your memories. So the Lawrence Welks sketch is um for you know, it's built around Kristin Wiggs character, which is great. That's the framework around it. Denice was the name of character water fun like Chase sing Cars, and so the writer James Anderson clearly had many memories of Lawrence Welk, Like he wrote in a way that obviously all the way from the Finger Lakes he just knew. He just knew it's the show so well that he's a little he might be like, can I tell you

something about James Anderson? Please? Do. It is so great. I toured in the musical Grease with him through Southeast Asia? What before he was a writer on SNL When I was twenty four years old and I think he was a couple of years older. We both forecast in a non union production of the musical Grease that went through Southeast Asia, and I remember hearing afterwards how he had become a writer on SNL when I was so happy for him. Did you know that he wrote the laurens? Oh? Yeah,

he and Kristen did thank you, thank you wonderful? Was her forehead really big? Or was I looking through a couple of others, sony, So they came to you then? Oh? Anyway, so you're Lawrence welk And I already knew enough. I mean, you know, I was familiar enough that I was like, of course, Lawrence Welkum, But then I didn't know enough about him. I knew he had this accent, and because I wanted to get that right, he learned to speaking

which when he was twenty one. Yes, he's speaking German until then and from a German community, a Roman Catholic German community in the Dakotas, educated by German speaking nuns. Yeah, incredible. Now I want you to listen to Welk speaking on his show. We're happy to dedicate this show to the most loyal members of our television audience, the mothers of the nation. And now here Fred's take. Now, before we continue with our Mother's Day show, I'd like to say

something to my mother, mother, thank you. Did you notice I can say the thh and mother, But when I tried to say thank you, I say thank you that's where And so how did you go about doing the accent? I mean, it really was just imitation from you know, hearing him and watching him, and there's something in the d's and something in the tongue in here, and he was very official. This is an announcement, this is something

I am speaking. It's almost like he it's not casual, it's not like, hey, you know, it was very officially I am bringing. And then the d's were sort of in the middle of his mouth as opposed to d is where where I heard it. I'm not saying by the way that I perfected or I got it perfectly right, but that's just strong. Great. But you know, you make a good point that the only thing that wasn't smooth about the Lawrence walk Show was the way he spoke, but even that was added to it, to the appeals, yes,

and to the whole vision of it. Told me, what inspired you to become a musician? Well, O, my family, I believe my brothers and sisters played into sang and my folks my dad played the accordion and my mother sang. So we had a lot of music either. Lawrence Welcome may have had a strong accent, but make no mistake, he was all American. He was born on March eleventh, nineteen oh three, in Strasbourg, North Dakota, the sixth of eight children. His parents were German immigrants who would come

to America by way of the Ukraine. His family was living in a in a sawd house. Yes, an upside down wagon or something with sawd over it right, It's just what I read. Yeah, it's like I'm sure. At that moment, he was like, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna study music and some big band stuff. I'm gonna get singers. I'm going to um have my own TV show. And everyone was like what is TV. He's like, don't worry about it. It's gonna be televised everywhere, and

I'm gonna take over the airwaves. If life were only that easy. In reality, the young Welk had to make a bargain with his parents just to own his first accordion. His father sold a cow to purchase the instrument. In return, Lawrence worked on the farm through his twenty first birthday and handed over any money he made from playing local gigs. Feels very German. Yeah, like here the terms of our deal. Yeah, and Alice de gelt fondine Musik is for the family. Okay,

couldn't no Dan exactly? Do you think that the deal he made with his father motivated him even more in a way? Definitely right? And what I think it's great of his father also to say, Okay, you want to do this, but let's make it serious. You're not just gonna be jamming in the garage of our sawd house with this with your buddies, like you got to be serious. After he paid his debt, Welk left home Accordion in

tow to pursue his musical dreams. Soon enough, he was leaving a ten piece band called the Hotsi Tatsi Boys. That name is about as racy as he ever got and steadily gained a name across the Upper Midwest. Along the way, he married his wife, Fern. They'd stay married for sixty one years and they had three children. Now. The label Champagne Music supposedly came out of a gig in Pittsburgh, where fans said that dancing to Welk's music

was like sipping champagne. Incidentally, Welk did not drink. When TV arrived, Welk moved to Los Angeles and landed his own show in nineteen fifty one on local station KATLA. By nineteen fifty five, he was offered a national audience of over thirty million on Saturday Night on ABC, and here bood thank you, thank you, my good friend, and a pleasant hello. Lawrence Welk shared the secret to his success with Edward R. Murrow on CBS's Person to Person.

I think we had the formula of playing simple harmony, of good harmony along with the melody, the type of music that's the American audience, slige, and it's been most wonderful. I think it must have taken some real I guess he's courage the right word, but it is kind of risky to say this is it. It's just pleasant. There's nothing deeper than that. Is there anything that you can

compare it to today? The experience of watching that kind of pleasant programming, I think any sort of reality TV that has to do with um, either real estate or fixing up a house or something where the uh, that sort of relaxing feeling, like you know, the end of a real estate show or or sort of makeover shows.

You know where it's going. But it's interesting also pickase in sort of turbulent times, people watch HGTV even more than usual because it's it's kind of it's you go to another place with it, yes, and it's I don't know if it's an escape as much as it's just sort of I mean this in a positive way, sort of numbing, just sort of like a little maybe like a little light drink. I want um a cocktail and

a polka. Wealth wasn't edgy, He wasn't surprising. He was aggressively uncool, the subject of parody even back in the fifties for his stilted delivery and musical taste. On his nineteen fifty seven comedy album, satirist Stan Freeberg poked fun at Welcome It's the machine. I'm please turn off the babble machine. Then please turn off the babbo. Thank you.

I'm a sister, but well pushing fifty. When he first got on TV, wasn't trying to please the urban sophisticate, nor was he all that interested in playgating network suits who wanted him to add more comedy and high profile guest stars. They didn't like Welk's accent. They also wanted him to eliminate what they saw is the quirky regionalism of his show Friend and Welcoming draw off County fair Show. There were whole episodes built around songs of the South.

There was a salute to Canada extravaganza, and an entire special dedicated to his home state, and mister Welk almost always made sure to point out where his performers hailed from, and I will bring you up a very canded young man from South Dakota. Here's the gentleman from Fargo, North Dakota. Little Alice from Dela Bablida of Tersa cited from Madisonville. Kim Clucky own Kim n Wealth largely ignored the network

notes and wanted to voted fan base. He knocked one of the most popular comedians of the nineteen fifties, Sid Caesar, off of his Saturday night throne, which made for this great headline. Lawrence Welk may be known as the man who killed Caesar. Did that show get canceled? Yes, Caesar got canceled. Yeah I didn't. They just moved the move to another time sline. I don't know who knows. It's

you know networks. Let's get them on the phone. On top of that, the Welk Orchestra's recording of the German pop song Calcutta went to number one when Welk was fifty seven, making him the oldest person at the time to top the charts. Wow, do you remember that song? I don't remember that. And then he was also an inventor. He patented an accordion shaped ash tray. Oh that's very cool. I want some of these. Let's I mean, I'm not a smoker, but let's have some of these around. Does

it close? He should have designed it so that it closes to you know, I hold the same thing, fold him yea, and actually do something with the ashes, yes, create a diamond. Oh definitely. Well, I don't know if you knew that Lawrence Folk was the first recipient of the Theodore Roosevelt rough Rider Award in nineteen sixty one, which is awarded to North Dakotan's to distinguish North Dakotans really and other recipients. Other famous North Dakotan's Peggy Lee, Oh,

I didn't know that. Who turns one hundred in twenty twenty? Who? She's dead? But she would have been a hundred years old. Angie Dickinson is from North Dakota. I love Angie. Yeah, she's great. Whiz Khalifa is from North Dakota. Away. Yeah. They have to have a little hall of famers and they do, okay great. If I had to choose between the Dakotas, I would choose North Dakota. But I don't think you'll ever have to choose. We don't have to choose. Cheryl Latt is from South Dakota. I don't have a

list of other famous South Dakota. But how did you know about Sarah Latte? I just I was a big Charlie's Angels fan. Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police Academy. You were, yeah, the original three Chary latt is a close like she's class I mean she's she plays Bill Murray of sn That's actually a great that would be a great SAP

analogy question. Bill Murray is too snl as blank is Charlie's Angels and you fill in Cheryl last She's in there early enough, she's she came in season two and she played fair Faucet's sister, Jill Monroe's sister. Oh wow, right,

is um Is Bodley still alive? No, David Doyle's dead And anyway, enough Charlie's Angels for now, at least back to Welk who show remained a safe, unchanging space for loyal, mostly older viewers, and in case anyone needed to be reminded of the audience demographic, the show was sponsored by the vitamin supplement Cheratoll, America's number one tonic, Jeratol hipup and say vitamin plus iron tonic that helped you feel stronger fast. They would have these the shots of the

audience dancing, usually older people and not glamorous. That had to be intentional. I mean it's really smart too, because the audience probably looked like the rest of the audience at home. The studio audience was also overwhelmingly white, as was the makeup of the Musical Family and TV in general in the nineteen sixties. Yet the show did break barriers when tap dancing phenom Arthur Duncan became the first African American regular on any TV variety series when he

joined the show in nineteen sixty four. The King of Taps, Arthur Duncan Uron and Arthur Duncan has repeatedly said Lawrence had his rules, he knew what he wanted, and that's what made the show working. I'm guessing the Lawrence Well Show would fall apart otherwise, you know, people showing off and stuff. Most of the stars on the show really only existed within the Welk universe. There was Myron Florin on the Accordion, Champagne, Lady Norma Zimmer pianist, Joe Anne Castle,

dancers Bobby and Sissy, married singers Guy and Ralna. What I always found sort of interesting as a kid watching it was that the people on it you would never see on other shows, and you never saw I never did. I know it happened occasionally, but I never saw very famous people from outside the show on the show, So it was a parallel universe. It was its own world. I never thought about that. But there were no guest stars.

There weren't like I guess a very famous appearance was made by Jack Benny because he really liked Jack Benny. But otherwise it was almost hermetically sealed. Yeah. Now before we get further into that, you're going to have to pardon the segue. Okay, so we should put on the other headphones, right, headphones. While waiting to hear a musical clip, Fred and I took a slight detour. I think the thing is I never understood the lack of affection for

Shelly Hacks Charlie's Angel. She was the fourth one, and I thought she was fine. She was Tiffany Welch from Boston, so they were trying to do like a sophisticated Angel. I've support it fully, so I guess I just feel like the flack that Shelly Hack got for not being

a great actress like it worked for. And also whatever generation signed on to Charlie's Angels, for them, that is their Charlie's Angel, So one could say she was the Adam Sandler of You know, that's sort of like people, how could you have Adam Sandler on what happens to the original cast, And there's a generation saying no, he's this is our angel. One thing's for sure. None of

the Angels would have graced the Welk stage. One of the early Welk performers, Alice Lawn, was reportedly let go for showing too much leg Welk's show was the ultimate encounter countercultural programming. The orchestra did cover popular songs, they were welcified, though one particular adaptation may not have been such a hit with the older crowd. One Toke over the line sweet Jesus one token, oh boy, the line wow,

how did it happen? Apparently he liked that the lyrics included sweet Jesus, and so he didn't realize what the song did. Someone must have explained it to him, right, I don't know, I've been changing. Is you complain to see? I mean, what did they think? Toke was? I mean, it doesn't mean anything else. Maybe he thought it was a token. I mean, the music does work for the show. But Lawrence Welk was no fool. He was well aware

of what youth culture thought of him. In one memorable episode from nineteen sixty nine, an old hippie in sunglasses and a sheepskin vest ambled out on stage and silenced the orchestra. Is that him? Hold time, You'll see Okay, now listen to what he says. Don't you cats know this polka jazz is strictly from Squaresville. Usually the charm of the show is they don't care about the outside world, which is what I love about it, right, and they're they're kind of all of a sudden we see the

outside world. Even hearing the word hippies, I thought, I don't want to. I was enjoying not even thinking about them. I hope you're going to like my fabulous rapping. Welk appeared as himself with Vivian Vance and Lucille Ball on an episode of Here's Lucy, a spinoff of I Love Lucy, and made fun of his own accent. Oh, I know he'll be wonderful one. That is the worst imitation of Lawrence. He's very aware of the audience. Oh, he's a good sport,

you know. I think of Lawrence Welk in sort of isolation, his own world. Then you see him with a titan with Lucy and she's playing someone who's sort of overwhelmed by the celebrity of Lawrence Welk. It just shows you what a big deal he was. And also he's clearly enjoying himself, which is really nice. I mean, if you're being parodied, you're in good shape. I mean, clearly it's enough of a gamble that people will get the reference. So that's already a sign that things are going really well.

Parodied multiple times and then into the two thousands with SNL, I mean, that's really says a lot about the show. What do you think he would have thought of the parody? I think I'm going to, just as a gay say that maybe he wouldn't have been psyched it. I think you would have said, I don't understand it. The Lennon sisters, Yeah, say they loved it, the SNL parody. They've seen it. Yeah, yeah, they the Lennon sisters have seen it. Yeah, Oh my god.

But it's another group of women that sends us back on a tangent. Jacqueline Smith stayed on the show the entire time. Charlie's Angels, not Lawrence walk and who can we compare her to? Oh, I'm trying to think who's the longest running cast. She's like Tim Meadows, somebody who was like Daryl Hammond. H yeah, yeah, what about So

Kate Jackson didn't stay the whole time? No, Kay Jackson didn't get along with Cheryl Ladd and the whole you know what, the whole Cramer versus Kramer thing, right, I don't know that Meryl Streep, you know, ended up winning an oscar for Cramer Versus Kramer. Kay Jackson had been offered that role and Aaron's spelling wouldn't let her out of the cor Oh and that's I know, I know, it's a terrible I know it. I still to this day, thank how frustrated she must feel about that. Oh that's rough.

That's a rough one. But not as rough as what happened to Welk in nineteen seventy one. That spring ABC canceled his show. His audience was deemed too old and too rural. But Lawrence Welk wasn't going to go quietly. These lyrics are wild. Listening We're going through the music revolution. Fred Ormison and I are listening to the Lawrence Welk cast seeing about the cancelation of their show in nineteen seventy one the same year as the Rural Purge over

at CBS. Is there some anger in this? They've been booted from the network, so there is some fight in there. There was some I'm sure that was when the anchor came from. Yeah, if it sounds like that song Roy Clark sang about he Haws cancelation in our Rural Purge episode, there's a reason for it. It's actually the same song, and the title is quite a mouthful. It's called the Lawrence Welk Heehaw counter Revolution Polka, and it feels to me,

it feels kind of contemporary. This tension, yeah, between what's perceived in the middle of the country and then the people who are controlling what airs nationally. And Lawrence Welk and Hehaw are kind of the two survivors. They go into syndication, and Lawrence Welke after nineteen seventy one, just he's at this point, he's almost seventy nineteen seventy one. He was born in nineteen o three. Wow, would you welcome,

very charming, gentleman, mister Lawrence welcome. Johnny Carson asked Welk about his cancelation on The Tonight Show in nineteen seventy four. You were with seventeen years with ABC, and then did you leave or did they say, hey, you're not going to be on the network anymore. No, we didn't leave, were requested to requested to leave. I've been through that. Everybody hands was had television show. How did you take it? Wasn't it? It was personal? A very difficult thing. But

Welk's sponsors stuck by him, as did his audience. After getting the acts from ABC, his audience actually grew. How many people would you reach every week? With that? I would have made an estimate. I would say we reach approximately around thirty million people. And so he assembles a station group larger than ABC had had for him. So continues getting tens of millions of viewers. Then, and we'll stay on until nineteen eighty one or nineteen eighty two.

We were seeing this stuff between nineteen seventy one in nineteen eighty two, which was the Lawrence Welk sort of I'm not going to be kept down. I Am not going to go down to the rural perge. I mean, it's amazing he he benefited from that move. I feel like, could it be seen as something a little bit like and I'm not trying to make a shocking comparison. It's a little bit of like what the Grateful Dead did.

They made so much money as a sort of live act that there's a sort of like we're just going to do our thing, just keep going, just keep going. This is definitely the first Lawrence Welk Grateful Dead comparison ever. But I think, but I totally hear what you're saying. Lawrence Welk not only made a fortune in television, he managed to create a real estate empire that included a

set of resorts. When he died on May seventeenth, nineteen ninety two, he was reportedly the second richest entertainer in the country after Bob Hope, and his musical variety series was at that point point the longest running in history. But that's not why I admire him. Lawrence Welk knew who he was, and he knew his audience, as he put it, very nice people. He played for theirs was an almost sacred bond. He wasn't going to let network executives interfere with that, and when they did, he went

his own way. That kind of rebel spirit is something we usually associate with young people, but it was lived out by a man in his late sixties. Lawrence Welk was a square yes and a badass to this day. His show can be seen in reruns on nearly three hundred public television stations, and it's still the highest rated syndicated series on public TV. Not bad for a kid from North Dakota who grew up in a sowd house. Now from all of har Musica family, good health and

good night. Next time on Mobituaries, we take the show on the road. Seth Paul Prudome is not all together now, Oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say, Don Deloise and Unison, I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can

subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Megan Marcus, Sam Egan and me Morocca. It was edited by Sam Egan and engineered by Nathan Miller. Indispensable support from Lucy Kirk Genius Daneski out there to Robina, Harry Wood, Richard Wore, and everyone at CBS News Radio Special thanks to Susie Down and of course to my friend the great Fred Armisson, who

can currently be seen in LUSAT Spookies on HBO. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart and is always undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. That sound again, Charlie is your therapist there again? Oh yes, and still hard at work showing me the upper body development exercises. What about the lower body, Charlie, Well, actually there doesn't seem to be a problem in that area, Isn't that great? Charlie's always trying to improve himself. At

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