Speaker 1: Hi, How are you doing? Oh great, how are you
Speaker 1: doing good? Thanks for having me. Oh, I love that
Speaker 1: you're here. I'm so glad that I ran into you
Speaker 1: on the street that day. I believe in stuff like
Speaker 1: that sometimes. I'm in the studio today with my friend, actor,
Speaker 1: comedian and musician Fred Armison. He's here for a Mobituari's
Speaker 1: first a sequel episode. Earlier in the season, I told
Speaker 1: you the story of television's rural purge of the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. That's when CBS, in search of a younger,
Speaker 1: more cosmopolitan audience, decided to cancel en mass the rural
Speaker 1: themed shows that had come to define it. Green Acres,
Speaker 1: Petticoat Junction, the Beverly Hillbillings, all of them bought the farm.
Speaker 1: These Ladida city folks don't want our kind around. As
Speaker 1: one actor put it, at the time, CBS canceled everything
Speaker 1: with a tree in it. Well, it turns out the
Speaker 1: purge spread beyond CBS. Good Night Over at eight. The
Speaker 1: chief victim was the Lawrence Welk Show, hosted by the
Speaker 1: heavily accented bandleader and accordion player Lawrence Welk. Thank your
Speaker 1: Boyfriend Girl, A real dured number. Welk was anything but hip,
Speaker 1: and his variety show catered to the more senior set
Speaker 1: who longed for the music and dancing of yesteryear. So
Speaker 1: this evening, our show is dedicated to our best friends,
Speaker 1: the senior citizens of the nation, and we starred with
Speaker 1: the song that should bring back a few memories one
Speaker 1: and two. But Fred Armison helped make Welk a household
Speaker 1: name for a whole new generation when he impersonated the
Speaker 1: Impressario on Saturday Night Live Now to take us out
Speaker 1: as a sister rack from the finger Legs making their
Speaker 1: wonderful Lawrence Welk Show debut. So I knew he would
Speaker 1: be the perfect polka partner. Thank You, Thank You. The
Speaker 1: real Welk and his orchestra served up a soothing stream
Speaker 1: of bubbly champagne music starting in the nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: although he had built up a fiercely loyal fan base,
Speaker 1: ABC canceled Welk in nineteen seventy one. But just like
Speaker 1: the variety show he hall over at CBS, which survived
Speaker 1: in syndication, the music didn't die. You see. After the purge,
Speaker 1: Welk and his musical family lived on, but They'll never
Speaker 1: takeaway champagne music that pus Lawrence Welk up his car.
Speaker 1: Could it be seen as something a little bit like
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to make a shocking comparison, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of like what the Grateful Dead did
Speaker 1: in that like just keep going, just keep going. This
Speaker 1: is definitely the first Lawrence Well Grateful Dead comparison ever.
Speaker 1: But I think, but I totally hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Fred and I will spend this episode talking all things Welk.
Speaker 1: There will be laughs, polka, and some pretty crazy tangents.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Smith stayed on the show the entire time. Charlie's
Speaker 1: Angels not Lawrence Walk because why not? From CBS Sunday
Speaker 1: Morning and Simon and Schuster, I'm Mo Rocca and this
Speaker 1: is mobituaries. This mobit Lawrence Welk. May seventeenth, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Death of a Square. I remember my family watching, or
Speaker 1: my parents watching, but not in a way that was
Speaker 1: like we must watch Lawrence Welk. It was like in
Speaker 1: the room, in the living room, it was just on
Speaker 1: atmosphere on Yeah. Fred Armison and I each grew up
Speaker 1: watching Lawrence Welk in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: a choice. In my case, my grandmother had it on
Speaker 1: when we went over to her apartment to visit on Sundays,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not like love or dislike or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just I mean, this is a positive thing. It's
Speaker 1: like a sort of wallpaper, huh, colorful and relaxing. To
Speaker 1: get us in the mood for today's conversation, we traveled
Speaker 1: down memory lane by sampling some of Welk's greatest hits.
Speaker 1: There were the big orchestral numbers like this Stephen Foster Medley.
Speaker 1: Oh this is great, isn't this? Wouldn't this just bring
Speaker 1: your pulse right now? Let me let me fill your
Speaker 1: glass right now. Oh it's slowing, it's already slowing. I'm
Speaker 1: so the world has just faded away. Indeed, the show
Speaker 1: had an almost sedative effect, not just the music, but
Speaker 1: also the look. Bubbles rolled over the opening credits, revealing
Speaker 1: a polyester and chiffon fantasia of powder blues, peaches, and
Speaker 1: cream tones. As the singers and dancers glided in and
Speaker 1: out of numbers. Chandeliers hung over a dance floor that
Speaker 1: filled with couples who seemed to emerge from out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: It felt like a wedding reception happening on another planet.
Speaker 1: Now it's my great pleasure through his four young ladies
Speaker 1: that have grown so very very popular on our two shows,
Speaker 1: The Wonderful Wonderful Lennin Sisters, Mister Wealth called his company
Speaker 1: of singers and musicians his musical family. The Lenin Sisters,
Speaker 1: who literally grew up on the show, became big stars
Speaker 1: with their almost hypnotizing harmonies. Fucking SENI, wow, it's too
Speaker 1: so perfect. It's really nice, isn't it. It's so lush. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny that there. I'm guessing there was effects in
Speaker 1: a rock and roll people who thought it was uncool,
Speaker 1: but it's there's so many similarities, Like I think that
Speaker 1: I think the Beach Boys probably aren't that much different
Speaker 1: than this, right, It's like pet sounds for grandparents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very soothing. The Lenin's Sisters almost certainly inspired the
Speaker 1: sister act led by Kristen Wigg in Saturday Night send
Speaker 1: up of the Welk Show Sisters Do As Sisters Show,
Speaker 1: We're All Together, Sisters, you were telling me about um
Speaker 1: when on Saturday Night Live, When do they say, we
Speaker 1: wanted to sketch about Lawrence walk The fun thing about
Speaker 1: S and L is that they don't really prepare you
Speaker 1: for these things. It's really you know, we have this
Speaker 1: night of writing and then you show up at the
Speaker 1: table and right before you sit down, someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: we have you as David Lee Roth. WHOA okay. So
Speaker 1: you kind of quickly look up and that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: You're like, I think you know, they cast you because
Speaker 1: they think you might be able to look like that person.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of fun to do some quick research
Speaker 1: and go like what was he like, or maybe to
Speaker 1: go by your memories. So the Lawrence Welks sketch is
Speaker 1: um for you know, it's built around Kristin Wiggs character,
Speaker 1: which is great. That's the framework around it. Denice was
Speaker 1: the name of character water fun like Chase sing Cars,
Speaker 1: and so the writer James Anderson clearly had many memories
Speaker 1: of Lawrence Welk, Like he wrote in a way that
Speaker 1: obviously all the way from the Finger Lakes he just knew.
Speaker 1: He just knew it's the show so well that he's
Speaker 1: a little he might be like, can I tell you
Speaker 1: something about James Anderson? Please? Do. It is so great.
Speaker 1: I toured in the musical Grease with him through Southeast Asia?
Speaker 1: What before he was a writer on SNL When I
Speaker 1: was twenty four years old and I think he was
Speaker 1: a couple of years older. We both forecast in a
Speaker 1: non union production of the musical Grease that went through
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, and I remember hearing afterwards how he had
Speaker 1: become a writer on SNL when I was so happy
Speaker 1: for him. Did you know that he wrote the laurens? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he and Kristen did thank you, thank you wonderful? Was
Speaker 1: her forehead really big? Or was I looking through a
Speaker 1: couple of others, sony, So they came to you then? Oh? Anyway,
Speaker 1: so you're Lawrence welk And I already knew enough. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I was familiar enough that I was like,
Speaker 1: of course, Lawrence Welkum, But then I didn't know enough
Speaker 1: about him. I knew he had this accent, and because
Speaker 1: I wanted to get that right, he learned to speaking
Speaker 1: which when he was twenty one. Yes, he's speaking German
Speaker 1: until then and from a German community, a Roman Catholic
Speaker 1: German community in the Dakotas, educated by German speaking nuns. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1: Now I want you to listen to Welk speaking on
Speaker 1: his show. We're happy to dedicate this show to the
Speaker 1: most loyal members of our television audience, the mothers of
Speaker 1: the nation. And now here Fred's take. Now, before we
Speaker 1: continue with our Mother's Day show, I'd like to say
Speaker 1: something to my mother, mother, thank you. Did you notice
Speaker 1: I can say the thh and mother, But when I
Speaker 1: tried to say thank you, I say thank you that's
Speaker 1: where And so how did you go about doing the accent?
Speaker 1: I mean, it really was just imitation from you know,
Speaker 1: hearing him and watching him, and there's something in the
Speaker 1: d's and something in the tongue in here, and he
Speaker 1: was very official. This is an announcement, this is something
Speaker 1: I am speaking. It's almost like he it's not casual,
Speaker 1: it's not like, hey, you know, it was very officially
Speaker 1: I am bringing. And then the d's were sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle of his mouth as opposed to d
Speaker 1: is where where I heard it. I'm not saying by
Speaker 1: the way that I perfected or I got it perfectly right,
Speaker 1: but that's just strong. Great. But you know, you make
Speaker 1: a good point that the only thing that wasn't smooth
Speaker 1: about the Lawrence walk Show was the way he spoke,
Speaker 1: but even that was added to it, to the appeals, yes,
Speaker 1: and to the whole vision of it. Told me, what
Speaker 1: inspired you to become a musician? Well, O, my family,
Speaker 1: I believe my brothers and sisters played into sang and
Speaker 1: my folks my dad played the accordion and my mother sang.
Speaker 1: So we had a lot of music either. Lawrence Welcome
Speaker 1: may have had a strong accent, but make no mistake,
Speaker 1: he was all American. He was born on March eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three, in Strasbourg, North Dakota, the sixth of
Speaker 1: eight children. His parents were German immigrants who would come
Speaker 1: to America by way of the Ukraine. His family was
Speaker 1: living in a in a sawd house. Yes, an upside
Speaker 1: down wagon or something with sawd over it right, It's
Speaker 1: just what I read. Yeah, it's like I'm sure. At
Speaker 1: that moment, he was like, you know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna study music and some big band stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get singers. I'm going to um have my own
Speaker 1: TV show. And everyone was like what is TV. He's like,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. It's gonna be televised everywhere, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take over the airwaves. If life were only
Speaker 1: that easy. In reality, the young Welk had to make
Speaker 1: a bargain with his parents just to own his first accordion.
Speaker 1: His father sold a cow to purchase the instrument. In return,
Speaker 1: Lawrence worked on the farm through his twenty first birthday
Speaker 1: and handed over any money he made from playing local gigs.
Speaker 1: Feels very German. Yeah, like here the terms of our deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Alice de gelt fondine Musik is for the family. Okay,
Speaker 1: couldn't no Dan exactly? Do you think that the deal
Speaker 1: he made with his father motivated him even more in
Speaker 1: a way? Definitely right? And what I think it's great
Speaker 1: of his father also to say, Okay, you want to
Speaker 1: do this, but let's make it serious. You're not just
Speaker 1: gonna be jamming in the garage of our sawd house
Speaker 1: with this with your buddies, like you got to be serious.
Speaker 1: After he paid his debt, Welk left home Accordion in
Speaker 1: tow to pursue his musical dreams. Soon enough, he was
Speaker 1: leaving a ten piece band called the Hotsi Tatsi Boys.
Speaker 1: That name is about as racy as he ever got
Speaker 1: and steadily gained a name across the Upper Midwest. Along
Speaker 1: the way, he married his wife, Fern. They'd stay married
Speaker 1: for sixty one years and they had three children. Now.
Speaker 1: The label Champagne Music supposedly came out of a gig
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh, where fans said that dancing to Welk's music
Speaker 1: was like sipping champagne. Incidentally, Welk did not drink. When
Speaker 1: TV arrived, Welk moved to Los Angeles and landed his
Speaker 1: own show in nineteen fifty one on local station KATLA.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty five, he was offered a national audience
Speaker 1: of over thirty million on Saturday Night on ABC, and
Speaker 1: here bood thank you, thank you, my good friend, and
Speaker 1: a pleasant hello. Lawrence Welk shared the secret to his
Speaker 1: success with Edward R. Murrow on CBS's Person to Person.
Speaker 1: I think we had the formula of playing simple harmony,
Speaker 1: of good harmony along with the melody, the type of
Speaker 1: music that's the American audience, slige, and it's been most wonderful.
Speaker 1: I think it must have taken some real I guess
Speaker 1: he's courage the right word, but it is kind of
Speaker 1: risky to say this is it. It's just pleasant. There's
Speaker 1: nothing deeper than that. Is there anything that you can
Speaker 1: compare it to today? The experience of watching that kind
Speaker 1: of pleasant programming, I think any sort of reality TV
Speaker 1: that has to do with um, either real estate or
Speaker 1: fixing up a house or something where the uh, that
Speaker 1: sort of relaxing feeling, like you know, the end of
Speaker 1: a real estate show or or sort of makeover shows.
Speaker 1: You know where it's going. But it's interesting also pickase
Speaker 1: in sort of turbulent times, people watch HGTV even more
Speaker 1: than usual because it's it's kind of it's you go
Speaker 1: to another place with it, yes, and it's I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's an escape as much as it's just
Speaker 1: sort of I mean this in a positive way, sort
Speaker 1: of numbing, just sort of like a little maybe like
Speaker 1: a little light drink. I want um a cocktail and
Speaker 1: a polka. Wealth wasn't edgy, He wasn't surprising. He was
Speaker 1: aggressively uncool, the subject of parody even back in the
Speaker 1: fifties for his stilted delivery and musical taste. On his
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven comedy album, satirist Stan Freeberg poked fun
Speaker 1: at Welcome It's the machine. I'm please turn off the
Speaker 1: babble machine. Then please turn off the babbo. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm a sister, but well pushing fifty. When he first
Speaker 1: got on TV, wasn't trying to please the urban sophisticate,
Speaker 1: nor was he all that interested in playgating network suits
Speaker 1: who wanted him to add more comedy and high profile
Speaker 1: guest stars. They didn't like Welk's accent. They also wanted
Speaker 1: him to eliminate what they saw is the quirky regionalism
Speaker 1: of his show Friend and Welcoming draw off County fair Show.
Speaker 1: There were whole episodes built around songs of the South.
Speaker 1: There was a salute to Canada extravaganza, and an entire
Speaker 1: special dedicated to his home state, and mister Welk almost
Speaker 1: always made sure to point out where his performers hailed from,
Speaker 1: and I will bring you up a very canded young
Speaker 1: man from South Dakota. Here's the gentleman from Fargo, North Dakota.
Speaker 1: Little Alice from Dela Bablida of Tersa cited from Madisonville.
Speaker 1: Kim Clucky own Kim n Wealth largely ignored the network
Speaker 1: notes and wanted to voted fan base. He knocked one
Speaker 1: of the most popular comedians of the nineteen fifties, Sid Caesar,
Speaker 1: off of his Saturday night throne, which made for this
Speaker 1: great headline. Lawrence Welk may be known as the man
Speaker 1: who killed Caesar. Did that show get canceled? Yes, Caesar
Speaker 1: got canceled. Yeah I didn't. They just moved the move
Speaker 1: to another time sline. I don't know who knows. It's
Speaker 1: you know networks. Let's get them on the phone. On
Speaker 1: top of that, the Welk Orchestra's recording of the German
Speaker 1: pop song Calcutta went to number one when Welk was
Speaker 1: fifty seven, making him the oldest person at the time
Speaker 1: to top the charts. Wow, do you remember that song?
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. And then he was also an inventor.
Speaker 1: He patented an accordion shaped ash tray. Oh that's very cool.
Speaker 1: I want some of these. Let's I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: a smoker, but let's have some of these around. Does
Speaker 1: it close? He should have designed it so that it
Speaker 1: closes to you know, I hold the same thing, fold
Speaker 1: him yea, and actually do something with the ashes, yes,
Speaker 1: create a diamond. Oh definitely. Well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you knew that Lawrence Folk was the first recipient of
Speaker 1: the Theodore Roosevelt rough Rider Award in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: which is awarded to North Dakotan's to distinguish North Dakotans
Speaker 1: really and other recipients. Other famous North Dakotan's Peggy Lee, Oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Who turns one hundred in twenty twenty? Who?
Speaker 1: She's dead? But she would have been a hundred years old.
Speaker 1: Angie Dickinson is from North Dakota. I love Angie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's great. Whiz Khalifa is from North Dakota. Away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They have to have a little hall of famers and
Speaker 1: they do, okay great. If I had to choose between
Speaker 1: the Dakotas, I would choose North Dakota. But I don't
Speaker 1: think you'll ever have to choose. We don't have to choose.
Speaker 1: Cheryl Latt is from South Dakota. I don't have a
Speaker 1: list of other famous South Dakota. But how did you
Speaker 1: know about Sarah Latte? I just I was a big
Speaker 1: Charlie's Angels fan. Once upon a time, there were three
Speaker 1: little girls who went to the police Academy. You were, yeah,
Speaker 1: the original three Chary latt is a close like she's
Speaker 1: class I mean she's she plays Bill Murray of sn
Speaker 1: That's actually a great that would be a great SAP
Speaker 1: analogy question. Bill Murray is too snl as blank is
Speaker 1: Charlie's Angels and you fill in Cheryl last She's in
Speaker 1: there early enough, she's she came in season two and
Speaker 1: she played fair Faucet's sister, Jill Monroe's sister. Oh wow, right,
Speaker 1: is um Is Bodley still alive? No, David Doyle's dead
Speaker 1: And anyway, enough Charlie's Angels for now, at least back
Speaker 1: to Welk who show remained a safe, unchanging space for loyal,
Speaker 1: mostly older viewers, and in case anyone needed to be
Speaker 1: reminded of the audience demographic, the show was sponsored by
Speaker 1: the vitamin supplement Cheratoll, America's number one tonic, Jeratol hipup
Speaker 1: and say vitamin plus iron tonic that helped you feel
Speaker 1: stronger fast. They would have these the shots of the
Speaker 1: audience dancing, usually older people and not glamorous. That had
Speaker 1: to be intentional. I mean it's really smart too, because
Speaker 1: the audience probably looked like the rest of the audience
Speaker 1: at home. The studio audience was also overwhelmingly white, as
Speaker 1: was the makeup of the Musical Family and TV in
Speaker 1: general in the nineteen sixties. Yet the show did break
Speaker 1: barriers when tap dancing phenom Arthur Duncan became the first
Speaker 1: African American regular on any TV variety series when he
Speaker 1: joined the show in nineteen sixty four. The King of Taps,
Speaker 1: Arthur Duncan Uron and Arthur Duncan has repeatedly said Lawrence
Speaker 1: had his rules, he knew what he wanted, and that's
Speaker 1: what made the show working. I'm guessing the Lawrence Well
Speaker 1: Show would fall apart otherwise, you know, people showing off
Speaker 1: and stuff. Most of the stars on the show really
Speaker 1: only existed within the Welk universe. There was Myron Florin
Speaker 1: on the Accordion, Champagne, Lady Norma Zimmer pianist, Joe Anne Castle,
Speaker 1: dancers Bobby and Sissy, married singers Guy and Ralna. What
Speaker 1: I always found sort of interesting as a kid watching
Speaker 1: it was that the people on it you would never
Speaker 1: see on other shows, and you never saw I never did.
Speaker 1: I know it happened occasionally, but I never saw very
Speaker 1: famous people from outside the show on the show, So
Speaker 1: it was a parallel universe. It was its own world.
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. But there were no guest stars.
Speaker 1: There weren't like I guess a very famous appearance was
Speaker 1: made by Jack Benny because he really liked Jack Benny.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it was almost hermetically sealed. Yeah. Now before
Speaker 1: we get further into that, you're going to have to
Speaker 1: pardon the segue. Okay, so we should put on the
Speaker 1: other headphones, right, headphones. While waiting to hear a musical clip,
Speaker 1: Fred and I took a slight detour. I think the
Speaker 1: thing is I never understood the lack of affection for
Speaker 1: Shelly Hacks Charlie's Angel. She was the fourth one, and
Speaker 1: I thought she was fine. She was Tiffany Welch from Boston,
Speaker 1: so they were trying to do like a sophisticated Angel.
Speaker 1: I've support it fully, so I guess I just feel
Speaker 1: like the flack that Shelly Hack got for not being
Speaker 1: a great actress like it worked for. And also whatever
Speaker 1: generation signed on to Charlie's Angels, for them, that is
Speaker 1: their Charlie's Angel, So one could say she was the
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler of You know, that's sort of like people,
Speaker 1: how could you have Adam Sandler on what happens to
Speaker 1: the original cast, And there's a generation saying no, he's
Speaker 1: this is our angel. One thing's for sure. None of
Speaker 1: the Angels would have graced the Welk stage. One of
Speaker 1: the early Welk performers, Alice Lawn, was reportedly let go
Speaker 1: for showing too much leg Welk's show was the ultimate
Speaker 1: encounter countercultural programming. The orchestra did cover popular songs, they
Speaker 1: were welcified, though one particular adaptation may not have been
Speaker 1: such a hit with the older crowd. One Toke over
Speaker 1: the line sweet Jesus one token, oh boy, the line wow,
Speaker 1: how did it happen? Apparently he liked that the lyrics
Speaker 1: included sweet Jesus, and so he didn't realize what the
Speaker 1: song did. Someone must have explained it to him, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've been changing. Is you complain to see?
Speaker 1: I mean, what did they think? Toke was? I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean anything else. Maybe he thought it was
Speaker 1: a token. I mean, the music does work for the show.
Speaker 1: But Lawrence Welk was no fool. He was well aware
Speaker 1: of what youth culture thought of him. In one memorable
Speaker 1: episode from nineteen sixty nine, an old hippie in sunglasses
Speaker 1: and a sheepskin vest ambled out on stage and silenced
Speaker 1: the orchestra. Is that him? Hold time, You'll see Okay,
Speaker 1: now listen to what he says. Don't you cats know
Speaker 1: this polka jazz is strictly from Squaresville. Usually the charm
Speaker 1: of the show is they don't care about the outside world,
Speaker 1: which is what I love about it, right, and they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of all of a sudden we see the
Speaker 1: outside world. Even hearing the word hippies, I thought, I
Speaker 1: don't want to. I was enjoying not even thinking about them.
Speaker 1: I hope you're going to like my fabulous rapping. Welk
Speaker 1: appeared as himself with Vivian Vance and Lucille Ball on
Speaker 1: an episode of Here's Lucy, a spinoff of I Love Lucy,
Speaker 1: and made fun of his own accent. Oh, I know
Speaker 1: he'll be wonderful one. That is the worst imitation of Lawrence.
Speaker 1: He's very aware of the audience. Oh, he's a good sport,
Speaker 1: you know. I think of Lawrence Welk in sort of isolation,
Speaker 1: his own world. Then you see him with a titan
Speaker 1: with Lucy and she's playing someone who's sort of overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the celebrity of Lawrence Welk. It just shows you
Speaker 1: what a big deal he was. And also he's clearly
Speaker 1: enjoying himself, which is really nice. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: being parodied, you're in good shape. I mean, clearly it's
Speaker 1: enough of a gamble that people will get the reference.
Speaker 1: So that's already a sign that things are going really well.
Speaker 1: Parodied multiple times and then into the two thousands with SNL,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really says a lot about the show.
Speaker 1: What do you think he would have thought of the parody?
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to, just as a gay say
Speaker 1: that maybe he wouldn't have been psyched it. I think
Speaker 1: you would have said, I don't understand it. The Lennon sisters, Yeah,
Speaker 1: say they loved it, the SNL parody. They've seen it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they the Lennon sisters have seen it. Yeah, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But it's another group of women that sends us back
Speaker 1: on a tangent. Jacqueline Smith stayed on the show the
Speaker 1: entire time. Charlie's Angels, not Lawrence walk and who can
Speaker 1: we compare her to? Oh, I'm trying to think who's
Speaker 1: the longest running cast. She's like Tim Meadows, somebody who
Speaker 1: was like Daryl Hammond. H yeah, yeah, what about So
Speaker 1: Kate Jackson didn't stay the whole time? No, Kay Jackson
Speaker 1: didn't get along with Cheryl Ladd and the whole you
Speaker 1: know what, the whole Cramer versus Kramer thing, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know that Meryl Streep, you know, ended up winning
Speaker 1: an oscar for Cramer Versus Kramer. Kay Jackson had been
Speaker 1: offered that role and Aaron's spelling wouldn't let her out
Speaker 1: of the cor Oh and that's I know, I know,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible I know it. I still to this day,
Speaker 1: thank how frustrated she must feel about that. Oh that's rough.
Speaker 1: That's a rough one. But not as rough as what
Speaker 1: happened to Welk in nineteen seventy one. That spring ABC
Speaker 1: canceled his show. His audience was deemed too old and
Speaker 1: too rural. But Lawrence Welk wasn't going to go quietly.
Speaker 1: These lyrics are wild. Listening We're going through the music revolution.
Speaker 1: Fred Ormison and I are listening to the Lawrence Welk
Speaker 1: cast seeing about the cancelation of their show in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one the same year as the Rural Purge over
Speaker 1: at CBS. Is there some anger in this? They've been
Speaker 1: booted from the network, so there is some fight in there.
Speaker 1: There was some I'm sure that was when the anchor
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, if it sounds like that song Roy
Speaker 1: Clark sang about he Haws cancelation in our Rural Purge episode,
Speaker 1: there's a reason for it. It's actually the same song,
Speaker 1: and the title is quite a mouthful. It's called the
Speaker 1: Lawrence Welk Heehaw counter Revolution Polka, and it feels to me,
Speaker 1: it feels kind of contemporary. This tension, yeah, between what's
Speaker 1: perceived in the middle of the country and then the
Speaker 1: people who are controlling what airs nationally. And Lawrence Welk
Speaker 1: and Hehaw are kind of the two survivors. They go
Speaker 1: into syndication, and Lawrence Welke after nineteen seventy one, just
Speaker 1: he's at this point, he's almost seventy nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen o three. Wow, would you welcome,
Speaker 1: very charming, gentleman, mister Lawrence welcome. Johnny Carson asked Welk
Speaker 1: about his cancelation on The Tonight Show in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: You were with seventeen years with ABC, and then did
Speaker 1: you leave or did they say, hey, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be on the network anymore. No, we didn't leave,
Speaker 1: were requested to requested to leave. I've been through that.
Speaker 1: Everybody hands was had television show. How did you take it?
Speaker 1: Wasn't it? It was personal? A very difficult thing. But
Speaker 1: Welk's sponsors stuck by him, as did his audience. After
Speaker 1: getting the acts from ABC, his audience actually grew. How
Speaker 1: many people would you reach every week? With that? I
Speaker 1: would have made an estimate. I would say we reach
Speaker 1: approximately around thirty million people. And so he assembles a
Speaker 1: station group larger than ABC had had for him. So
Speaker 1: continues getting tens of millions of viewers. Then, and we'll
Speaker 1: stay on until nineteen eighty one or nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: We were seeing this stuff between nineteen seventy one in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, which was the Lawrence Welk sort of
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be kept down. I Am not
Speaker 1: going to go down to the rural perge. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's amazing he he benefited from that move. I feel like,
Speaker 1: could it be seen as something a little bit like
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to make a shocking comparison. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of like what the Grateful Dead did.
Speaker 1: They made so much money as a sort of live
Speaker 1: act that there's a sort of like we're just going
Speaker 1: to do our thing, just keep going, just keep going.
Speaker 1: This is definitely the first Lawrence Welk Grateful Dead comparison ever.
Speaker 1: But I think, but I totally hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Welk not only made a fortune in television, he
Speaker 1: managed to create a real estate empire that included a
Speaker 1: set of resorts. When he died on May seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, he was reportedly the second richest entertainer in
Speaker 1: the country after Bob Hope, and his musical variety series
Speaker 1: was at that point point the longest running in history.
Speaker 1: But that's not why I admire him. Lawrence Welk knew
Speaker 1: who he was, and he knew his audience, as he
Speaker 1: put it, very nice people. He played for theirs was
Speaker 1: an almost sacred bond. He wasn't going to let network
Speaker 1: executives interfere with that, and when they did, he went
Speaker 1: his own way. That kind of rebel spirit is something
Speaker 1: we usually associate with young people, but it was lived
Speaker 1: out by a man in his late sixties. Lawrence Welk
Speaker 1: was a square yes and a badass to this day.
Speaker 1: His show can be seen in reruns on nearly three
Speaker 1: hundred public television stations, and it's still the highest rated
Speaker 1: syndicated series on public TV. Not bad for a kid
Speaker 1: from North Dakota who grew up in a sowd house.
Speaker 1: Now from all of har Musica family, good health and
Speaker 1: good night. Next time on Mobituaries, we take the show
Speaker 1: on the road. Seth Paul Prudome is not all together now,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Speaker 1: Don Deloise and Unison, I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary.
Speaker 1: May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
Speaker 1: of Mobituaries was produced by Megan Marcus, Sam Egan and
Speaker 1: me Morocca. It was edited by Sam Egan and engineered
Speaker 1: by Nathan Miller. Indispensable support from Lucy Kirk Genius Daneski
Speaker 1: out there to Robina, Harry Wood, Richard Wore, and everyone
Speaker 1: at CBS News Radio Special thanks to Susie Down and
Speaker 1: of course to my friend the great Fred Armisson, who
Speaker 1: can currently be seen in LUSAT Spookies on HBO. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is written by Daniel Hart and is always
Speaker 1: undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp without whom
Speaker 1: Mobituaries couldn't live. That sound again, Charlie is your therapist
Speaker 1: there again? Oh yes, and still hard at work showing
Speaker 1: me the upper body development exercises. What about the lower body, Charlie, Well,
Speaker 1: actually there doesn't seem to be a problem in that area,
Speaker 1: Isn't that great? Charlie's always trying to improve himself. At
Speaker 1: least I can do. Bye Angels by Hi, It's mo.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you
Speaker 1: to check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of
Speaker 1: stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts
Speaker 1: on the line, sports teams that threw in the towel
Speaker 1: for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses, presidential candidacies that cratered,
Speaker 1: whole countries that went caput, and dragons Yes, dragons you see.
Speaker 1: People used to believe the dragons will reel until just
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