For the next five years, Lawrence earned money playing for local weddings and parties and learned that the real money was made by being in charge. Lawrence spoke with a heavy accent and stilted English, which he didn’t learn until he left home but he would use to his advantage decades later. Strasburg was a mostly German Catholic community and the only school was run by the nuns and the only language spoken in the community was German. He must also remain on the farm until he was 21 as his older brother had married and moved.
His father made him a deal, he would sell a cow and buy an accordion for him, but he must pay him back from any performances at church socials and dances, and through work on the farm. His father thought about it for a week, then agreed. Just before his 16th birthday, he finally worked up his courage and asked his father for $400 to buy his own accordion (1919 dollars!). When a traveling musician gave a show with a new-fangled pianostyle accordion, Lawrence was entranced and knew he had to have one. Lawrence wanted his own accordion not his father’s third generation button box that had traveled over Europe, the Atlantic, and had been passed down to his older brother. He used the time to learn and become proficient on the banjo and several other instruments. Lawrence was hospitalized for several weeks and homebound for seven months after being released. One was commandeered to cover the 75 miles to a hospital over the primitive dirt roads. In 1914 there were only a few automobiles in Strasburg. Well, times on that flatland farm were tough, and in the fourth grade his appendix ruptured tiny Strasburg was several miles away by wagon, where the only doctor said he needed immediate surgery. As he grew older, Lawrence harbored thoughts of leaving the farm and being a musician to escape the drudgery and hard work.īoth before and after finishing his chores on their pre-mechanical wheat farm (he became a champion wheat thrasher, probably from accordion practice), he practiced. Farming wheat by day, the long winter nights were passed with Lawrence’s family playing a concertina accordion and his mother singing along with relatives. For the first year or so the Welk family lived in a hole in the ground that was covered with an overturned wagon and slices of sod covering the structure while a woodframe house was built. A group of them settled in central North Dakota. Lawrence Welk was born in 1903 to German parents who, along with other relatives and friends who happened to be the wrong ethnicity, had been expelled from Strasberg, Russia by the Russian government in 1892. And to fully justify the motto of Carl Finch of Brave Combo: “The weather is always the opening act,” let’s go back to the year 1903 B.C. So where had Lawrence Welk been? Was he an overnight success? Hardly. Anyone interested in music has heard of the Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, the Crosby Brothers, all these Big Band orchestra leaders who were contemporaries of Welk. He had been performing since he was a teenager.
#Lawrence welk pennsylvania polka tv
Welk started his first TV show in 1951, at the age of 48. Enjoy these favorites: Big Band, Champagne Music and Polkas & Waltzes.Ĥ.A plaque in the lobby of the Lawrence Welk Museum proclaims: “A total of 10,300,000,000 people! (That’s 10.3 BILLION!) have tuned in” to the TV show. Here are 3 CDs, each with a different kind of music, for your dancing and listening pleasure with 36 songs in all.
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