Playing small professional gigs in the surrounding area, Welk honed his musical skills and earned enough money to pay his parents back when he left home for good in 1924.īy the early 1930s, Lawrence Welk had earned a degree in music and made a name for himself as the leader of a traveling orchestra. Lawrence wore out the inexpensive, mail-order accordion bought for him as a boy, so he made a deal with his parents: In exchange for a $400 loan to purchase a professional accordion, he would stay and work on the family farm through the age of 21. He learned to play the accordion from his father, who carried his own antique instrument with him when he immigrated to America. A dutiful son, Welk dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work full time on the family farm, but he decided early on that he wished to pursue a career in music.
In fact, Lawrence Welk did not learn English until his early 20s, which explains the accent that became his trademark.
Welk’s parents were immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine who spoke only German to the eight children they raised on their farm outside Strasburg, North Dakota. As polarizing in his own folksy way as Elvis Presley was in his, the inimitable Lawrence Welk-creator and King of “Champagne Music”-was born in rural North Dakota on March 11, 1903. But for the children and grandchildren watching along with them, it seemed more like the “television show that time forgot.” The man at this generational flash point was an accordion-playing, Alsatian-accented bandleader who kicked off each number with “A vun and a two” and ended with a cheery “Wunnerful, wunnerful.” Although he delighted the older crowd, youngsters were usually not so enamored. For the generation that grew up on the big bands of the 1930s and '40s, The Lawrence Welk Show was a blessed island of calm in a world gone mad for rock and roll, and it aired like clockwork every Saturday night from 1955 to 1982.
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