Lawrence Welk was super squeaky clean. NO edgy music, no scandals, nothing sexy. Uber conservative German-catholic family rated, etc etc. Lots of ballroom dancing. Think social club in the basement of a church.
At some point we discovered They performed the Brewer and Shipley hit One Toke Over the Line. Clearly Welk had no idea what the song was about, he introduced it as a spiritual. That is of course Myron FLoren with the accordion.
Watch on youtube.com
B&S found it ironic that Welk was playing it as a gospel song at the same time the FCC was banning it from the radio.
We go to Big Boy for breakfast each SUnday. LAst week, for some reason we mentioned this to our regular waitress...er, server. She had never heard of Lawrence Welk, let alone our story. We told her to look it up online. I doubted she'd remember, but whatever. Well, this morning we went. Place is just dead, like three tables, and no kids. Wring had no kids to give rubber duckies today. Waitress says, "Hey, I got something for you." And she comes out with three record albums. I mean good old vinyl records. One was even a double disc one. They were of course...Lawrence Welk records. One had a sticker on the front "Includes photo album". And inside OMG the photo album was still with the record. Just a large folded sheet with color pix of the band and performers, but there it was. She had spotted them at a yard sale or some such.
She asked a bit later if we had a record player, I had to say no. But I just appreciated having them. I told her that did make my day.
SO when we returned to the home, we visited the community room, talked to the group there. Showed them my prizes. Of course all there knew Welk, no one in our age group would be ignorant. One lady said, "Your know we DO have a record player over there by the big TV. Maybe you could play them later?"
Anna one, anna two...