Lawrence Welk - Two Sensation Albums in One Hit Package

Lawrence Welk - Two Sensation Albums in One Hit Package

LAWRENCE WELK - AS TIME GOES BY

SIDE 1

01 AS TIME GOES BY 2 27
02 HELLO DOLLY 2 02
03 GHOST RIDERS IN THE SKY 1 56
04 EVERY LITTLE MOVEMENT 2 04
05 SUMMER SAMBA 2 08

SIDE 2

01 EMBRACEABLE YOU 2 50
02 CAROLINA IN THE MORNING 2 10
03 LET THE REST OF THE WORLD GO BY 2 11
04 SOME ONE TO WATCH OVER ME 2 10


LAWRENCE WELK - YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE

SIDE 1

01 YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE 2 11
02 LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT 1 59
03 WHERE OR WHEN 3 32
04 SEPTEMBER SONG 2 48
05 PEOPLE WILL SAY WE'RE IN LOVE 2 14

SIDE 2

01 THE SOUND OF MUSIC 2 50
02 TO EACH HIS OWN 2 29
03 PEOPLE 2 20
04 GETTING TO KNOW YOU 2 35
05 BE MY LOVE 2 20



LAWRENCE WELK

In 1952, the manager of the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica, Calif. was looking for a dance band to fill a six-week engagement. The manager didn't have much money to spend, but he finally persuaded a bandleader named Lawrence Welk, from Strasburg, North Dakota, to bring his musicians in to play. Five years later, Welk was still at the Aragon Ballroom, even though he had become the star of a network television show and was one of the biggest bands on records. Lawrence Welk continued to play at the Aragon until 1961, when the pressure of outside engagements plus the promise of a lucrative long-tern engagement from the Hollywood Palladium made it necessary to leave.

Lawrence Welk has been playing his kind of music for audiences in all parts of the United States for nearly 40 years. It was early in the 1920s when he left the family farm in Strasburg to join a 6-man band billing itself as "The Biggest Little Band in America". The band played one-night stands througout the Dakotas, and by 1925 had its own radio show. The fans were fantastically loyal, and whenever a date was announced at the local Legion hall, the tickets were sold out weeks in advance.

In 1928, Welk moved to Pittsburgh, and began playing some of the more important Eastern ballrooms. For the first time, he came to the attention of music critics, who tagged his style as "Mickey Mouse music." Not only the critics but other bandleaders ridiculed his "cornball" style. The criticism didn't bother Welk. Recently he noted that the other big-name dance bands of the 1940s and early 1950s began playing for their own amusement and eventually got musically over the heads of their audiences. Welk may be square, but he has the same fanatic following today he had in the Dakotas in the 1920s - and he's had to change his style hardly at all to do it.

Welk's secret is that he plays familiar favorites, sticks to a danceable tempo, and avoids elaborate arrangements. While this results in music which American critics call "square," European musicologists have compared Welk's style favorably with the musette orchestras of Paris, Brussels and other cities, which utilize the accordion for all it's worth.

Notes by Robert Angus