CRL 57148
THE SOUND OF
CORAL
RECORDS
HIGH-FIDELITY
Champagne and Roses
LAWRENCE WELK AND HIS CHAMPAGNE MUSIC
SELECTIONS INCLUDE :
Side One
1. CHAMPAGNE AND ROSES
Vocal By Alice Lon
Ruth Roberts-Bill Katz-Stanley Clayton
2 BOUQUET OF ROSES
Steve Nelson-Bob Hilliard
Instrumental Fox Trot
3 ROSES, ROSES, ROSES
Vocal By Dick Dale
Ruth Roberts-Bill Katz-Stanley Clayton
4 ROOM FULL OF ROSES
Tim Spencer
Fox Trot
5 MOONLIGHT AND ROSES
(Bring Mem'ries o You) Instrumental
Ben Black-Neil Moret-Edwin Lemare
6 ROSES
Tim Spencer-Glenn Spencer
Instrumental Fox Trot
Side Two
1 BLUE CHAMPAGNE
Grady Watts-Frank Ryerson
Fox Trot
2 DARK EYES AND PINK CHAMPAGNE
Vocal By Larry Dean
Ruth Roberts-Bill Katz-Stanley Clayton
3 CHAMPAGNE MUSIC
Instrumental Fox Trot
Ruth Roberts-Bill Katz-Stanley Clayton
4 THAT CHAMPAGNE FEELING
Vocal By Maurice Pearson
Ruth Roberts-Bill Katz-Stanley Clayton
5 CHAMPAGNE BLUES
George Cates-Irving Taylor
Vocal By Bob Lido
6 CHAMPAGNE TIME
George Cates
Instrumental
Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly played in tune."
- Robert Burns.
"Champagne And Roses" is a particularly apt title for a Lawrence Welk album. Wine, roses and song have been a sure-fire recipe for romance since the beginning of love, and the sentimental sweetness and lightly effervescent quality of Welk's music in this package, provides perfect blendship of all three ingredients.
One side is devoted to the bubbly brew - "Blue Champagne," "Champagne Blues," "
Champagne Music," etc. - while the other side features six "rose" songs including such richly nostalgic items as "Bouquet Of Roses," "Moonlight and Roses," and "Room Full of Roses."
Although the selections run a wide range of musical moods, each tune is characterized by a steady, clearly defined dance beat, the tempo that has made Welk one of the country's outstanding ballroom attractions more than 25 years ago and catapulted him to far greater fame on TV in the fifties.
In spit of his "Champagne Music" title, Welk himself is a "beer and pretzels" man who made it the hard way. He grew up on a North Dakota farm with seven brothers and sisters and his Alsatian-born parents made music an integral part of the home. The future video star was playing the accordion at community dances by the time he was 13, and while in his early teens, became a full-fledged orchestra leader with a show on his own over radio station WNAX, Yankton, South Dakota.
Welk's friendly personality and danceable style quickly made him a favorite with
ballroom dancers throughout the Mid-West and Southern California and his popularity with the dip-and-glide set increased steadily over the years.
Nevertheless, when ABC-TV first put the Lawrence Welk show on the air, few if any could have forseen that the unassuming, moderate budget program would become the major surprise hit of the 1955-56 season.
In the beginning nobody like Welk but the people. In the face of phenomenal ratings, the critics predicted that the show was just a freak click which would pall on the public as soon as the novelty wore off.
Today, however, its ratings are brighter than ever, (so high in fact, that veteran video star Sid Caesar-in a competitive time slot-quit NBC entirely in 1957) and Welk's original weekly hour show on Saturday nights has been supplemented with a Monday night telecast.
The critics finally came around too, and even the staid New York Times TV critic Jack Gould recently confessed in print, that the Welk show inspires him to make like a living-room Fred Astaire.
Welk himself attributes his TV success to the fact that "people still want to dance," and his band plays the kind of music that lets them do just that in the privacy of their own parlor. More objective observers, though, believe that the real secret of Lawrence Welk's remarkably durable popularity on television is the relaxed showmanship and likeable "just folks" charm of the man himself.
Whether it's the man, his music, or a combination of both, the results are as listenable as they are danceable. So roll up the carpets or just sit back and listen, while Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra provide a musical background of "Champagne and Roses."
June Bundy
