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#Lawrence welk cast retirement tv
In a 1954 show program for the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica, California - where Welk’s band had a permanent engagement and filmed its local TV show - Welk wrote that the trip to Mitchell was a long-awaited trip and was “the one engagement that all of us have looked forward to making.” (Today, adjusted for inflation, that check would be worth nearly $300,000.) At the time, Welk received the largest check ever paid to a Corn Palace performer at $29,746.80. In 1954, Welk took the record back, eclipsing Lombardo’s run by 409 attendees, for a total of 49,842 over 15 shows. (Outside the building, an estimated 100,000 people were taking in the festival on Main Street over the course of the week.) In the process, he took down Welk’s festival attendance record in 1952, drawing 49,433 ticket buyers over the course of 14 shows. Guy Lombardo - himself known for his sweet music, much like Welk - drew massive crowds to Mitchell in 1952. Instead, he got the Palace dances back into the black, showing once again that was a draw unlike any other.įor the annual fall festival, it was an era of bandleaders. Republic columnist Dick Kobak wrote at the time that Welk never got into a rut with his show. That number was not insignificant: it was the first dance that turned a profit for the Corn Palace Committee since 1947. Instead, it was to play a Friday night Corn Palace dance, something he had done hundreds of times criss-crossing the Dakotas and the Midwest. Welk was back on March 25, 1950, although not as the festival’s lead billing. On the stage, Welk, who was 45, told the crowd that his orchestra would play a medley of tunes just like what he played in South Dakota in the Thirties. It was just before his radio show was picked up nationally by ABC, but well into an era when Welk was regularly filling ballrooms around the country. Welk first headlined a Corn Palace Festival in 1948, setting the festival’s attendance record.
#Lawrence welk cast retirement series
READ: More from the Corn Palace 100 series by Marcus Traxler. “After all, it’s the folks back here in the little towns that ‘got us over the hump.’” “It gives me a very warm feeling to return to South Dakota, which is really home to us,” Welk said on a visit to Mitchell in 1962. The first documented recording of Welk leading a Corn Palace dance came in 1934, 10 years after Welk left his North Dakota farm at age 21 with his accordion to embark on a music career for the ages. Welk’s band took up semi-residency in Yankton in 1927 and playing on WNAX-AM expanded Welk’s reach, helping him make a name for himself. Welk’s talented accordionist Myron Floren grew up near Roslyn and worked in radio in Sioux Falls. Welk created a band and later an orchestra that toured the Upper Midwest, including halls throughout South Dakota. The goal, Welk said, was to create music that had a “bouncing feel” and would be easily recognizable. Born to German-Russian immigrants to Strasburg, North Dakota, in 1903, Welk was known as the farm boy who liked to play the accordion, playing his famous “champagne music” that emphasized dancing, light melodies and rhythms. Given that Welk was from Dakota (as he often called it) and his appearances at the Palace coincided with his own national rise to stardom, the Mitchell area loved him unlike any other. A 1963 Daily Republic headline boasted it simply: “WELK WOWS ‘EM AGAIN AT PALACE.” In the three appearances in the 1960s alone, he drew more than 150,000 attendees. He headlined the festival’s main stage five times (1948, 1954, 1962, 19, becoming the only standalone act to lead the festival billing that many times), and he set records with every stop. Over four decades, Welk kept popping into the Corn Palace with his champagne music and filling the venue to its brim. As was Andy Williams, Jack Benny and Gene Autry, with the latter flying his plane directly into Mitchell with great fanfare.īut in Corn Palace history, there is one entertainer who stands alone: Lawrence Welk. In the history books of the Corn Palace, the list of A-list entertainment came of age in the 1950s and 1960s.Īll-time names such as jazz orchestra leader Duke Ellington and The Three Stooges were on the stage. EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a series commemorating the 100th anniversary of the current Corn Palace building, which opened in 1921.