The Lawrence Welk Show

Broadcast history

The local program that would become The Lawrence Welk Show first aired on May 11, 1951, from KTLA in Los Angeles, which served as the flagship station for the Paramount Television Network. Its original broadcasts came from the Aragon Ballroom at Venice Beach, a venue that has since been torn down. In 1954, Paramount intended to take the show nationwide, but that plan fell through when the network’s disputes with DuMont Television Network led to both companies’ collapse.

The show finally reached a national audience on July 2, 1955, via ABC. It started production at the Hollywood Palladium before moving to stage 5 at the ABC Television Center on Prospect Avenue and Talmadge Street in Hollywood, where it was filmed for 23 of its 27 years on national TV. Upon its national debut, it was called the Dodge Dancing Party for the 1955 and 1956 seasons. Between 1956 and 1959, Welk aired two separate shows each week: one titled Lawrence Welk Presents Top Tunes and New Talent (1956–58) and later Lawrence Welk’s Plymouth Show (1958–59).

That Plymouth program made history as the first American TV show to broadcast in stereophonic sound, achieved by simulcasting one audio channel on ABC’s television network and the other on its radio network, requiring viewers to tune in both. In the 1959–60 season, the two shows merged back into The Lawrence Welk Show, returning to monophonic audio. Chrysler supplied the announcers during this time: Lou Crosby for the Dodge shows and James Narz for Plymouth.

Narz changed his stage name to Tom Kennedy to avoid confusion with his brother Jack, a Ford employee. By 1956, Welk worked with Ben Selvin at RCA Thesaurus to produce electrical transcriptions of “The New Lawrence Welk Show” for local radio stations.

Format

Each episode of The Lawrence Welk Show typically began with floating bubbles and the pop and fizz of a champagne bottle, followed by the opening theme—first "Bubbles in the Wine," later replaced by "Champagne Time." Welk himself often showed viewers how he made that sound: he would pop his finger out of his mouth and then hiss softly to mimic escaping bubbles. After the theme, Welk introduced the show's weekly focus, leading into either an orchestral piece or a group number with the full cast of singers.

He introduced most acts in a pronounced German accent that became his trademark and was widely imitated, even by Welk himself in his book titles. The accent sometimes caused him to misread cue cards, and he once lamented it in his autobiography, occasionally forcing the "d" in "wonderful." For instrumental numbers, couples from the audience were invited to dance on stage, and Welk often joined them. In later seasons, many songs were presented as skits.

The Musical Family performed a broad mix of adult standards, big band tunes, and versions of pop, country, Christian, and patriotic songs. Welk declared in 1956 that his group could play anything "as long as it's done in the champagne style."

Episode status

The first ten seasons of The Lawrence Welk Show, which aired live on ABC until 1965, survive only as black-and-white kinescopes or videotapes. Starting with the 1965–1966 season, episodes were shot in color, and those are believed to be fully preserved. No episodes have been released on home video by the Welk Organization or the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, and none are planned. However, specials featuring the Welk Musical Family are available on DVD, obtainable through donations during reruns on local PBS stations. These include titles like "A Champagne Toast to the Big Bands" (1991), "The Lennon Sisters: Easy to Remember" (1992), and others through 2025's "Lawrence Welk: A North Dakota Farm Boy."

In popular culture

Accordion pop/rock band Those Darn Accordions recorded "The Story of Lawrence Welk" on their 1994 album Squeeze This!, a comic retelling of Welk's life story referencing his television series. Stan Freberg created a parody of the show in a song called "Wun'erful Wun'erful (Sides uh-one and uh-two)", which became a Top 30 hit in 1957, spoofing the musicianship among Welk's musicians. Dickie Goodman used Welk as a target of satire on his 1959 novelty single "Stagger Lawrence", featuring an episode interrupted by Lloyd Price's version of "Stagger Lee."

The show is one of two that serve as the main subjects of the 1972 song "The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka," the other being Hee Haw. On October 4, 2008, Saturday Night Live parodied the show with Fred Armisen portraying Welk; the sketch featured the four singing Maharelle sisters and proved so popular that the parody became a recurring sketch. In "The Ride," episode 6.09 of The Sopranos, Paulie Walnuts watches a December 1975 episode of The Lawrence Welk Show with his aunt, and the music from the show leads into the credits.