Robert Howard Ralston (born July 2, 1938, in Upland, California) is an American pianist and organist who performed on television's The Lawrence Welk Show from 1963 until 1982, when the series ended.
[1][2] A native of Southern California, Ralston graduated from Montebello High School in 1955 and attended Wheaton College in Illinois on a full music scholarship.
During his college years, Ralston played six nights a week with the Freddy Martin orchestra (1959-1962) at Los Angeles's Coconut Grove nightclub, where in 1962, Welk invited him on his show as a guest musician.
Playing with Freddy Martin lasted until the summer of 1963, when one of Welk's original pianists, Jerry Burke, fell ill and soon died, and Ralston was hired on a permanent basis.
Los Angeles police detective Steve Hales stated outside the courtroom, "'In all my years working with sexually exploited children, that was the most inappropriate sentence on a pedophile I've ever seen."