[1] Welk, a native of North Dakota who was born to German immigrants from Russia, began his career as a bandleader in the 1920s in the Great Plains.

He gradually became more known throughout the country due to recordings and radio performances, and he and his orchestra were based in Chicago in the 1940s, where they had a standing residency at the Trianon Ballroom.

The show's popularity held through the following years, and with its focus on inoffensive entertainment, it was embraced by conservative audiences as an antidote to the counterculture of the 1960s.

In 1971, ABC cancelled The Lawrence Welk Show as part of a broader trend away from programs aimed at older or more rural audiences.

In the remaining decade of his life, he managed various business interests and packaged reruns of his show for broadcast on PBS, where it has continued to appear into the 21st century.

[2] He was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana (née Schwahn) Welk, Roman Catholic ethnic Germans who had emigrated in 1892 from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine).

They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year inside an upturned wagon covered in sod.

[10] Welk became an iconic figure in the German-Russian community of the northern Great Plains—his success story personified the American dream.

On his 21st birthday, having fulfilled his promise to his father, Welk left the family farm to pursue a career in music.

[17] Welk collaborated with Western artist Red Foley to record a version of Spade Cooley's "Shame on You" in 1945.

[20] In addition to the above-mentioned "Spiked Beer", Welk's territory band made occasional trips to Richmond, Indiana, and to Grafton, Wisconsin, to record a handful of sessions for the Gennett and Paramount companies.

The same year, he began producing The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA in Los Angeles, where it was broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach.

This was a long-standing tradition in the Welk band; the first Champagne Lady was Lois Best (1939 to 1941), followed during the war years by Jayne Walton.

In the December 8, 1956, broadcast, "Nuttin' for Christmas" became a vehicle for Rocky Rockwell dressed in a child's outfit, and Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" was sung by the violinist Bob Lido, wearing fake Presley-style sideburns.

In a 1971 episode, Welk infamously billed the Brewer & Shipley single "One Toke Over the Line" (performed as a duet by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale), which referenced the use of marijuana, as a "modern spiritual";[26] social conservatives of the era saw the song as subversive and it became the first casualty of an attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to get radio stations to ban all pro-drug songs.

Whenever a Dixieland tune was scheduled, Welk harked back to his days with the Hotsy Totsy Boys and enthusiastically led the band.

Although described by one critic, Canadian journalist and entertainment editor Frank Rasky, as "the squarest music this side of Euclid",[28] this strategy proved commercially successful, and the show remained on the air for 31 years.

Welk's musicians included accordionist Myron Floren, the concert violinist Dick Kesner, the guitarist Buddy Merrill, and the New Orleans Dixieland clarinetist Pete Fountain.

Though Welk was occasionally rumored to be tight with a dollar, he paid his regular band members top scale.

Despite the authentic New Orleans Dixieland clarinet that made him a popular cast member, Pete Fountain left the orchestra in a dispute with Welk over adding a jazz solo to a Christmas song.

Despite its staid reputation, The Lawrence Welk Show nonetheless kept up with the times and never limited itself strictly to music of the big-band era.

During the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, the show incorporated material by such contemporary sources as the Beatles, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Neil Sedaka, the Everly Brothers and Paul Williams (as well as, in the most notorious example, Brewer & Shipley), all arranged in a format that was easily digestible to older viewers.

Originally produced in black and white, in 1957 the show began being recorded on videotape, and it switched to color for the fall 1965 season.

[34] During its network run, The Lawrence Welk Show aired on ABC on Saturday nights at 9 p.m. (Eastern Time), moving up a half-hour to 8:30 p.m. in the fall of 1963.

During this period, the networks were in the process of eliminating programming that was seen as having either too old an audience, did not appeal to urban residents, or both (the so-called Rural Purge).

[35] For the entire run, musical numbers were divided fairly evenly between prerecorded lip- and finger-sync performances and those recorded live on film or tape.

He also starred in and produced a pair of Christmas specials in 1984 and 1985.Welk was a businessman and subsequent to his marriage in 1930, he was the manager of a hotel, restaurant, and music store.

In 2007, Welk became a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana.Welk's band continues to appear in a dedicated theater in Branson, Missouri.

[49] The "Live Lawrence Welk Show" makes annual concert tours across the United States and Canada, featuring stars from the television series, including Ralna English, Mary Lou Metzger, Gail Farrell, and Anacani.

All of Welk's books are coauthored by, or written in conjunction with, Bernice McGeehan and published by Prentice Hall, except where indicated: * "Shame On You" also made the US Country charts (No.