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Okay, quickly so we can move on...
Lawrence Welk was a bandleader who became famous in the Fifties when he became host of a television musical variety show. The son of immigrants, he grew up in a small hamlet in North Dakota speaking only German. He didn't learn English until he was in his early twenties. Beginning as an accordion player, he formed a band; originally calling themselves the Hotsy-Totsy Boys, they eventually changed to the Honolulu Fruit Orchestra and finally Lawrence Welk's Champagne Music-Makers.
Welk was a... unique presence on television. He became known for his thick accent, his peppy "Uh-one und a-two" band cues, his polkas, his rather stiff demeanor, and his old- fashioned conservative outlook, which only became more exaggerated as time went on. As times changed, he didn't; in form and content, his show remained stuck in the Fifties, a comfort for older people frightened by social change but a bizarre spectacle for everyone else. He assembled a large cast of musicians and performers as regulars on his show, his "musical family." Though the main criteria for whether a performer stayed or went was audience popularity, Welk was also a stern taskmaster and very concerned with presenting a strong moral image; he once fired a woman for crossing her legs on-camera. Though most people found his show positively antediluvian by the Seventies, his audience of pensioners and grandmas kept him afloat on network TV, then first run syndication, then in reruns for decades.
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