Lawrence Welk

Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. 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 (later Ukraine).

Welk was a first cousin, once removed, of former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer (Welk's mother and Schweitzer's paternal grandmother were siblings). Welk's paternal great-great-grandparents, Moritz and Magdalena Welk, emigrated in 1808 from Germanophone Alsace-Lorraine to Ukraine.

The family lived on a homestead that became a tourist attraction. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year inside an upturned wagon covered in sod. Welk left school during fourth grade to work full-time on the family farm.

Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 (equivalent to $6,429 in 2025). He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. Any money he made elsewhere during that time, doing farmwork or performing, would go to his family.

Welk became an iconic figure in the German-Russian community of the northern Great Plains—his success story personified the American dream. Welk did not learn to speak English until he was 21; he never felt comfortable speaking in public. To the day he died, his English had a marked German accent.

Early career

On his 21st birthday, having fulfilled his promise to his father, Welk left the family farm to pursue a career in music. During the 1920s, he performed with various bands before forming an orchestra. He led dance bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota, including the Hotsy Totsy Boys and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. His band was also the station band for the popular radio programming WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. The Lawrence Welk Orchestra scored an immediate success and began a daily radio show, which lasted from 1927 to 1936. The radio show led to many well-paying engagements for the band throughout the midwestern states. In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Although many associate Welk's music with a style quite separate from jazz, he recorded several jazzy sides; in November 1928 for Gennett Records, based in Richmond, Indiana: "Spiked Beer" and "Doin' The New Low Down" and in 1931 in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount Records "Smile Darn Ya, Smile".

During the 1930s, Welk led a touring dance band specializing in dance tunes and "sweet" music (during this period, bands performing light-melodic music were referred to as "sweet bands" to distinguish them from the more rhythmic and assertive "hot" bands of artists like Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington). Initially, the band traveled around the country by car. They were too poor to rent rooms, so they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. The term champagne music was derived from an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, after a dancer referred to his band's sound as "light and bubbly as champagne." The hotel also lays claim to the original "bubble machine," a prop left over from a 1920s movie premiere. Welk described his band's sound, saying, "We still play music with the champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. We place the stress on melody; the chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. We play with a steady beat so dancers can follow it."

Welk's band performed across the country, but particularly in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band began a 10-year stint at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, regularly drawing crowds of several thousand. His orchestra also performed frequently at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s. In 1944 and 1945, Welk led his orchestra in 10 "Soundies", three-minute movie musicals considered to be the early pioneers of music videos.

Welk collaborated with Western artist Red Foley to record a version of Spade Cooley's "Shame on You" in 1945. The record (Decca 18698) was number 4 to Cooley's number 5 on Billboard's September 15 "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" listing. From 1949 through 1951, the band had radio programming on ABC, sponsored by Miller High Life, "The Champagne of Bottled Beer."

In addition to his activities as a performing artist, Welk edited a course of modern music for the piano accordion which included arrangements by John Serry for the U. S. School of Music in New York City in 1953.

Welk was married for 61 years, until his death in 1992, to Fern Renner (August 26, 1903 – February 13, 2002), with whom he had two daughters and a son. His son, Lawrence Welk Jr., married and divorced fellow Lawrence Welk Show performer Tanya Falan. Welk had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild. His grandson Lawrence Welk III is a helicopter pilot who worked with Zoey Tur and owns Angel City Air, which provides aerial electronic newsgathering services to television stations in Los Angeles.

A devout Roman Catholic, Welk was a daily communicant. He was a member of The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

He died of pneumonia on May 17, 1992, at age 89, at his Santa Monica home, surrounded by his family. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.