He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. (is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). To revisit it is to sail into David Lynch territory: Nothing gives me more delight than watching something like this nowadays. The clip of The Lawrence Welk Show’s closing credits below is from 1978! Rock and roll was already kind of over by then, Elvis was in his grave already, but Lawrence Welk was still chugging along. And you really must watch some to get what I’m talking about. This was a show for grandparents, and even they snickered at it. Roger’s Neighborhood. All of the singers and musicians on the show looked like junior staffers from the Nixon Administration. Polkas, songs from the 1890s, novelty songs, and attempts at humor that would be considered too awkward and toothless for Mr. The show was on the air until 1982, you realize. It was SO anachronistic when I was growing up. I was delighted to watch a bit of it a few months ago at my mom’s senior citizen facility. The Lawrence Welk Show began on radio in 1949 and switched to television in 1951. It’s music for cotillions, where no one breaks a sweat when they dance.
In the 30s, as he gained a following in the mid-west (especially Chicago), his sound was dubbed “Champagne Music” (an idea reinforced by his use of a bubble machine on his tv show). This would be the aesthetic he would cleave to until his dying day. There can be no more eye-opening illustration of the fact that “big band” and “swing” are not synonymous than Welk’s orchestra, which played light, pretty, tuneful, and very WHITE dance music with very little (if any) jazz to it. Upon reaching majority (the mid 1920s) he formed a local big band. Raised on a farm, he persuaded his father to buy him a mail order accordion, which he spent his entire youth paying off. Welk didn’t learn English until he went to school. He was raised in a pocket of German immigrants in a remote area of North Dakota, a place so rural and isolated there was no need for anyone to learn English. The answer proves to be quite interesting. He was supposedly American, but somehow he had that accent. For example, what was that accent (we wondered)? “Wunnerful, wunnerful!”, “senk you, senk you,” “An’ now the luffly Lennon Sisterss!” and (as he counted off a number) “…a-one, an’ a two!”. (I’ve since come to better appreciate Sinatra and Dean Martin).īut like I say, Welk, was the pinnacle, a well-spring of mystery. When I was a kid, Welk was the gold standard for “Old People Music We Just Didn’t Understand.” It was a long list that also included the likes of Liberace, Doc Severinsen, Dinah Shore, Robert Goulet, Kate Smith , and all of those embarrassing, nauseating guys from the Rat Pack.
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