Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.

If you like this podcast and would like to support our work, please visit American Catholic

History.org slash support. I'm Noelle Heister Crowe. And I'm Tom Crow. Today we're talking about

Lawrence Welk, the North Dakota farm boy turned musician, who overcame terrible shyness to become

one of the most important band leaders and television personalities of the 20th century.

Right, Welk's television program ran for an incredible 31 years,

and in his day, only Bing Crosby was a more lucrative musical act. Crosby, of course,

was also Catholic, and we'll likely be telling his story in a few weeks.

But in today's episode, it's all about the king of champagne music. Now, I never really watched Lawrence Welk shows,

but my mom would talk about him a lot. She was a big fan. And really cool, I found out a girl

that I went to college with Mary Grace Nelligan. He was actually her uncle. She was talking about

how Uncle Larry would call at Christmas time every year, greatcle, I should say, her grandmother's brother.

But anyways, even after Welk retired in 1982, the show remained on the air in a syndicated reruns,

and it still runs on public television.

It's just an amazing run for any program, especially one that was so simple.

Right.

And the cultural phenomenon that is the Lawrence Wilk show

didn't make sense to tons of people, but the show also had a very large and very loyal viewership.

It simply wouldn't have lasted on network television for 31 years if it didn't.

Welk would say many times that his secret was simple.

Give the people what they want, something that they were familiar with and could understand.

It had to be something that built them up rather than brought them down or confused them.

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