North Dakota: The Wunnerful Lawrence Welk with Sharon McMahon

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this solo episode, Sharon shares the prolific life and career of vintage musical icon Lawrence Welk. Welk, a household name, and host of his own show (that you probably only watched at your grandma’s house), was one of the wealthiest entertainers in the U.S before his death in the early 1990s. He came from humble beginnings, growing up on a farm in North Dakota with his German immigrant parents and several siblings. Over the course of his long musical career, Welk became the sound of an era; his “champagne music” stirring nostalgia in a generation who socialized at public dance halls and waltzed the night away.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my friends I have a really fun episode for you today there's a lot of my own
0:08.1	childhood memories tied up in what I want to chat with you about.
0:12.8	And so I think this will be really fun.
0:15.0	Let's dive into this episode about the great state of North Dakota.
0:19.3	I'm Sharon McMahon.
0:20.9	And welcome to the Sharon Says So
0:23.0	Podcast.
0:24.0	Raise your hand.
0:26.0	I can't see you, but I want you to raise your hand anyway.
0:29.0	If you ever grew up watching the TV show, Lawrence Welk, because I did.
0:38.8	It was well off the air by the time I was a child but my grandmother absolutely loved it and we
0:45.3	watched it in reruns we watch it in syndication and so I have to tell you more
0:50.6	about Lawrence Welk who at the time that he died in the 1990s, was one of the richest
0:56.8	men in entertainment.
0:59.8	He was worth over $150 million. So let's start at the beginning and we're going to trace
1:06.9	how this man who did not even learn how to speak English until he was in his
1:10.9	20s became one of the richest people in entertainment by the
1:16.8	time that he died. So Lawrence Welk was the child of immigrants. His parents were ethnically German. They lived in the All-Sace Lorraine region of Europe and they immigrated to Ukraine. And then in the late 1800s his parents Ludwig and Christina Welk came to the
1:39.8	United States and they settled in North Dakota.
1:45.0	Lawrence Welk was the sixth child for the Welk family.
1:49.6	They had eight or nine children depending on which biography you consult.
1:53.4	And his parents spoke no English.
	...

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