I can never really get my head around the Lawrence Welk show. Welk, himself, seems clearly unironic, and I’m pretty sure that most people who watch it, or at least who watched it at the time, liked it without irony; but I really wonder about the musicians, singers, dancers and so on. Could they possibly have been THAT wholesome? I always envision them going off stage, doing acid and having mad sex while LW’s handlers kept him in the dark. With that in mind, get a load of this:
How can this be? Sure, LW probably believed this was just a “modern spiritual”; but what about Gayle and Dale? what about the accordionist introducing the number?? Madness this way lies, I guess, but I can’t help reading more and more into the little details the more I watch it. How can the announcer’s little cough at the beginning NOT be a winking reference to smoking dope? How can he not be signaling to an in-group when he turns his head and touches his tie before the camera cuts over to the singers? How can Gayle and Dale’s little winking looks at each other not come from knowing that as soon as they cut to commercial the two of them will be one toke over the line; and perhaps in flagrante delicto as well, maybe WITH the announcer. And yet, and yet…
What’s up with the bass “Don’tcha know that we’re-a” that comes in twice? Is that Dale singing? His lips seem to be moving but it doesn’t soun like him. Maybe a backup singer off the camera and Dale is lip-synching?
I’ve had nightmares. I’ve had bad trips. I’ve worked in a psychiatric hospital. I’ve seen dead bodies.
This is worse.
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That’s a pretty terrible performance, even for LW standards. The whole thing seems fishy to me. It makes me wonder if one of the guys in the band thought it’d be funny to try to convince Welk that this was a spiritual, simply because it uses the term “Sweet Jesus,” which is probably a brand of weed too (Seriously…I don’t know….seriously!)
I’ve never felt comfortable watching this show anyway. It’s too Osmond-esque for me, but at least the Osmonds seemed truly wholesome. The LW show always seemed somewhat forced. Besides, jazz musicians are never this sweet. Period. Name me one that fits that profile. See. You can’t. Told you so. Hopefully the blue-hairs in the audience liked this song and stayed blissfully ignorant to the meaning of the tune. Just don’t make me have to watch more of this.
Actually, that’s exactly why I am suspicious about this (and all of) LW’s stuff. I know a lot of musicians, jazz and otherwise, and even in the 60s it seems like they would have been going backstage and talking smack about how awful the show was. And, of course, doing what they needed to to keep the gig–a gig is a gig, after all, especially one like this that must have paid well.
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