Lawrence Welk Show production

"Wanderful. Wanderful". I grew up with many Sundays at Grandma and Grandpa's house with good ol' Lawrence and crew on TV. For a young kid, it wasn't my cup-o-tea by any stretch. Too bad in some ways. He had great musicians. I always wonder about those guys/gals in the background. Not always getting their names mentioned, but a real honor to go through life telling your grandkids, or new friends,  that you were in Lawrence Welk's band on TV. You had to be good.
 
Back to your question, I can only give an opinion (no professional first-hand knowledge) as you requested. I would say most is live takes, with some occasional editing as necessary. The magic of TV. The link below has some actual mistakes when Lawrence or a performer speaks a word incorrectly during an introduction and then repeats the word correctly. They could have edited it out and the introduction redone but did not. There is no reason to doubt that this show could have been done in one take. After all these are real professionals involved. On the other hand, with TV having timing constraints for commercials and 60-minute time limit, they may have had to use some editing as needed.  So they could easily set up each song as a take, and do the intro's separately. Bottom line....I believe this was mostly done in one take, but I don't know for sure.  On the other hand, today, the production would probably be heavily edited just because that's how it would be done today.  
 
 

No Lawrence Welk for me when I was at my grandparent's house.  It was professional wrestling with the likes of Haystacks Calhoun.

rbecker
I was trying to decide how they produced the later Lawrence Welk shows. There seems to be a point where, to me, that most of the elements were filmed separately and then stitched together. The band; either led by Welk or George Cates. The staged vocals. The audience listening or dancing. And finally Welk standing alone with baton in hand making comments between songs. It seems like they were all unrelated in time and space.
 
I've been meaning to get opinions about this but kept forgetting until I saw the "One Toke" post. I've looked online a few times, but have never been able to find any production details.

Not a better way to define naive.

I liked the blond piano player that jammed like she drank a case of red bull before she played the boogie-woogie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI64g2nP6kI

soens
Sorry, but... since my parents insisted we watch LW back then, this is most likely why simple but original jingles are always playing in my head all the time.
 
When I was old enough to realize how silly the LWS was I stopped watching. Apparently too late tho.... please make it stop!

It could be worse. You ever been to Disney's "Its A Small World" ride?

Team Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI64g2nP6kI

Yep, "Flowers on the Wall". Her signature tune.

"See the comments from Roy Rising here:..."
 
Thanks, Ham N Egz. Exactly the sort of info I am looking for.

Ken,
 
I think rbecker was being sincere giving information unless I missed something. Was a crazy era and sometimes takes a few decades to sort it all out objective when passions have died down and we can look back without anger. Comment not so much on the technical stuff.
 
Back in the 60's era of us hippies, drug addicts, LSD explorers, Lawrence Welk was a symbol of the clueless "establishment". Only one step up and more antiseptic than Merl Haggard when Merl did his Okie from Muscogee track.
 
Nobody hated Lawrence, but the underground considered him as an ignorant pawn that probably got stoned on wine, but never experienced the transcendental rush of a belly full of mushrooms. He could get forked up with the rest of the band on alcohol, but we were criminals getting high on our drugs of choice.
 
We condemned his washed out covers of pop songs. Either nowhere near the original hit or not covering the real hits. No acid rock to be had.
 
One Toke Over the Line rendition by the clean singers is an incredible screw up in the context of the time. If there had been internet then, this clip would have gone viral in celebration.
 
John
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Took me a long time to realize in retrospect the multi level talent and genius of the guy.  What it required to put it together and keep it together for as long as he did. We always saw him as the show's band leader, but evidently a gifted musician in his own right.