His orchestra also played at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s. In the early 1940s, the band started to play at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, where they played for 10 years. Welk's big band performed across the country but mostly at ballrooms and hotels in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. We play with a steady beat so that dancers can follow it." We place the stress on melody the chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. Welk described his band's sound, saying "We still play music with the champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. At an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, a dancer said that Welk's band's sound was as "light and bubbly as champagne," which is where the term "Champagne Music" came from. They were too poor to rent rooms, so they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. At first, the band traveled around the country by car. In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota.ĭuring the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that played dance tunes and "sweet" music. His band also played for radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. He led big bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. Kelly bands before he started his own orchestra. During the 1920s, he performed with the Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, and George T. On his 21st birthday, Welk left the family's farm to start his career in music. Any other money he earned during that time, by doing farmwork or performing, would go to his family. Welk decided on a career in music and got his father to buy him an accordion from a mail order for $400 (equivalent to $4,255 in 2018)2018 He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, to pay his father back for the accordion. In North Dakota, the family lived on a homestead. They emigrated to America in 1892 from Selz, Kutschurgan District, in the German-speaking area north of Odessa (now Odessa, Ukraine, but then in southwestern Russia). His parents were Ludwig and Christiana (Schwahn) Welk, who were ethnic Germans from Russia. Most people there spoke German, but also knew English. Welk was born in Strasburg, North Dakota.
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