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. Her husband, Randy Zimmer, died in 2008.During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that played dance tunes and "sweet" music. Music” and in an episode of “I Love Lucy” and was the voice of the White Rose in the 1951 Disney film “Alice in Wonderland.” Zimmer made several film and TV appearances, including one with Crosby in the 1950 film “Mr. She also took part in a tribute to Welk and his show held earlier this year at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. Zimmer appeared on the orchestra’s public TV specials that have aired (along with repeats of the series) since 1987. She sang with a succession of vocal groups including the Norman Luboff Choir, the Pete King Chorale and the Ken Darby Singers and appeared on television variety shows during the 1950s.Īs part of a quartet called the Girlfriends, she sang backup for Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como and Bing Crosby, including on Crosby’s famed recording of “White Christmas.” The show experimented with several different singers over the course of a year, and Zimmer officially joined Welk as his Champagne Lady on New Year’s Eve 1960.īorn Norma Larsen in Larson, Idaho, she grew up in Seattle. After protests, however, Welk tried (and failed) to get Lon back. Welk’s previous Champagne Lady (the title Welk traditionally gave to his orchestra’s lead female singer), Alice Lon, was fired in 1959 - he thought she exposed her legs too much on camera.
0 kommentar(er)
