“Golfing is a great sport,” Welk said in an interview with this newspaper. The 18-hole tournament was organized to benefit the Mitchell United Fund, with Welk and 10 of his band members playing in the event. Noble and his Mitchell colleagues delivered for Welk, organizing a celebrity golf tournament on the Friday of Corn Palace week. Most of our players are duffers who shoot between 90 and 100.” “It could be the band against a local club, or just some golers around Mitchell.
“I was wondering if publicity-wise it would mean anything to have a delay of golf which could be put on for a charity,” Welk wrote. 1, 1962, he wrote to Corn Palace Festival committee treasurer Harvard Noble about putting together a charity event when he was in the city the next month. He even opened his own golf resort and housing development outside of San Diego. Welk was an avid golfer, already a regular at mid-winter celebrity pro-am hosted by Bob Hope in Palm Springs, California. Instead, he was wondering if he and his bandmates could get in a round of golf. The Corn Palace box office opened in mid-May, the earliest on record, and advance ticket orders were coming in at a pace of 800 tickets per day.īut Welk wasn’t too concerned about the ticket sales. (Republic file photo via Carnegie Resource Center) Playing golf, making the audience happyįast forward to 1962 and Welk was set to return to Mitchell once more for the annual fall festival. Lawrence Welk is depicted in a Corn Palace mural with 27 varieties of corn in 1963.
The next year, Welk’s TV show was picked up nationally by ABC, making his stardom ever larger, shown to up to 30 million viewers on Saturday nights. “The week with home folks is one of our greatest thrills,” Welk wrote. In a 1954 show program for the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica, California - where Welk’s band had a permanent engagement and filmed its local TV show - Welk wrote that the trip to Mitchell was a long-awaited trip and was “the one engagement that all of us have looked forward to making.” (Today, adjusted for inflation, that check would be worth nearly $300,000.) At the time, Welk received the largest check ever paid to a Corn Palace performer at $29,746.80. In 1954, Welk took the record back, eclipsing Lombardo’s run by 409 attendees, for a total of 49,842 over 15 shows. (Outside the building, an estimated 100,000 people were taking in the festival on Main Street over the course of the week.) In the process, he took down Welk’s festival attendance record in 1952, drawing 49,433 ticket buyers over the course of 14 shows. Guy Lombardo - himself known for his sweet music, much like Welk - drew massive crowds to Mitchell in 1952.
READ: More from the Corn Palace 100 series by Marcus Traxler.įor the annual fall festival, it was an era of bandleaders. “After all, it’s the folks back here in the little towns that ‘got us over the hump.’” “It gives me a very warm feeling to return to South Dakota, which is really home to us,” Welk said on a visit to Mitchell in 1962. The first documented recording of Welk leading a Corn Palace dance came in 1934, 10 years after Welk left his North Dakota farm at age 21 with his accordion to embark on a music career for the ages. Welk’s band took up semi-residency in Yankton in 1927 and playing on WNAX-AM expanded Welk’s reach, helping him make a name for himself.
Welk’s talented accordionist Myron Floren grew up near Roslyn and worked in radio in Sioux Falls. Welk created a band and later an orchestra that toured the Upper Midwest, including halls throughout South Dakota. The goal, Welk said, was to create music that had a “bouncing feel” and would be easily recognizable. Born to German-Russian immigrants to Strasburg, North Dakota, in 1903, Welk was known as the farm boy who liked to play the accordion, playing his famous “champagne music” that emphasized dancing, light melodies and rhythms. Given that Welk was from Dakota (as he often called it) and his appearances at the Palace coincided with his own national rise to stardom, the Mitchell area loved him unlike any other.