It would be very hard to resurrect a song's magic after that. If this guy played "Twinkle Little Star" and then played "Highway to Hell" (ACDC), I swear you probably couldn't tell the difference. And they lost whatever magic spell they might have had.
Every song played on the accordion sounded like every other song. If you really want to destroy a perfectly good piece of music, just play it on the accordion at the Welk Show. But some were substantive in their own right. Granted some of the songs were already rather dated and silly. One of the worst attributes of the entire show that became a Welk trademark were the arrangements of popular songs for accordion. But like I said, they really weren't engaged in music anyway so maybe it's as it should be. Not only do I not think he was actually conducting but he didn't seem to know the first thing about conducting.
His baton has nothing to do with the beat, the rhythm, or the character of the music whatsoever. (You can find it on Youtube.) When the orchestra "plays" the tune of "I Could Have Danced All Night", a relatively slow legato melody, Welk looks like he's conducting Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa, only about 3 times faster. Take a look at a 1967 show in which he "conducts" a medley from "My Fair Lady". I don't think Welk himself was a musician. All that was cut out of the music when Welk got hold of it. Listen to some of the original recordings from the swing era (1930's and 1940's), where saxophonists like Johnny Hodges roared, drummers like Chick Webb battled their drums, and singers like Ivie Anderson and Bessie Smith didn't just sing but wailed their songs. Most Welk arrangements took away any feeling that the music might have had before it was butchered. Even music that had very little edge to it already, like the songs by Lerner and Lowe or Rogers and Hammerstein, fell victim to Welk's baton in which everything was watered down until there was nothing left but pure sap. Welk, who often recapped music from the swing era, eradicated all of the swing out of swing leaving a sound lacking emotional substance that are only really notes and not really music. Welk could take the most vanilla-sounding of music and shred every ounce of originality out of it and turn it into muzak performed live. Lawrence Welk's "music" was as bad as it sounded.
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