{"id":13281,"date":"2020-01-23T19:09:46","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T00:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13281"},"modified":"2020-01-23T19:09:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T00:09:46","slug":"mockinbird-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13281","title":{"rendered":"‘Mockin’bird Hill’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I still haven\u2019t finished<\/strong> reading the book I\u2019ll review next. It is a mark of my desperation for material that I\u2019m going to post a music video that represents an utter betrayal of my younger self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you see here is a clip from the old Lawrence Welk TV series. It features the popular singers, The Lennon Sisters, doing \u201cMockin\u2019bird Hill,\u201d a song popular in the 1950s. Patti Page had a big hit with it. I remember that my mother and her sisters were fond of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iK99-mLWkjA\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What nobody told me at the time was that it\u2019s a Scandinavian song \u2013 arguably Norwegian. It was first recorded by a Swedish accordionist named Carl \u201cCalle\u201d Jularbo in 1915, but it sounds suspiciously similar to a Norwegian folk tune, \u201cNorska Bondvals<\/em>\u201d (Norwegian Farmer\u2019s Waltz). In the clip, the accordionist introducing the song is Myron Floren, a Norwegian-American who was a regular on the Welk show. He was the single major star at Norsk H\u00f8stfest in Minot for many years until his death, which was years before I ever attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like the song, but still hate myself for posting it in\nthis incarnation, because of my childhood. My parents loved Lawrence Welk, and\nmy brothers and I despised him (and all his works and all his ways, as we\nLutherans say). We had a conspiracy to blind our parents to the program\u2019s\nexistence. It was broadcast on Saturday evenings in our area, but there was\nanother channel that showed Tarzan movies at the same time. My brothers and I\nloved Tarzan. So when the folks fired up the Remote Control (which consisted of\nhaving one of us change the channel for them), we would zip past the channel\nshowing Welk, hoping they wouldn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that I\u2019m old, I rightly ought to be learning to appreciate Lawrence Welk\u2019s oeuvre<\/em>. Sometimes they run his programs on the public television station. I\u2019ve long been a confirmed fuddy-duddy. I ought to appreciate them now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But honestly, I can\u2019t. I\u2019ll admit that some of the girls are\npretty. But that \u201cChampagne Sound\u201d (Welk\u2019s personal trademark) just leaves me\ncold. Too processed. Too polka-based. And those obligatory, rictus-like smiles\non all the performers, who were known to be paid minimum union scale regardless\nof their popularity with the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too much ancient bitterness there. Too much blood shed, to wax hyperbolic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t even like Tarzan that much these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I still haven\u2019t finished reading the book I\u2019ll review next. It is a mark of my desperation for material that I\u2019m going to post a music video that represents an utter betrayal of my younger self. What you see here is a clip from the old Lawrence Welk TV series. It features the popular singers, … Continue reading ‘Mockin’bird Hill’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[1619,1962,2939],"class_list":["post-13281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-lawrence-welk","tag-myron-floren","tag-the-lennon-sisters"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}