“No, it was like he’d say let’s do a tribute to the big bands or a tribute to the swing bands, or an around the world (themed show) or a salute to Duke Ellington. Welk said ‘let’s do the old songs,’ ” he said.
He’d say: ‘They’ll never know the difference, and you covered well, let’s leave it in.’ ”īurgess, who will appear on KOCE during pledge breaks Saturday from 7:45 to 10 p.m., said the weekly grind never got to him. Welk was really into making it feel like a live TV show. The other time, we were doing an outer-space dance and she hit some kind of dry ice and slipped and disappeared under the dry ice. “One time, my partner got her foot whacked (while performing a Filipino pole dance), and she started crying. In 21 years, he said, he remembers stopping only twice. “He never wanted us to stop (to reshoot a sequence) even if the singers forgot their lyrics or the dancers” flubbed up.
It was embarrassing, but we got more mail on that and people talked about it for years and years.”ĭespite such snafus, Welk liked the look of live TV so much that even when the show was prerecorded, he strove to retain a sense of being there, Burgess said. Paired with Niverson, Burgess will chasse, jitterbug and polka with wholesome spunk to such songs as “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Roll Out the Barrel” on Saturday’s specials.īurgess recalled the early days of live TV when an audience member dancing with Welk “was twirling around and flipped her wig off. “It went on like that for six months until he told us on the air we were regulars,” the cheery-voiced dancer said. That sort of intuition seemed to pay off from the day the Welk show premiered in July, 1955.ĭuring its first year, the program’s Nielsen ratings more than quadrupled to 32.5 it stayed on the air for 27 years before going to reruns, and since 1987, has been the most-watched show on PBS, its exclusive broadcaster since then, according to PMN Trac, an independent organization that analyzes public television audiences.īurgess, who was born in Long Beach and started dance lessons at 4, joined Welk’s coterie after myriad television appearances and a four-year stint as a fresh-faced Mouseketeer.Īt 19, after winning a ballroom dance contest with partner Barbara Boylen (the first of his three Welk-show partners, preceding Cissy King and Elaine Niverson), the couple were asked to appear on the show, the first of many such guest stints.
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