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In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His band was also the station band for the popular radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. He led big bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. During the 1920s, he performed with various bands before starting his own orchestra. On his 21st birthday, having fulfilled his promise to his father, Welk left the family farm to pursue a career in music. Any money he made elsewhere during that time, doing farmwork or performing, would go to his family. Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 (equivalent to $ 4,733 in 2015) He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year inside an upturned wagon covered in sod. Growing up speaking German and English, Welk left school during fourth grade to work full-time on the family farm. The family lived on a homestead, which is now a tourist attraction. Welk's grandparents, Moritz and Magdalena Welk, emigrated in 1808 from Alsace-Lorraine to Ukraine.
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Lawrence Welk was a first cousin, once removed, of former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer (Welk's mother and Schweitzer's paternal grandmother were siblings). He was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana (Schwahn) Welk, ethnic Germans who emigrated to America in 1892 from Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. His style came to be known to his large audience of radio, television, and live-performance fans (and critics) as "champagne music". Lawrence Welk (Ma– May 17, 1992) was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted the television program The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982. Shirley Welk, Donna Welk, Lawrence "Larry" Welk, Jr. Musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California