Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 17 Feb 2003 2:17 pm |
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Welk business shaped by late bandleader's values
By JEANNE A. NAUJECK
Staff Writer
In the annals of broadcasting, there is a special place for The Lawrence Welk Show, that effervescent icon of musical variety shows that ended a 27-year run in 1982 but enjoys a seemingly endless life in syndication. Audiences still adore Welk, the polka-dancing ''Champagne King'' who died in 1992 and would have been 100 on March 11.
Welk was proud of his Midwestern squareness. So it's ironic that his company, Welk Music Group, is behind some of today's hottest musical acts — artists that are on the outskirts of country but the cutting edge of cool. They include Nickel Creek, the young folk and bluegrass trio that has two Grammy nominations, and Dolly Parton, whose career renaissance on WMG's Sugar Hill Records included her first tour in a decade and the Grammy-nominated album Halos and Horns. In all, WMG acts are up for six Grammys Sunday.
This is not your grandfather's Welk.
''The Welk name carries good and bad,'' said Larry Welk, son of the late bandleader and CEO of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based WMG. ''But it was only bad before we proved we could do what we said.''
What Larry Welk and his son Kevin, president of WMG, have done is build a tightly focused business around Nashville-based Welk Publishing and two record labels: Durham, N.C.-based Sugar Hill, which WMG acquired in 1998, and Vanguard Records, a 52-year-old label that boasts a folk, jazz and bluegrass catalog, including Joan Baez, Doc Watson and Bill Monroe.
Vanguard, which WMG bought in 1986, was doing reissues only when Larry Welk brought in Nashville producer and label veteran Steve Buckingham to reactivate it in 1998. Buckingham, former head of artist discovery and development for Columbia Records and producer for Ricky Skaggs, Tammy Wynette and Ricky Van Shelton, said he met Larry Welk at a low point in his career.
''I was burned out on country radio,'' Buckingham said. ''I was dealing with charts, focus groups and consultants — things I didn't get into the business for — and I felt like I was making the same record over and over again.''
He was working with Dolly Parton on her Blue Eye imprint when Welk offered him the job at Vanguard.
''She (Parton) knew I was burned out and said 'Go do it. If you don't, you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life,' '' Buckingham said.
He jumped. In June 1999, he returned the favor, inviting Parton to record a bluegrass album in conjunction with Sugar Hill.
''Thirty days later, we were recording what became The Grass Is Blue,'' Buckingham said. ''By the end of August, it was done; by October it was on the street, and she was getting the best reviews of her career. It was unbelievable.''
He enjoyed the atmosphere at WMG, where he said deals are often sealed with a handshake. Larry and Kevin Welk are nothing like the famously prudish bandleader, who once fired a ''Champagne Lady'' for showing too much leg. They burst into peals of laughter recalling how Lawrence Sr.'s thick German accent created memorable ''Welk-isms'' like instructing the band to ''Pee on your toes!''
But they say they run the business by the late Welk's principles — ''doing what you said you would and treating people right.'' They admire Parton as much for her business sense as for her commitment to her fans, something Lawrence Sr. would have appreciated. And they said they committed to Nickel Creek through the nearly two years it took to ''break'' the act. Nine months after Nickel Creek's self-titled debut album was released, the album had sold only 40,000 copies. Last February, it became Sugar Hill's first gold record. Their follow-up This Side, released last August, sold 50,000 copies its first week and total record sales from the two are about 1.3 million.
WMG can take risks because it doesn't depend on hits for income. Along with steady revenue from its catalog, which accounts for about 45% of sales, the Welk portfolio includes extensive real estate holdings. including commercial properties in the Los Angeles area and resorts and time-shares in California and in Branson, Mo., which is also home to the Champagne Theatre.
''Dad never cared about money, or the details of making money,'' Larry Welk said. ''He was totally absorbed in his show and pleasing his audience. That was his life.
''But he had a business instinct. He would drive past a gas station on Wilshire Boulevard (in Los Angeles) and say, 'Is that place for sale? That's going to be a busy corner one day.' And he was right.''
WMG also distributes its music directly to retailers, using its fulfillment center for Heartland Music, the compilation album business it sold to Time Warner/Time-Life Music in 1996. WMG is Borders Books' sixth-best-selling distributor in units sold per title, ranking behind only the major labels.
''We're not promoting one artist over another. They have to take all of them,'' Kevin Welk said. ''Their buyers don't have time to do the research on every artist we sell, but they trust us.''
A few years ago, Kevin Welk said he told his father he wanted to grow the business and add new artists to the labels rather than just manage the catalog. It was a symbolic passing of the torch to a third generation of Welks in music.
While that famous bubble machine has been retired, Lawrence Welk's successors may get to pop some bubbly after the Grammys.
''Would he enjoy the music today? Probably not,'' Larry Welk said of his late father. ''He wouldn't get it. It's a different audience.
''But we're still in the music business. And we're still having fun.''
Jeanne A. Naujeck covers the music and entertainment businesses and can be reached at 259-8076 or jnaujeck@tennessean.com.
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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047
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