Matt from Scrubbles, who designed my lovely new PCJM banner found this treasure: The blandest singers in America (and her name is Gayle/Gail/Gale!) performing "One Toke Over The Line" on "The Lawrence Welk Show."
Do you think either of them, or Mr. Welk, actually knew what "toke" referred to? In the introduction, they simply refer to it as "one of the newer songs." And at the end, Lawrence Welk refers to it as "a modern spiritual." Well, it does mention Jesus.
Maybe one of LW's writers was putting one over on the show. More likely, though, they just thought it was a pretty tune, which it is.
Michael Brewer of the original singers of "One Toke," Brewer and Shipley, is quoted about the performance in their Wikipedia entry.
Brewer says: ""The Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, named us personally as a subversive to American youth, but at exactly the same time Lawrence Welk performed the crazy thing and introduced it as a gospel song. That shows how absurd it really is. Of course, we got more publicity than we could have paid for."
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5 comments:
I think that "Gayle and Dale" knew EXACTLY what they were getting away with, and so did Myron Floren, who introduced the number and seemed to have all he could do not to choke on it. But Mr. Welk himself? Not a clue.
OMG - That is too funny! It looks like whoever that is doing the intro knew what the song was about - he could hardly get the words out! OTOTL has always been one of my favorite songs - actually, that entire Brewer & Shipley album is beyond excellent. Thanks for the laughs, Gael!
I'm not sure which is scarier, the fact that that song was on Lawrence Welk, or the fact that I had a jumper just like the one she is wearing!
You could ask Ralna English, another Welk star:
http://www.ralnaenglish.com/email.php
Sweet Jesus, it is catchy.
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