Welk's parents were ethnic Germans who emigrated from Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1893, and settled on the plains of North Dakota. However, there were still plenty of the Greatest Generation around through the Eisenhower era and beyond, and while their tastes began trending towards a sweeter sound, they still wanted to enjoy 'their' music, and no one did a better job of providing it through the years than Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers. During the post-War era, the music industry turned its attention to Rock 'n' Roll, an outgrowth of Hot Jazz with greater appeal to the highly profitable youth market.
While Hot jazz was all the rage, there was another type of Jazz, still easy to dance to, but rather than the raucous rhythm and stylings of the hot acts, the Sweet Jazz specialists put out music which was better to dance to when you were trying to hold your best girl a little closer. Hot, Big Band dance music was the soundtrack for the so-called Greatest Generation which grew up during the Great Depression and fought the Second World War.
