Rogers finds Lawrence Welk wunnerful, wunnerful

When Lester Burnham, the protagonist of the 1999 film “American Beauty,” soothes his midlife crisis with a dinner-table rant about his complacent, unsatisfying life, he needs a target for his venom. Something boring, predictable and totally at odds with the exhilarating lifestyle he so desires.

He chooses as his scapegoat the background music his wife plays every night at dinner: Lawrence Welk.

The abuse heaped on Welk, whose notoriously un-trendy Saturday night musical show was an idiosyncratic keystone of American popular culture from 1955 to 1982, does not surprise J. Bradley Rogers (American Studies, Music ’04), Welk fan extraordinaire.

“Welk is universally cited as an example of bad taste,” he said.

Rogers begs to differ, and plans to do so in a 50-page thesis focusing on Welk’s “aesthetic sensibility” and cultural influence.

“This project attempts to take the traditional methodologies of studying classical music and apply them to music that is particularly relevant,” Rogers said. “For a lot of contemporary Americans, while they are certainly still inheriting the cultural legacies of classical music, the musical baggage they carry around is very relevant. And in this case, when we study this sort of music, it can give serious insight into contemporary culture.”

Rogers was only an infant when Welk’s show went off the air in 1982. But in 10th grade he heard a Welk recording of “Allegheny Moon.” That’s all it took.

“What struck me? I don’t know,” Rogers said. “That’s the beauty of it. It was just sort of sublime. Initially, it’s just bizarre. It’s completely, in a way, disorienting, because it’s so familiar.”

The “bizarre” splendor of Welk’s show, with its waltzes, polkas and big band numbers, has a certain kitsch value these days, particularly among jaded college students. Rogers, though, insists that was not what attracted him.

“It’s impossible, almost, to like Lawrence Welk today without it being somehow campy or ironic. But, no, no, no, no, no. It’s not just that type of appeal. This music is of too much relevance,” he said.

Rogers has also exposed his uncivilized fellow Wahoos to the world of Welk. “I do have a couple of converts,” he joked. “I’m a Lawrence Welk missionary.”