Saturday, November 18, 2006

America, The Melting Pot

Today has been fun, the Bucks beat Michigan 42-39 to play for college football's national championship, and this week's Welk episode is a classic! It's America the Melting Pot which first aired November 18, 1972...exactly 34 years ago today! Here's the cast with the opening number, "What's More American?"

This show had Clay Hart & Sally Flynn host the wraparounds, along with Sadie the Wonderdog...and they take us on a tour of our diverse country on this week of Thanksgiving. There were plenty of diverse numbers in the show, such as Myron Floren's "Lady of Spain" as well as Cissy & Bobby dancing to the Hungarian Csardas. Also, we had Sandi & Sally singing one of my favorite tunes, "Chason De Amor"

Buddy Merrill, with help from the orchestra, demonstrated his guitar skills with "April in Portugal" and later assisted Clay with the "Walting Matilda", both were nice and pleasant sounding. Bud also paired up with his guitar pickin' partner in crime Neil Levang with Estrellia, which was backed up nicely with Bob Lido at the maracas, Bob Ralston at the harpischord and Cissy & Bobby's fine dancing. Neil also went to town later in the show with violinist Harry Hyams with "My Yiddish Mama"

And for a taste of ol' Italy...there's Tanya leading the gang at a Roman cafe with "That's Amore" and proving she more than just Italian, she also played a German barmaid a few numbers later with Dick Dale singing "Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen"...whatever that means, plus there was a real fun number with Cissy & Bobby, Jack Imel and Mary Lou Metzger with "Loch Lomond".

Do they take the high road or the low road? Any way is fine by me!

That's this week's show in a nutshell....next week, we go globe-trotting again with "This Colorful World".

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone....and to all U of Michigan fans out there, there's always next year!


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2 comments:

mom said...

I was hoping you could help me. I just listened to Clay and Sally Hart sing a song they wrote for their sons wedding. It was beautiful and would be a perfect song for our son. He is getting married in June 2007 to a wonderful girl. Is there a recording of this song I could purchase? Any help you could give me would be appreciated. Thank you, Mom

Justin said...

Do you have a copy of this that you could post to YouTube? My mother was dancing in the audience at the end of the episode.