The Lennon Sisters--Dianne, Peggy, Kathy and Janet--are celebrating their 55th anniversary this year, having made their first appearance on The Lawrence Welk Christmas Show on ABC-TV in 1955.
Only youngest sisters Kathy and Janet remain active in music, and continue to record and perform together along with younger sister Mimi. They also run their KatJan, Inc. toy design/manufacturing company, which makes award-winning reproductions of their childhood rag dolls, as well as the Lennon Sisters Paper Dolls sets that were first produced in 1957.
In New York this week for Toy Fair 2011, Kathy and Janet enjoyed a reunion with fellow Welk Show cast member Bobby Burgess, who was in town celebrating his wedding anniversary. They also took a moment away from greeting buyers at the Javits Center exhibition hall to look back on the Welk Show experience.
"It was a special time," said Kathy. "We all went to the same school--with the same big teacher we all loved and were scared of! The 13 years we were with the show served us well."
They stayed with the Welk Show until 1968, when they struck out on their own.
"It appealed to every possible age group--the music was so universal," said Janet, and the show certainly did cover many of the pop music genres of the time, while focusing on the Welk orchestra's big band-era "champagne music" standards. "Mr. Welk really had his finger on the pulse of the audience."
Janet herself still watches reruns of the show on TV with her grandchildren, and dances with them in the living room.
"Now I know how people felt watching us on TV!" she said.
Those people who watch, she noted, can get quite emotional.
"People come up with tears in their eyes when we perform," added Kathy, who just completed her 17th year performing with her sisters at the Welk Champagne Theater in Branson, Missouri, and also performs with them throughout the U.S. "Last night at dinner a man came up and actually said, 'Oh my God! I have tears in my eyes!'"
The Welk Show, noted Janet, "conjures up an innocent time spent with parents and grandparents."
Added Kathy: "You don't get embarrassed by [the adult-directed content of] any commercials--like movie ads. All ages can sit there and enjoy watching TV together. That's what it's about: family and entertainment--and there's not that much of just that anymore!"
She makes a connection between the nature of the Welk Show and the KatJan product.
"That's what the product is all about: bringing people back to a simpler time," said Kathy. "We tell people the story of the original dolls [lovingly made for the young sisters in 1949 by their mother and grandmother] and they get very emotional. Everything is really about hugs, about love--and taking care of each other."
She observed that the Lennon Sisters were "very blessed to grow up and learn the music business in such an innocent time, with the help of our parents."
"TV was brand new then," recalled Janet. "We were the only thing to watch on Saturday night, and people opted to stay in and watch us--and we were on at a time when everybody could watch together."
She noted, too, the high talent level of Welk's "Musical Family" of performers and musicians.
"We've all stayed really good friends with everybody from the Welk Family," she said.
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