Let's Get Acquainted - Brunswick Records

Let's Get Acquainted - The Lennon Sisters
featuring Pete Fountain

1958 - Brunswick Records BL 54031

Selections Include:

Side One
1. Let's Get Acquainted
2. Little White Lies
3. Young And In Love
With Orchestra Directed By Tiny Little
4. Teenage Waltz
With Orchestra Directed By Tiny Little
S. Pocahontas
6. White Silver Sands
With Pete Fountain And His Dixieland Boys

Side Two
1. When I'm With You
Featured In The Motion Picture "Poor Little Rich Girl"
2. One Day A Little Girl
With Pete Fountain And His Dixieland Boys
3. Walk With Me
4. If I Don't Love You
5. Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry)
6. Goodnight God

Liner Notes:

The Lennon Sisters - Vocal Quartet With Instrumental Accompaniment

Let's get acquainted with the Lennon Sisters - Dianne, Peggy, Kathy & Janet - those four talented youngsters who sing their way into the hearts of millions of television viewers each week, via Lawrence Welk's network shows.

Representing half of Bill and Isobel Lennon's family of eight children there was always much to do around their Venice, California home. Singing together was the way the girls made their dishwashing chores lighter and their family duties more like fun than work. Humming lullabies and play-party songs together was a family affair in which the sisters took delight.

Perhaps some of their natural talent comes to them through their Dad. Bill Lennon had been a featured vocalist with the Paul Whiteman and Freddie Martin Bands in the early forties and for a time had a quartet with his brothers, Pat, Bob and Ted. As a protege of the famous tenor, Tito Shipa, he appeared in Hollywood Bowl concerts.

The girls first performed for friends and relatives and then went "on stage" at church benefits and civic functions. Fifteen-year-old Dianne's St. Monica's schoolmate, Larry Welk, Jr. "discovered" the sisters and got his famous dad to listen to them. Welk Sr. was so impressed with their charm and musical ability that he immediately signed them for a special ABC-TV Christmas show that was in preparation for the 1955 holidays. As soon as the nation's viewers saw them, Welk's judgement and Larry Jr's foresight were justified.

Billboard, the trade magazine of the music industry, published results of a disc jockey popularity poll shortly there-after and the Lennon Sisters were within the top ten most promising vocal groups. Noting this, Coral & Brunswick Records began making plans for offering more of their fine work on wax. Hence, several single releases, among them hits like "Tonight You Belong To Me" and "White Silver Sands" and now their first long playing album.

Despite tempting lucrative offers for outside engagements, the girls have remained loyal to their primary duties at home and with their schooling, limiting their professional work to recording and appearing as members of the Welk shows.

With no formal musical training, the girls do their arrangements seated at the kitchen table with a pitch-pipe as their only instrument. Mom helps them with the harmony and Dad coaches on phrasing and expression. Mom also designs and makes all their costumes.

Maestro Welk sums up their charm in the following statement: "They look sweet, sing sweet and have a certain intangible spiritual quality. It gets across to the audience."

Listen to these selections ...we're sure you will agree.

Merry Christmas From Lawrence Welk And His Champagne Music - Coral Records

Merry Christmas From Lawrence Welk And His Champagne Music

featuring Pete Fountain

1958 Coral Records CRL 57093 Mono / CLR 757093 Stereo

Side One
1. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Instrumental Fox Trot
2. I Wanna Do More Than Whistle (Under The Mistletoe)
Vocal By The Sparklers And Alice Lon
3. White Christmas
Vocal By The Sparklers
4. Christmas Island
Vocal By The Sparklers
5. The Christmas Toy
Vocal By The Lennon Sisters
6. Santa Claus Is Comin` To Town
Instrumental

Side Two
1. Winter Wonderland
With Larry, Dick And Curt
2. Christmas Dreaming (A Little Early This Year)
Vocal By Dick Dale
3. Christmas Comes But Once A Year
Vocal By Larry, Dean And The Sparklers
4. Thanks For Christmas
Vocal By Alice Lon And The Sparklers
5. Twelve Gifts Of Christmas
Vocal By Larry, Dean And The Sparklers
6. High On The House Top
Vocal By Larry Hooper

Pete was with Lawrence Welk when this records was recorded and is in the band playing.

Liner Notes:

The wondrous enchantment of Christmas and the festive holiday season has been told in many ways and in many languages down through the ages. From the moving biblical stories to the immortal lines of Dickens' Christmas Carol, we have come to know and understand the true meaning of this most revered day.

However, our feelings as Americans towards Christmas in other than a religious vein, have best been told by Tin Pan Alley and the present day song writers. In their words and melodies they have truly captured the thoughts of children and adults during the Christmas season.

They have depicted the sheer excitement of children when they know Santa will soon be on his way - their angelic faces and well mannered behavior - the anticipation of shiny new toys and a stocking crammed with delicacies, Their music has expressed our warm feelings of brotherhood, and our heartfelt desire for good will among men. The longing thoughts that stem from Christmas spent away from loved ones to the crackling spirits of a bright fireplace, and the sparkling freshness of a newly fallen snow have found their way from their pens to our hearts and imaginations.

In this musical greeting from Lawrence Welk, he and his Champagne Music Makers have chosen a group of selections that are wholly representative of the American Christmas spirit. Whether you spend Christmas in the sunny climates of Southern California and Florida, or in the snow covered countrysides of Maine and Minnesota, Lawrence Welk extends to you best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.

Dixieland Lawrence Welk and Pete Fountain - Ranwood Records

Dixieland Lawrence Welk and Pete Fountain

1980 - Ranwood Records 8149-2

CD Listing
1. China Boy
2. Sweethearts On Parade
3. Blue Moods
4. Should I
5. Pete's Tail-Fly
6. San Antonio Rose
7. Barnyard Blues
8. When My Sugar Walks Down The Street
9. 's Wonderful
10. Tea 'n Trumpets
11. Thou Swell
12. Strike Up The Band

Liner Notes:

It was in the Fall of 1956 that three New Orleans musicians journeyed to the West Coast for the annual Gene Norman-Frank Bull Jazz Festival. They were veteran trumpet-man Al Hirt; a fourteen-year-old phenomenon on trumpet, Warren Luning, Jr.; and another veteran from the New Orleans jazz scene, clarinetist Pete Fountain. Among those in the audience that proceeded to flip over the playing of the New Orleans visitors was young Lawrence Welk, Jr. Forthwith he goes to the old man and says, "Dad, this you've gotta hear!" (Or words of similar import.) So Larry, Sr. put down his accordion, turned off the bubble-machine, and made the trip to the auditorium where the jazz bash was being held; and that night an idea was born. To wit: why not build a dixieland contingent from the Welk Orchestra around Pete Fountain, and feature him regularly, both at the dance sessions and on the weekly television broadcasts?

Thus it was that Pete Fountain left Al Hirt's band a few months after their return to New Orleans to accept an offer from Lawrence Welk that was (in Pete's words) "too good to turn down."

Since joining the Lawrence Welk Orchestra as a featured soloist, Pete has taken advantage of the opportunity to study on the west coast - an opportunity which the mature Pete Fountain realized was a valuable one in keeping with his desire to grow musically. He is almost twenty-eight years old.

Although it is essentially the Welk Orchestra backing Pete in this album, the arrangements are not of the "Champagne Music" style. Neither is it a jazz album. Rather it is designed for dancing, with an easily identifiable beat, and tempos well-suited for dancing.

Two years later he returned to jazz and New Orleans. As he puts it, "champagne and bourbon just don't mix" - but in two years he had become one of the most familiar names in American music, so the time had been well spent, well spent indeed.