A Higher Calling

As Mr. Ginley was flipping through YouTube channels the other night, he paused and said, "No, this has to be fake news."

Lawrence Welk, ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mind you, there's plenty of that going around, but there are times when the real thing is stranger than AI-generated tripe.

Calling me over to the screen, Mr. pointed and said, "Check this out."

There were Gail Farrell and Dick Dale, two singing darlings from The Lawrence Welk Show, and they were belting out "One Toke Over the Line." They sang it with reverence, the same way they would harmonize to "How Great Thou Art" or "Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore."

Hallelujah, indeed.

Okay, before we continue, permit me to refresh your memory (or bring you up to speed). 

Lawrence Welk was a band leader from the Swing Era. My folks always said he was too schmaltzy for them (they liked their Swing to swing). He had a TV show in the 1950s through the 1970s that was popular with the geriatric set because it was wholesome in a Wonder Bread sort of way, if you catch my drift.

One Toke Over the Line was a hit for the musical duo of Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley in 1971. As you may suspect, it's a reference to pot smoking. 

Brewer confirmed the song was about getting high. In fact, he said they were between sets in their dressing room and stoned when they wrote it.

The song drew immediate criticism from then-VP Spiro Agnew, who called it subversive, thereby guaranteeing the song would be a hit with the youngsters.

It was at about the same time that Lawrence Welk plucked the tune from the airways and had that other duo of Farrell and Dale perform the song. Clearly, Welk had no idea what the song was about. Perhaps it was these lyrics that captured his attention: "One toke over the line, sweet Jesus" and "Waiting for the train to come home, Sweet Mary." I don't believe he ever commented on it, but imagine it's these references that caused Welk to nod approvingly after the performance and identify it as "a modern spiritual."

For those of you who are still doubting Thomases, I now give you the YouTube link to One Toke Over the Line.

And a one-ah and a two-ah...

Brewer & Shipley, 1971
Photo by Nick DeWolf, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons