Lawrence Duchow
Deceased Category – Inducted 1983
Lawrence Duchow started his musical career in 1932
playing with Hal’s Bluebirds out of Chilton, Wisconsin. Their first job
was for a dance at Kleist’s Hall in Potter, Wisconsin. Lawrence took
over the operation reins in 1933 and called it the Lawrence Duchow and
his Red Raven Inn
 Orchestra
as the band was performing at the Red Raven Inn in Hilbert, Wisconsin.
The band grew and began to record for Decca and later for RCA Victor in
which they had some of the biggest hits of any band playing polka and
waltz music. The orchestra introduced Windy City Polka,
Milwaukee Polka written for the Milwaukee Centennial
newspaper, Vagabond Waltz, The Swiss Boy and their theme,
Red Robin Polka. With recording success, came road work, all the
way from coast to coast and border to border. They played weekly at
Trianon Ballroom in Chicago and had a weekly coast-to-coast radio
broadcast on WGN. During the war, many servicemen carried Red Raven
records with them overseas.
Lawrence Duchow served in the Army until a medical
discharge sent him back to the band and his public. After the
dissolution of his orchestra in 1953, the traveling music library was
sold to Don Peachy of Burnette, Wisconsin. Jay Wells of Appleton and
Andy Anderson received the rights of the Red Raven Orchestra name and
the rest of the library in 1960. Duchow settled in California, where he
developed a store coupon brokerage firm called the Lawrence Duchow
Markets. He also was a booking agent for West Coast orchestras. His
death at the age of 58 in 1972 at Hamlet, California, was the result of
a stroke. He will be remembered for what Franklyn McCormak of WGN Radio
said was “The best damned Old-Tyme band there ever was.” They recorded
some 300 singles. During the peak of his career, Lawrence Duchow was
considered second only to Lawrence Welk in the area of dance music. |
