Champagne Lady Dies At 87
Unless you are over the age of 50 or watch PBS on Saturday nights at early-bird hour (around 6 pm), you probably won’t understand why I’m in deep grief today over the death this week of Norma Zimmer. Zimmer was the “Champagne Lady” of TV’s “The Lawrence Welk Show” and a studio singer who worked with Frank Sinatra and other pop stars. She was the very model of effervescence for the postwar generation. The Welk show is considered impossibly wholesome and kitsch by most folks today, but I have to confess that I can never channel surf by it: I’m always hooked for a moment by the dancing of Cissy and Bobby and especially by the song stylings of Miss Norma.
