Bob Smale
Robert Claire Smale, known as Bob Smale (March 21, 1931 – November 9, 2010), was a pianist. Smale performed from 1969 to 1982 on "The Lawrence Welk Show". He was also a musical arranger, conductor, and writer for Welk and in other venues as well in the musical scene in Los Angeles, California. Smale joined the Welk orchestra in 1969 when two of the show's pianists, Frank Scott and Larry Hooper, left the program. (Hooper would fill in for Smale from time to time before rejoining the show in 1973.) At the time, the Welk series was still  broadcast on ABC, prior to switching to syndication in 1971 for an additional eleven-year run. A native of Oakland, California, Smale and his wife of forty-seven years, Mary Hope Smale (born c. 1939), had three children, Margaret S. Wells and Rob and David Smale, and ten grandchildren. He died at the age of seventy-nine at his residence in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.