... that although Alan Freed is often credited for coining the phrase "rock & roll," Philadelphia journalist Maurie Orodenker was a more likely source, having used the term as early as 1942 while working at Billboard magazine?
... that while Dick Clark was presenting a stage show in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Aug. 29, 1961, an announcer from WKYT-TV in Lexington, Ky., (just 80 miles down the road from Cincinnati) was filling in for him on American Bandstand back in Philadelphia? That announcer, Nick Clooney (pictured in 1954), was better known in those days as the brother of singer Rosemary Clooney. Today he's better known as the father of Oscar-winning actor George Clooney, who was less than four months old at the time his proud papa filled in for Clark.
... that in November 1961 Chancellor Records recalled Fabian's Wild Party 45 (Chancellor 1092) because the title of the flip side — Made You — was too suggestive? It was replaced with The Gospel Truth. Made You had been an English hit by Adam Faith from the movie Beat Girl and was written by John Barry. Both versions of the record are readily available today. In case you missed the original:
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --isavailable from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
The Twist pretty much dominated the dance scene from 1960 through at least 1962. Dick Clark, of course, deserves much of the credit for his role in having Chubby Checker record the song then pushing it on American Bandstand, but the song (and dance) actually has its roots well before Checker's version first hit the charts.
Here's a series of videos that illustrates just some of The Twist's lineage.
Songs mentioning twisting date back many decades, but here's one from the early years of television, an abbreviated version of Ballin' the Jack by Dagmar in 1951:
There is debate in some circles about who actually wrote the lyrics to The Twist, but Buster Bennett should deserve some credit for "look at sis, out in the backyard doin' that twist" since that phrase was used in his 1946 recording of I Want to Woogie Woogie:
As Hank Ballard and his guitarist, Cal Green, worked on the lyrics and music that would become the Twist, they borrowed the melody from an earlier Midnighters recording, Is Your Love For Real ...:
... which sounded similar to a 1954 recording by Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters, Whatcha Gonna Do:
The Midnighters recorded The Twist twice in 1958 - in Miami in March and in Cincinnati in November, the recording for King records that was the B-side of Teardrops on Your Letter. Here's the King version of The Twist by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters:
Dick Clark asked old pal Bernie Lowe of Cameo-Parkway to come up with a version of The Twist that would be more palatable for his American Bandstand audience than the original, which was done by a guy better known for his Annie trilogy - Work With Me Annie, Annie Had a Baby and Sexy Ways. What Lowe and a&r man Dave Appell came up with was the note-for-note clone of Ballard's song by Chubby Checker:
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --isavailable from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
In the early years of American Bandstand, Dick Clark turned a handful of South Philadelphia teenagers into rock and roll stars - Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker.
Besides being neighbors and, in some cases, classmates, another thing these singers had in common was that they were all minors. As such, they came under the protection of the Orphans' Court.
Orphans' Courts were set up in each Philadelphia county by the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. The courts weren't established for orphans as the term is commonly used - children without living parents - but were created to protect "the best interests of those persons and entities" who had not yet reached the age of majority.
So, under Pennsylvania law, each of these singers was appointed a guardian and had to petition the court in order to tap into their assets.
For instance, Fabian had to ask the court for $7,000 in 1960 to build a studio in the basement of his parents' home in Haddonfield, N.J., a house his parents had bought two years earlier with an advance from Fabian's estate.
Rydell and Checker went to court to get money for new cars. While Rydell had little trouble in getting $4,534 to buy a 1961 Pontiac, Checker had to pull a few strings to get what he wanted. Checker's guardian wanted him to get a Pontiac Bonneville sports coupe, but Checker had his eyes on a new Ford Thunderbird. The judge favored the guardian's position since the Pontiac was $530 cheaper, but relented when Checker's managers offered to pay the difference out of their own pockets.
A few months later, Checker was back in court, trying to divert some of his earnings to his parents. But Judge Harold O. Saylor denied the request, saying that Checker's parents - Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Evans - earned enough from their jobs to live comfortably. At the time, Raymond Evans was earning $75 a week as a longshoreman and his wife pulled down $35 a week as a seamstress. Checker was earning as much as $2,000 for each appearance.
Judge Saylor did rule, however, that Checker was entitled to a $200 a week clothing allowance after Checker’s managers insisted he ruined his clothes while working up a sweat while dancing.
About that photo. The picture at the top of this post is an ad from the May 1, 1961, issue of Billboard for Bob Heller's Flying Record Distributing Company. Heller was a well-known Philadelphia promotion man who once worked for Chips Distributing, which was once partially owned by Dick Clark. In an era where promotion men spent long days on the road, delivering records to small radio stations from the trunk of their cars, it looks as if Heller found a different way to get the job done. The plane, a 1960 Piper, is still in the air and is registered to an owner in Lamar, Colo.
Getting an appointment to see Dick Clark was notoriously difficult, especially for people he didn't know. This funny Saturday Night Live skit is probably not far off the mark:
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --isavailable from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
Twelve years after Syracuse University student Dick Clark was heard on WOLF radio in Syracuse, another Syracuse University student who would go on to great heights in broadcasting was host of a daily 6-9 p.m. show on WOLF. The student? Marv Albert, who would go on to be the voice of the New York Knicks and Rangers for many years.
As Dick Clark was giving his payola testimony in Washington, D.C., Newsweek published an article in its May 2, 1960, issue about Clark headlined "Disk Jockey and Friends." The article was not very complimentary to Clark:
Describing Bandstand: “A torpid diurnal ritual in which teenagers gum-chew their moony way around a linoleum dance floor in a barn-like Philadelphia studio to rock ’n’ roll records.”
“It is the Clark clambakes which pioneer teen-age styles in dress and lingo, introduce dance crazes (sample: “The Madison”), and help mold the under-talented, over-pompadoured teenage culture gods whom a shocking number of young Americans seem to adore.”
It wasn't long after the payola hearings that Chubby Checker became a national sensation with his recording of The Twist. It appears as if the marketing people at Parkway Records didn't know that The Twist was the plug side of Checker's record because in the first ad for the record that appeared in Billboard magazine on July 4, 1960, it was the flip, Toot, that was touted.
Things got fixed in a hurry, but Toot has largely been forgotten. Until now. Give a listen:
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --isavailable from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
Before Dick Clark was summoned to appear before a House committee looking into payola in 1960, the committee spent several days building a case against Clark. As many as 80 Clark associates had been interviewed by investigators looking for questionable connections to the popular American Bandstand host.
One of the witnesses appearing before the committee was a middle-aged songwriter from Chillicothe, Ohio, named Orville Lunsford. Lunsford told the story of how he wrote a song called The All-American Boy, had a friend record it and leased it to Fraternity Records in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Then, Lunsford claimed, he received a call from Fraternity president Harry Carlson saying Dick Clark was willing to push the song on Bandstand, if the company had 50,000 copies pressed by Clark's Mallard Pressing Co. in Philadelphia. Carlson disputed the story, but Lunsford claimed the records were pressed in January 1959.
“Almost immediately,” Lunsford said, “I heard my song played every other day on Clark’s show, American Bandstand, and on the other Dick Clark show also. The record became a big hit in the nation for a while.”[1]
But Lunsford's story was only partially true. Dick Clark did, indeed, push the song to near the top of the charts, but the story of The All-American Boy is one of the strangest of the rock & roll era.
First, Lunsford didn't write the song. Second, Bill Parsons (who was listed as the singer) didn't sing the song. It was actually Bobby Bare who wrote and recorded the song that became a hit, thanks to American Bandstand.
It wasn't a conspiracy that led to the confusion, just a laughable SNAFU right from the start.
Lunsford, Parsons and Bare were acquaintances in southern Ohio when Parsons returned from U.S. Army service in Germany. Determined to establish a musical career, Parsons started playing local night clubs at $10 a night. By 1958, he had worked up an arrangement of the old fiddle tune, Rubber Dolly, that he figured would make a good rockabilly record.
He booked time at the King Records studio in Cincinnati to cut a demo and his buddy, Bare, who was just a couple of days from entering the U.S. Army himself, tagged along. When Parsons was satisfied with his efforts, Bare asked to use up the final 15 minutes of the session to lay down a track of a talking blues he'd written, The All-American Boy.
The next day, Parsons and Lunsford took the song to Carlson at Fraternity. Carlson paid the pair $500 in advance royalties so he could release Rubber Dolly and The All-American Boy on a record. In the contract, Parsons and Lunsford claimed they had written the songs, Parsons sang them and they owned all rights to them.
By the time the Clark connection was established, Bare was a private in the army at Fort Ord, Calif. When Clark asked Parsons to lip-sync the song on American Bandstand, Parsons called his buddy in a panic.
Bare reassured Parsons that he could do as good a job lip-syncing to the song as Bare could and told him to just enjoy the ride and buy a car or something with the royalties. Parsons followed through with the masquerade for awhile, but was outed when he couldn't produce The All-American Boy "sound" in follow up sessions.
Dale Stevens, columnist of The Cincinnati Post & Times Star, figured it all out when Bare released a similar-sounding follow-up, I’m Hanging Up My Rifle, on Fraternity. Although Stevens learned that Lunsford, Bare and Parsons were good friends, none of them would confess to the ruse.
Carlson said he didn't figure it out until Lunsford complained that he'd been cheated out of songwriting royalties.
At the time The All-American Boy was riding the charts, most people assumed it was about Elvis Presley, who was in the army at the time. But Bare insists the song was about his anxiety over putting his own promising musical career on hold to serve his country.
Bare went on to have a solid career in the country-rock genre, but at RCA, not Fraternity.
Check out the similarity yourself. First, The All-American Boy:
Now, I’m Hanging Up My Rifle:
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --isavailable from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.
Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
[1] Associated Press, April 28, 1960.
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A site devoted to the Philadelphia years of American Bandstand, 1952-64.
