Here's another excerpt from Bandstandland:
Background: Bandstand and its host, Bob Horn, enjoyed phenomenal success in its first 3 1/2 years on Channel 6, WFIL-TV, in Philadelphia. In mid-June 1956, Horn capped a controversial four-month-long "Name That Lion" contest by naming its winner:
"[Bandstand host Bob] Horn was on a roll.
He and [producer Tony] Mammarella created a Bandstand Yearbook that sold more than 50,000 copies. He was the highest-paid personality at the station and pulled down extra cash from his many appearances at record hops. He was part owner in the Teen and Sound record labels with longtime associate Nat Segall and Bernie Lowe, a local pianist.
And the kids on the show loved him.
Bobbie Young, who started dancing on the show in 1954 and joined the Committee in 1956, said Horn often treated Committee members to dinner out when traveling to dances out of town. Another Committee member, Mary Ann Colella called the years she danced on Bob Horn’s Bandstand “happy, happy years.” Horn took her fishing on his boat and to his house in Levittown. “He was very fatherly,” she said.
Colella, whose parents were divorced, found comfort on Bandstand, from the cakes she got on her birthday to the postcards she received from record promoter Johnny Arthur, redeemable for Ship & Shore blouses. Four Coins manager Danny Kessler sent her records in hopes she’d tell Horn, who would play the record on Rate-A-Record and put her on to rate it.
“Of course, they always got a 98,” she said.
Horn’s public persona was one of a hep-talking, smooth operator who knew his way around a studio and who could hold his own with the pushy, eccentric people of the music business that he came in contact with daily.
It wasn’t that simple."
Did you know? As a youngster growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, Dick Clark drew inspiration from the great voices he heard on the radio. Read more in this excerpt from Bandstandland. 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.
Excerpted from Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll, now available from Sunbury Press. 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.
© 2019 Larry Lehmer
