Here's another excerpt from Bandstandland:
Background: After Dick Clark took over Bandstand in 1956, Philadelphia's already active music scene got even busier.
"That meant that salesmen like Gunter Hauer and Joe Beiderman could fill the trunks of their cars with records and head out to the 50-60 stations they had targeted in their eastern Pennsylvania-Delaware market. They hit record hops, too, often towing along artists, ginning up interest wherever they could.
They couldn’t hit every place they wanted so they also sent records by mail. When word reached Universal salesman Tom Kennedy that some jockeys were passing the packages along to their kids unopened, he started inserting a Tootsie Roll pop, just the right size to fit in a 45 record’s hole. The packages started being opened.
The traffic of promotion men became so heavy around the WFIL studios that [producer Tony] Mammarella and Clark soon designated Tuesday as record promotion day. As many as 10-12 promotion men would crowd into the small meeting room at the rear of the Brown Jug every Tuesday to talk shop and swap stories.
“Next to the Brill Building in New York, more music deals were made in that back room than anywhere else at the time,” Clark said.1
While Clark spent a good deal of his time working on the nuts and bolts of producing Philadelphia’s top-rated daytime television show, he also worked on introducing himself to the kids who made the show so popular.
He doubled the number of regulars on the Committee and worked to win over those Philadelphia teens who remained loyal to [original host Bob] Horn and were skeptical of Clark."
1 Dick Clark & Richard Robinson, Rock, Roll & Remember, p. 64.
Did you know? When American Bandstand went national, Dick Clark was faced with a new problem: How to get by on a small budget. 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. Author 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
