Many people in the record business were running scared in late 1959. There was a lot of buzz that the quiz show scandal that had dominated headlines would soon morph into a full-fledged Congressional inquiry into the music industry. Those fears were about to be realized when Oren Harris, chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Legislative Oversight Committee, said he would start hearings into the whole payola business with hearings in Washington to begin on Feb. 8, 1960. We pick up the story with this excerpt from Bandstandland: How dancing teenagers took over America and Dick Clark took over rock & roll:
"Satirist Stan Freberg placed deejays in the curious position of having to decide whether to play a song about their plight with his record, “The Old Payola Blues.” The clichéd storyline of the song went like this: record producer plucks good-looking teenager who can’t sing from the streets, records him and then pays a disc jockey to help turn the song into a hit.
In a direct swipe at Fabian, the teenager in the song (named Clyde Ankle) protests that he can’t sing. The record producer says that’s OK, his pretty face and pompadour are good enough. When Clyde asks, “Well, do I get to pose beside a tiger?” (which Fabian had done for the cover of his Hold That Tiger LP), he was told “Nah that’s been done. Maybe we’ll get you a moose.”1
On Jan. 8, 1960, Dick Clark had scored another coup — an on-air phone interview on American Bandstand from Germany with Elvis Presley on Presley’s 25th birthday. Interest in Elvis was running especially high since he was soon to be discharged from the Army and he was rumored to be setting up a joint television program with a teen favorite from another era, Frank Sinatra.
But the New York Post was still focused on payola. The same day that Clark talked to Elvis, the Post’s William H.A. Carr reported that Clark had secured most of the rights to “16 Candles” by the Crests at no cost to him and netted some $10,000 in royalties after turning the song into a hit that sold some 600,000 copies."
1 Freberg Music Corp. (ASCAP), 1959.
© 2019 Larry Lehmer
Excerpted from Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll.
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 --is available 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.
