Submissions are moderated. 3. a. Lewis (WRAL), May 29, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; "Nero, the Mad," letter to J.D. . And his nationally televised American Bandstand influenced music, dance and fashion, establishing Clark as one of the savviest businessmen of the 20th century. We couldn't go on Shindig on a regular basis. from Baltimore. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_26', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_26').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Thomas's show was among the first victims of the station's financial problems. The role of the A&R man was to organize and coordinate the professionals involved in recording. a. Dick Clark b. Neil Sedaka c. Chubby Checker d. Bob Horn, The focus of American Bandstand was: a. provocative live performances b. resurrecting rhythm and . The sponsor was Beechnut Foods, for whom Clark pitched Beechnut Spearmint Gum and, contrary to the no gum rule on his daily Philadelphia show, Clark encouraged his New York audience to chew and chew again, the more visible the chewing the better. I asked your daughter to tell you to call me, please. Rainey performed in ostrich feathers and a triple necklace of gold coins. Lewis (WRAL), n.d. [ca. b. Carole King Lewis (WRAL), May 8, 1966, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. Teenage. d. gentle soul, Ben E. King had been a singer with: b. doo-wop-style backing vocals Broadcast icon Dick Clark, the longtime host of the influential "American Bandstand," has died, publicist Paul Shefrin said. Screenshot courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town. Clark was the host of American Bandstand in the late '50s through the mid-'60s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. . Unable to find a buyer for WVUE, Storer turned the station license back to the government, and the station went dark in September 1958.29Howard, Multiple Ownership in Television Broadcasting, 146. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_29', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_29').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The manager of WVUE later told broadcasting historian Gerry Wilkerson,"No one can make a profit with a TV station unless affiliated with NBC, CBS or ABC." A lot of rock and roll today is bordering on what is called 'popular music.'"52Ibid. "41Susan Jordan, letter to J.D. Clarks usual practice was not to play any record that was not already a hit in some major local markets; this applied to recordings by Avalon (a nice little voice), Rydell, and Francis.3 Fabian, who by all accounts was no singer, presented a different case: his fabulous looks drove teenage girls to gleeful screaming fits. Bryan Adams Aerosmith Alabama All Sports Band The Alarm Deborah Allen The Animals Paul Anka Ann-Margret Susan Anton Adam Ant Aerosmith America Animotion Ashford & Simpson The Association Christopher Atkins Atlantic Starr Patti Austin Autograph Frankie Avalon Angel B[edit] The B'zz The Babys Bachman-Turner Overdrive Badfinger Philip Bailey Baltimora Recognizing the songs potential, but also that the dance in the Ballard version, with its very suggestive horizontal hip movement, wasnt appropriate for prudish national television. Who were the first African Americans to perform on American Bandstand? Like other young people across the country, black teenagers identified with different aspects of. this meant trying to attract sponsors to advertise to black television audiences. In July 1956, Dick Clark, a commercial pitchman and deejay with an unsullied reputation, inherited WFIL-TVsBandstandfrom scandal-tainted Bob Horn and revamped it for a national audience of teenage consumers as ABCsAmerican Bandstand, which first aired in August 1957. This 2019 photograph shows the building that once housed WFIL-TV and Studio B at 4548 Market St., where Dick Clarks American Bandstand was broadcast live every weekday afternoon from 1957 to 1964. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_56', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_56').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); At the same time, the critics expressed concern that the station's management and white president, Richard Eaton, would not attend to community interests and concerns beyond musical entertainment. My question ismay they appear on your 'Dance Party'? . This video album provides vintage footage from American Bandstands anchorage in West Philadelphia. Black Swan, the first black-owned record label, rejected Bessie Smith for being too vulgar, while a leading black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, complained that these "filth furnishers" and "purveyors of putrid puns" were "a hindrance to our standard of respectability and success". b. they were pop-oriented "66"TV Jockey Profile: The Milt Grant Show," Billboard, February 6, 1961, 43. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_66', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_66').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); He promised potential sponsors that for an hour every afternoon WTTG-TV's studio in the Raleigh Hotel in downtown Washington would be a nexus for selling products to area teenagers. Lewis (WRAL), June 24, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; Daniel Jackson, letter to J.D. a. Roy Orbison The scholar Angela Davis calls her "the first real 'superstar' in African-American popular culture. I focus on three black teen shows, The Mitch Thomas Show from Wilmington, Delaware (19551958); Teenage Frolics (19581983), hosted by Raleigh, North Carolina, deejay J. D. Lewis; and Washington, DC's Teenarama Dance Party (19631970), hosted by Bob King. Filmed 19571958. 1966-67], Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. Lewis (WRAL), n.d. [ca. We had Teenarama, which was ours. a. influencing the Beach Boys While The Grady and Hurst Showbroadcast five times perweek, the weekly Mitch Thomas Show proved to be more influential. Self - Singer 1 episode, 1979 Firefall . Seventeen (WOI-TV's teen dance show), 1958. Who was first black artist on American bandstand? [4] Jackson,American Bandstand, 137-39, 145-46; The Diary of Arlene Sullivan, in Arlene Sullivan, Ray Smith, and Sharon Sultan Cutler,Bandstand Diaries: The Philadelphia Years, 1956-1963(Chicago: Coney Island Press, 2016), 59-60. Courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town. After all, teenagers have $9 billion a year to spend.". The Mitch Thomas Show stood out because it was the first television show hosted by a black deejay that featured a studio audience of black teenagers. In addition to a dress code, Clark's show required visitors to write in advance to request tickets, and these applications were screened by name and address. Black teenagers were banned. But now it doesn't interest anyone." We're going to make them do it in the glaring light of television. This pocket Bluetooth printer lets you print your precious memories before they hit Instagram. Matthew F. Delmont is an assistant professor of American studies at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., and the author of The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia. Ironically, the records that the Blues Mafia dedicated themselves to rescuing from obscurity have become far more famous than the smash hits of the 1920s. Philadelphia American Bandstand Regular Billy Cook shows us his style of the Fast Dance as it was called on Bandstand/American Bandstand (Jitterbug/Lindy Hop. Please be respectful. "Leader of the Pack" This obsession with the "genuine" black experience proved fatal for the classic blues. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_22', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_22').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); They were watching, for example, when dancers on The Mitch Thomas Show started dancing The Stroll, a group dance where boys and girls faced each other in two parallel lines, while couples took turns strutting down the aisle. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_10', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_10').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Born in West Palm Beach, Florida, Mitch Thomas graduated from Delaware State College and served in the army before becoming the first black disc jockey in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1949.11Eustace Gay, "Pioneer In TV Field Doing Marvelous Job Furnishing Youth With Recreation," Philadelphia Tribune, February 11, 1956; Gary Mullinax, "Radio Guided DJ to Stars," The News Journal Papers (Wilmington, DE), January 28, 1986,D4. Bodroghkozy, Aniko. The failure of the station that broadcast The Mitch Thomas Show underscores the tenuous nature of such unaffiliated local programs. Why were they then relegated to the sidelines, asks Dorian Lynskey. Lewis (WRAL), n.d. [ca. Continue Learning about Movies & Television. The son of a radio-station owner in Utica, N.Y., Dick Clark had been a radio disc jockey as a student at Syracuse University. "Teen Angel" The female blues singers were on the losing side of a long, complicated argument about what the blues should be. In rejecting the blues' relationship to big-city showbusiness, the conventional narrative all but erased women's voices and experiences. This essay examines four programs that brought music and dance to southern and border state audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Among these four programs, only one recording is known to exist,a 1957 episode of The Milt Grant Show recorded to sell the show to sponsors. a. Avalon and Vinton Counter to host Dick Clark's claims that he integrated American Bandstand, my research revealed how the first national television program directed at teens discriminated against black youth during its early years and how black teens and civil rights advocates protested this discrimination.8Matthew Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). In a 1998 interview for the documentary Black Philadelphia Memories, Thomas recalled that "the show was so strong that I could play a record one time and break it wide open. By 1960, under the control of Carl Murphy, the Afro-American publishededitions acrossthe Mid-Atlantic States. I brought Ray Charles in there on a Sunday night, and it was just beautiful to look out there and see everything just nice. University of California Press. By examining these local programs this essay builds on the work of scholarsNorma Coates, Murray Forman, Julie Malnig, Tim Wall, George Lipsitz, and Brian Ward who have examined the intersections of music and television, the importance of televised teen dance shows as community spaces, and the development of rhythm and blues and rock and roll.9Norma Coates, "Elvis from the Waist Up and Other Myths: 1950s Music Television and the Gendering of Rock Discourse," in Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, eds. [2] Matthew F. Delmont,The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock n Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 142. "54"Voice of the People: In Defense of WOOK-TV," Washington Afro-American, February 23, 1963. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_54', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_54').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Congress ofRacial Equality (CORE) chairman Julies Hobson also expressed concern, saying, "I object to foot tapping, dancing, screaming and shouting." Grant needed to be able to feature black performers in a way that was safe for the consuming pleasure of the white studio and television audiences and the sponsors that were eager to reach them. http://www.museum.tv/eotv/musicontele.htm. Intresting note: in 1963 Dick Clark and Swan records had the opportunity to release the Beatles in the US under their label, but Dick took one look at . Clarks policy was to restrict American Bandstand to youth aged 14-17. a. Mike Stoller Due to the heavily racially segregated South, her family moved to Yonkers . Smith's versatile blues encompassed gallows humour (Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair), social commentary (Poor Man's Blues), salty innuendo (Kitchen Man) and lusty good times (Gimme a Pigfoot). This series is guest edited by Grace Elizabeth Hale, Commonwealth Chair of American Studies, professor of history, and director of the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia. b. Lewis, July 7, 1967, Lewis Family Papers,folder 139. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_38', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_38').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Despite Helms's backhanded reference, Pepsi's sponsorship offered Teenage Frolics a national brand sponsor, something neither The Mitch Thomas Show nor Teenarama possessed. "The songs may live," wrote one critic in 1926, "but the best thing of all, the free impulse, the pattern of careless voices happily inventing as they go, if it dies it cannot be resurrected." This preservationist instinct may have been valid but the assumptions that underpinned it were often paternalistic and segregationist: derived from the singing of slaves, the oral blues was the product of naive, untutored imaginations that would wither on contact with modernity, so they had to be protected, like rare orchids. An Italian-American teenager raised in Newark who achieved similar stardom appearing onAmerican Bandstandwas Concetta Franconero, whose stage name was Connie Francis, whose breakout hit was Whose Sorry Now.. The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia. First, The Mitch Thomas Show, Teenage Frolics, and Teenarama Dance Party were important for black teens because the shows offered televisual spaces that valued their creative energies and talents. In 1970, for example, black students who attended W. E. B. DuBois High School were transferred to historically white Wake Forest High School and the DuBois High School building became Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School.39Barry Malone, "Before Brown: Cultural and Social Capital in a Rural Black School Community, W.E.B. 195657. Enter your comment below. Jesse Helms, memo to Ray Reeve, July 6, 1967, Lewis Family Papers,folder 139; Ray Reeve, memo to J.D. The entrepreneurial songwriter Perry Bradford, a man so stubborn he was known as "Mule", knew better. show). c. Jan and Dean Bob King watches dancers on Teenarama, Washington DC, ca. By the time Clark delivered a revampedBandstandto national audiences asAmerican Bandstandin 1957, the show was ostensibly squeaky clean. For the writer Zora Neale Hurston, His Negroness is being rubbed off by close contact with white culture.". According to Thomas Dorsey, the gospel blues pioneer who used to play in Rainey's band, "It collapsed I dont know what happened to the blues, they seemed to drop it all at once, it just went down.". Historian Brett Gadsden describes Delaware as "a provincial hybrid, one in which ostensibly southern and northern modes of race relations operated. Barry Malone, "Before Brown: Cultural and Social Capital in a Rural Black School Community, W.E.B. 1967], Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_45', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_45').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); As television production became increasingly centralized in Los Angeles in the 1960s, Teenage Frolics was part of the everyday life of black teenagers in the Raleigh area. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Delta blues singers such as Charley Patton, Skip James, Son House and Robert Johnson slotted into the post-war counterculture's worship of untameable outcasts who lived tough, rootless lives a million miles away from bourgeois conformity. In the 1920s US, glamorous, funny black female singers were the blues' first - and revolutionary hitmakers. Release Dates "In the southern context, congregation was important because it symbolized anact of free will, whereas segregation represented the imposition of another's will." When the Buddy Deane Show was pressured to integrate white All of the following were populist characteristics of the folk song movement EXCEPT: Which song initiated the folk music revival in mainstream pop? Televised teen dance shows offer an example of how"basic habits of interaction in public spaces" did not change dramatically in 1957. . 2. The teens on Seventeen were emulating their peers in Philadelphia who popularized the dance on the nationally broadcast American Bandstand. Nationally, American Bandstand blocked black teens from entering the studio during its years in Philadelphia, despite host Dick Clark's claims to the contrary. 1966-67], Lewis Family Papers,folder 140. New York By 1961, The Twist and Checkers follow-up record, Lets Twist Again (Like We Did Last Summer), were an international phenomenon. [1] Larry Lehmer,Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll(Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunberry Press), 55. Buddy Deane show was another 'dance-to-the-hits' show broadcast While Black artists were permitted to perform, only white dancers were allowed. Record companies routinely ignored African-American musicianswith only a few exceptions, such as singer Bert Williams and bandleader James Reese Europe. white dancers on the same dance floor. Company Credits These white teenagers were not alone in watching The Mitch Thomas Show. . Courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont. c. writing playlet songs A weekly presentation of popular music, which went through many format changes during its long run. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_72', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_72').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Matthew Delmont is associate professor of history at Arizona State University and author ofThe Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and Civil Rights in 1950sPhiladelphia (University of California Press, American Crossroads series, February 2012), andWhy Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation(University of California Press, American Crossroads series, forthcoming February 2016). It imagined the performers as men who sang their pain without concern for attention or financial reward, even though, in reality, they would very much have liked both. Steve's Show, Little Rock, Arkansas, late 1950s. I was standing there watching them dancing in a line, and after a while I asked them, 'What are y'all doing out there?' He was going to be on 'Bandstand' and they wanted to go see him. Themselves - Pop Band 1 episode, 1957 Bob Crewe . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. This site requires Javascript to be turned on. . Then people like Presley came along and began to change it . The The cameras shift between a medium shot of the artists and a wide shot of couples dancing, before using a picture-in-picture production technique that presented the shot of the artists in a box overlaying the shot of the teenagers dancing. "6Quoted in Bodrogkozy, Equal Time, 2. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_6', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_6').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); In the context of pitched battles over segregation and civil rights, these televised teen dance shows reveal much about the visibility of different youth musical cultures in the 1950s and 1960s. But Clark's recollections differ from archival materials, newspaper accounts, video and photographic evidence and the memories of people who were regulars on American Bandstand or who were excluded from the show. Some classic blues singers sought refuge in acting Ethel Waters, pictured in 1943's Cabin in the Sky, was at one time the highest paid actress on Broadway (Credit: Getty Images). The early blues women were sidelined by the "Blues Mafia" who championed Delta blues singers such as Robert Johnson, Skip James and Son House [pictured] (Credit: Getty Images), For all its obsession with the "real", the 1960s blues revival was built on a series of myths. The first order of business was to lure disaffected Horn loyalists to his version ofBandstand. City councils from Jersey City to Santa Cruz to San Antonio had banned rock performances, and radio stations in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver, Lubbock and Cincinnati refused to play rock and roll. schools danced on Bandstand starting in 1952 when Bob Horn was the If the iconic civil rights images from cities like Little Rock, Greensboro, and Birmingham attest to the fact that young activists struggled to be treated as first-class citizens, The Mitch Thomas Show, Teenage Frolics, and Teenarama emphasized that black youth were worthy of being first-class consumers and teenagers.72On the relationship between citizenship and consumption, see Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumptions in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Robert Weems, Jr., Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Victoria Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2012). Show,", On Mitch Thomas' concerts, see Archie Miller, "Fun & Thrills,", Ray Smith, interviewwithauthor, August 10, 2006. The show's producers implemented racially discriminatory admissions policies because they feared that racial tensions around the studio in West Philadelphia would alienate advertisers. August Wilson's Rainey calls the blues "life's way of talking". Earl Lewis. This article will also be published in the Washington Post's Outlook section for Sunday, April 22, 2012. American Bandstand didn't just introduce the country to the latest rock-and-roll musicians, it had the nation on its feet with the latest dance crazes, such as the Pony, the Jitterbug, and the . Richard Wagstaff Clark [1] [2] (November 30, 1929 - April 18, 2012) was an American television and radio personality, television producer and film actor, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1956 to 1989. "In the southern context, congregation was important because it symbolized anact of free will, whereas segregation represented the imposition of another's will." c. Sedaka and Greenfield Hairspray (the movie) is not a documentary. WOOK-TV advertisement for Teenarama host Bob King,1965. Clark revamped Horn's show for national broadcast by ABC. In fact, she won two Grammy awards that night for Best Jazz Performance, Soloist for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook.. For the best experience please upgrade your IE version or switch to a another web browser. b. the Everly Brothers To do otherwise would necessitate our preemption of a solid hour of commercial network programming, which I deem inadvisable. Bessie Smith earned more, and spent more, than anybody else. Some scholars and folklorists like Zora Neale Hurston saw these popular recordings as a spiritual corruption of the blues (Credit: Getty Images). The resulting image nicely illustrates the tensions surrounding televising black music to white audiences. YouTube video, 31:42. And the image Clark presented in those early years was exclusively white. Her songs "Tweedle Dee" and "Jim Dandy" both reached the top twenty of the pop chart, but white singer Georgia Gibbs's cover of "Tweedle Dee" topped the pop chart and outsold Baker's version.63Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 376. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_63', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_63').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Baker's contemporary Ruth Brown explained, "I wasn't so upset about other singers copying my songs because that was their privilege, and they had to pay the writers of the song.
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