Letters from viewers and aspiring musicians to Lewis and WRAL attest that many teenagers and performers wanted to appear on Teenage Frolics. The Beach Boys were already the kings of surf pop by their first appearance on American Bandstand in 1964. This site requires Javascript to be turned on. . Broadcasting daily evidence of Philadelphia's vibrant interracial teenage culture would have offered viewers images of black and white teens interacting as peers at a time when such images were extremely rare. Today the building is the home of West Philadelphias Enterprise Center, which maintains American Bandstand memorabilia in the space once used as Studio B, today used as a room for Enterprise Center events. As George Melly, one of the few critics to take the classic blues seriously in the 1960s, wrote, "there is a proportion of the worthless, the mechanical, the contrived, but there is also a gaiety, a vitality, a sense of good time.". 1950s Teen Dance TV Shows, Volume 1. My question ismay they appear on your 'Dance Party'? tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_39', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_39').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); "When black schools closed," historian David Cecelski writes, "their names, mascots, mottos, holidays, and traditions were sacrificed with them, while students were transferred to historically white schools that retained those markers of cultural and racial identity. 'all-black' Fridays (taking into account that the show was a Daily While the Chubby Checker craze lastly only a few years, the singer is credited with transforming pop music dance from the jitterbug rock n rock style to an open dancing format, which, unlike the jitterbug, didnt require a partner.7. b. Jan Berry's songwriting "5, A talented local pop group that dodged the label Philadelphia Schlock was Danny and the Juniors, four white teenagers who attended John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia and who rose meteorically in Clarks orbit with At the Hop, a catchy song to which Clark held half of the publishing rights. a. the Drifters 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. After the widely circulated photograph made her a local celebrity she attended the show with a bodyguard.68David Margolick, Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 44, 290. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_68', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_68').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Steve's Show was a highly visible regional space that asserted a racially segregated public culture and continued to do so until it went off the air in 1961. Viewers would have had little idea that African Americans made up nearly 30 percent of Philadelphia's population in this era or that black teens developed many of the dances that American Bandstand popularized nationally. Jesse Helms, later a US senator and national conservative leader, became an executive at Capitol Broadcasting in 1960 and delivered news editorials railing against communism, liberalism, and civil rights. I asked your daughter to tell you to call me, please. Lewis (WRAL), June 24, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140, July 22, 1967; Gwendolyn Gilmore, J.D. Arlene with singer Frankie Avalon at an American Bandstand event. b. Phil Spector Vermont Public Radio. c. "I Get Around" d. Philadelphia, In the early 1950s, many folk musicians ran into problems due to: In his 1997 history of American Bandstand, for example, Clark contends, "I don't think of myself as a hero or civil rights activist for integrating the show; it was simply the right thing to do." It was a little more raucous. Most people listening to a dance program would rather hear the latest records. This site requires Javascript to be turned on. b. his trademark fast tremolos on the guitar Dubois High School, Wake Forest, North Carolina,". Colchester, VT: VPR, July 11, 2009. a. the Ronettes These white teenagers were not alone in watching The Mitch Thomas Show. . b. For his part, Eaton argued on the eve of the station's first broadcast, "WOOK-TV will be a place where young Negroes can develop their talents and the problems of the Negro [will be] vividly displayed. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_16', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_16').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The station's bet on Thomas was part of a larger strategy that included hiring white disc jockeys Joe Grady and Ed Hurst to host a daily afternoon dance program that started at 5 p.m., after Bandstand concluded its daily broadcast. d. opposing Vietnam, Which of following can be said about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez during the folk revival? The distinction, which may be a fine one, is the style of the singer and the background of a record. Did Dick Clark have segregation on American Bandstand? There were two black dancers on this show, the "black Bandstand," or whatever you want to call it. When a white singer dropped out of a recording session at the last minute, Bradford convinced Hagar to take a chance on Smith, a Cincinnati-born star of the Harlem club scene, and scored a substantial hit. Beach Boys on American Bandstand. While performers, record companies, and music fans welcomed Teenarama's promotion of R&B, WOOK's music programing drew criticism from Washington's black press and the city's black leaders. Chubby Checker - The Twist, Songs & Facts - Biography It seems as if you never play records anymore. Six months later, she did it again. "Surfin' Safari" By 1951, when he landed a job at ABC's WFIL station in Philadelphia, he worked in radio, regarded as too youthful looking to be a credible TV newscaster. "Frolic Fan," letter to J.D. Lewis (WRAL), letter to Dick Snyder, May 24, 1963, Lewis Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, catalog number 5499, folder 139. American Bandstand, abbreviated AB, is an American music-performance and dance television program that aired regularly in various versions from 1952 to 1989, and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as the program's producer.It featured teenagers dancing to Top 40 music introduced by Clark; at least one popular musical actover the decades, running the . 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. Lewis (WRAL), letter to Dick Snyder, May 24, 1963, Lewis Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, catalog number 5499, folder 139. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_36', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_36').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Lewis secured Pepsi Cola, which sponsored Teenage Frolics as part of the "special markets" campaign to increase sales of the beverage among African Americans.37On Pepsi marketing to black customers, see Stephanie Capparell, The Real Pepsi Challenge: How One Pioneering Company Broke Color Barriers in 1940s American Business (New York: Free Press, 2008). In 1934, at the age of 17, Fitzgerald performed at the famous Apollo Theater in New York City and won the prize of $25 for Amateur Night. Years before Soul Train (19712006) brought black dance television to national audiences, The Mitch Thomas Show, Teenage Frolics, and Teenarama highlighted black music and dance styles.71Ericka Blount Danois, Love, Peace, and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America's Favorite Dance Show Soul Train: Classic Moments (Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2013); Nelson George, The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture and Style (New York: William Morrow, 2014); Questlove, Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation (New York: Harper Design, 2013). J.D. Soundings is an ongoing series of interdisciplinary, multimedia publications that use historical, ethnographic, musicological, and documentary methods to map and explore southern musics and related practices. Broadcasting from Wilmington, Raleigh, and Washington, these shows reached regional audiences, but varied in terms of signal strength and network affiliations. "Teen Angel" tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_11', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_11').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); His television show, broadcast every Saturday, resembled Philadelphia's Bandstand,at the timea local program hosted by Bob Horn,and other locally broadcast teenage dance programs. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_23', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_23').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Because the show influenced American Bandstand during its first year as a national program, teenagers across the country learned dances popularized by The Mitch Thomas Show. He first commented on the program's integration in his 1976 autobiography, when American Bandstand's ratings were in decline and the show faced a challenge from Don Cornelius' Soul Train. The role of the A&R man was to organize and coordinate the professionals involved in recording. b. they were pop-oriented A lot of rock and roll today is bordering on what is called 'popular music.'"52Ibid. The abbreviated (15 minute) programs are necessary because of ABC's scheduling of American Bandstand from 12:301:30 p.m. each Saturday. The station also included a coverage map of WRAL-TV, "which includes the most heavily populated Negro areas of the state of North Carolina (Approximately 450,000 Negroes)," and promised that "'The Teen-Age Frolic Show' affords a wonderful opportunity for firsthand consumer reaction to the sponsor's product."36J.D. a. [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. Enter your comment below. Reproduced with permission ofThePhiladelphia Tribune. . The reputation of Bessie Smith, the subject of a newly updated 1997 biography by Jackie Kay, was kept alive by prominent admirers such as Janis Joplin and Nina Simone, while Rainey's was revived by August Wilson's 1982 play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and, more recently, by George C Wolfe's movie adaptation. As historian. And the image Clark presented in those early years was exclusively white. "31Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 10. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_31', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_31').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The Mitch Thomas Show teenagers would also have been familiar with segregation as practiced in Philadelphiaand televisedon American Bandstand. A hallmark of earlyAmerican Bandstandwas Clarks promotion of Italian-American male teen idols, sex-symbol pop singers who hailed from South Philadelphia: Frankie Avalon (ne Francis Avallone), Bobby Rydell (ne Ridarelli), and Fabian (ne Fabiano Forte). "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. American Bandstand - 10 Great Performances - LiveAbout This was an extraordinarily high level of promotional activity, even by the standards of commercial television. Bessie Smith recorded one last session in 1933, for one-sixth of the fee she used to command, before she died after a car crash in 1937. Their teachers asked for volunteers and those who were We often use the history of popular culture to talk about the history of race in America. Submissions are moderated. When North Carolina began desegregation from 1969 to 1971, many black high schools were closed or were converted to elementary schools or junior highs. The guy's name was Otis and I don't remember the girl's name. Bandstand (TV Series 1958-1972) - IMDb Lewis (WRAL), May 29, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; "Nero, the Mad," letter to J.D.