Dancing Around the "Glaring Light of Television": Black Teen Dance 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. d. they were cover artists, Phil Spector referred to the singles he produced as: Courtesy American Bandstand. Fletcher and Fred Fletcher's Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owned WRAL, received a TV license in 1956 and Lewis played an important role in convincing the Federal Communications Comission (FCC) that WRAL-TV would serve African American viewers. More than 20 million people watched the coronation on the BBC . On Aug. 5, 1957, "American Bandstand" (as it was now called), debuted to a national audience. b. protesting the Korean War "60Beverly Lindsay-Johnson, interview with author, January 8, 2013. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_60', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_60').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This story and the black and white reenactments in Lindsay-Johnson's film speak both to the creativity that historians of television must employ and to the imprint Teenarama made on the black population in Washington, DC. It is a fictional performance that only vaguely At the same time, WPHF's Wilmington studios were only thirty miles from Philadelphia, a city that,historian Matthew Countryman notes, many black people called "Up South. 1966-67], Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. Screenshot from Black Philadelphia Memories, directed byTrudi Brown (WHYY-TV12, 1999). As WOOK-TV prepared to come on the air in 1963, the Afro-American newspaper received a letter from Rev. American Bandstand - Broadcast History. Lewis (WRAL), May 29, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; "Nero, the Mad," letter to J.D. Most of the obituaries of Clark, who took over Bandstand in 1956, have noted that the show used rock and roll to break down racial barriers, mostly because that is the story Clark told. Hairspray (the movie) is not a documentary. 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. DIck Clark: The Black music connection and more "He attends sales meetings, store openings and maintains close identification with his sponsors' products off the air as well as on. That is the show that had 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 . 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 tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_49', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_49').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Whereas all television sets could pick up VHFstations, which carried major network programming, UHF (ultra high frequency) stations required viewers to have special UHF tuners. The teens held and drank their sodas while dancing, keeping the sponsor's product in the picture throughout the song. Carried out more covertly, this northern-style segregation was no less intentional or demeaning.32On the limitations of the de jure/de facto framework, see Matthew Lassiter, "De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth," in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, eds., Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 2548. 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. cancelled. Like other white teens that protested the desegregation of Central High, Hazel Bryan danced regularly on Steve's Show. Not so nice: No matter what Dick Clark says, 'American Bandstand Jimmy Peatross and Joan Buck tell a related story about learning how to do The Strand from black teenagers in, Art Peters, "Mitch Thomas Fired From TV Dance Party Job,", On the limitations of the de jure/de facto framework, see Matthew Lassiter, "De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth," in, Clarence Williams, "JD Lewis Jr.: A Living Broadcasting Legend,". In a letter to potential advertisers, WRAL billed Teenage Frolics as "a live and lively dancing party featuring colored teenagers from high schools in the Channel 5 area." This eclipse is the result of a concerted effort by cultural gatekeepers, across several decades, to valorise certain aspects of the African-American experience while denigrating others. While black people who migrated from the Jim Crow South were looking for a better future, the folklorists sentimentally fetishised the agony and mystery of the past they had left behind. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_9', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_9').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The Mitch Thomas Show debuted on August 13, 1955, on WPFH, an unaffiliated television station that broadcast to Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley from Wilmington.10"The NAACP Reports: WCAM (Radio)," August 7, 1955, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 21, folder 423, TUUA. A. J. Fletcher and Fred Fletcher's Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owned WRAL, received a TV license in 1956 and Lewis played an important role in convincing the Federal Communications Comission (FCC)that WRAL-TV would serve African American viewers.33Clarence Williams, "JD Lewis Jr.: A Living Broadcasting Legend," Ace: Magazine of the Triangle, SeptemberOctober 2002, 1214, 70. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_33', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_33').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Unlike The Mitch Thomas Show and Teenarama, Teenage Frolics aired on a VHF (very high frequency)station with a network affiliation (WRAL-TV had a primary affiliation with NBC and a secondary affiliation with ABC).34"WRAL-TV," 1960 Broadcasting Yearbook,A73 tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_34', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_34').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Despite these network ties, WRAL proved challenging in other ways. We couldn't go on American Bandstand on a regular basis. The The pop audience's perception of the image and authenticity of folk music was the result of the: All of the following were professional songwriters at the Brill Building EXCEPT: c. "Only the Lonely" I brought Ray Charles in there on a Sunday night, and it was just beautiful to look out there and see everything just nice. (19631970) hosted by Bob King. One of the challenges with analyzing The Mitch Thomas Show, Teenage Frolics, and Teenarama is that no visual traces of the shows are known to exist. A daily dance show, Bandstand was the first national TV program directed at teenagers and starring teenagers.. Last modified April 11, 2014. http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/nicest-kids/index. DVD. New York Lee Andrews and the Hearts was the first black singer to appear on American Bandstand, which went national with ABC in 1957. Christopher Sterling and John Michael Kittross, "Voice of the People: In Defense of WOOK-TV,", "Nation's First Minority Group TV Station to Broadcast Today,", Nan Randall, "Rocking and Rolling Road to Respectability,". 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.". 1967], Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. FormerBandstanderArlene Sullivan, famous in her own right as aBandstand regular in the late 1950s, recalled, There werent many people in the fifties who did not think that Fabian was the handsomest boy theyd ever seen. Dick Clark, host of the influential "American Bandstand,' dies | CNN 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. the show's powers-that-be refused and the show was subsequently . The Milt Grant Show dedicated almost every minute to selling products, and Grant, as this message to potential sponsors makes clear, was a compelling and unabashed salesman. selected went together as a group. We couldn't go on Shindig on a regular basis. This viewer offered Lewis several suggestions for how to improve the show, including, "You need more records. 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. "One of the phonograph companies made over four million dollars on the Blues," reported The Metronome in 1922. 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. The decision to maintain discriminatory admissions policies flowed logically from neighborhood and school segregation in Philadelphia, the commercial pressures of national television and deeply held beliefs about the dangers of racial mixing. Clark's show put African-American music and performers on television every day. Jackie Kay's book and George C Wolfe's film are important reminders of the period when the blues was mass-market party music and its reigning stars were women, proud and majestic in feathers and gold. To show how these perspectives are intertwined I'll conclude with a brief discussion of a dance show that started broadcasting at a pivotal time and from a pivotal place in the history of civil rights. 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. between Hairspray (the movie) and the real events of the 1950's in Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. . They were the Bobby Brooks fan club. 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. Second, television technology worked to enhance and/or limit the visibility of different youth musical cultures. The First Jazz Recording Was Made by a Group of White Guys? Sisters Gwendolyn and Lena Horton, for example, regularly walked from the Walnut Terrace neighborhood to appear on the show. First, were important for black teens because the shows offered televisual spaces that valued their creative energies and talents. Created by black deejay Don Cornelius as a black dance show, Soul Train started in Chicago in 1970 before being picked up by stations across the country the following year. Earl Lewis. Dick Clark introduced records, and the camera followed teenagers as they selected partners to dance, writes historian Matthew Delmont. "And why not? "12Otis Givens, interview withauthor, June 27, 2007. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_12', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_12').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Similarly, South Philadelphia teen Donna Brown recalled in a 1995 interview,"I remember at the same time that Bandstand used to come on, there used to be a black dance thing that came on, and it was The Mitch Thomas Show . I would appreciate your information by telling me if we can come and when we can come. In 1960, Checker recorded The Twist, a song written and first recorded by Hank Ballard, an R&B pioneer. a. accusations of Communism "49"WOOK-TV," 1965 Broadcasting Yearbook,A10. Some commented they looked like grampas'. Race and American Bandstand, The Seven-Year Itch: West Philly Loses American Bandstand, Report accessibility issues and request help. From paid advertisements for consumer goods to promotions of records and musical guests, also often paid for by record promoters, The Milt Grant Show presented its viewers with a host of messages. c. "I Get Around" "Who can tell," Burton offered, "from the working of the station maybe we can increase our colored stardom. 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. African American Performers on Early Sound Recordings, 1892-1916 Clark brought African-American performers to national television in an era when such performances were rare. a. they produced several hit singles Kendall Productions Records, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. Please enable Javascript and reload the page. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_7', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_7').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Unlike other racially segregatedleisure spaces, however, television brought the sounds and images of black music cultures to viewers of all colorsacross and beyond the cities from which the shows broadcast. One such woman was Gertrude Pridgett, aka Ma Rainey, who had been performing the blues for more than 20 years when she recorded her first session for Paramount in 1923 at the age of 37. I became more fascinated with the operation than the program." b. the Drifters For black, working-class women, the classic blues was an unprecedented new arena of self-expression which gave voice to overt sexuality, the peril of abusive men (like Bessie Smith's husband), and even queer perspectives. It was the first national television program aimed squarely at teens, and it laid the groundwork for the baby boom generation, defining what teens listened to, how they danced and what they wore, ate and drank. I asked your daughter to tell you to call me, please. "59"Dance Party (The Teenarama Story), Research Narrative," Box 2, Kendall Production Records, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. 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. At the same time, the classic blues singers were too working-class and sexually frank for some of the urban middle classes. a. the Ronettes Dick Clark at his customary podium onAmerican Bandstandas the programs teenagers dance. Continue Learning about Movies & Television. I was talking about it to Jimmy Peatross one day, when I was putting together the book, and he said, "Oh, I watched this black couple do it." tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_1', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_1').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); With "Betty and Dupree," Willis revived a folk song, first recorded as "Dupree Blues" in 1930 by Blind Willie Walker from Greenville, South Carolina. Image courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont. Beverly Lindsay-Johnson, interview with author, January 8, 2013. J. D. Lewis' Teenage Frolics, which aired from 1958 to 1983, stayed on the air longer than any other local teen dance program. ", But many scholars of African-American culture, black and white alike, were horrified by the rise of the Victrola record player and the music it played. 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). Dick Clark Comes to Bandstand New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Division. Used with permission of Yvonne Holley, Lewis Family Papers #5499, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 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). Donald Hodge, letter to J.D. The show urged teenagers to drink Pepsi, eat at Tops' Drive-Inn, listen to Motorola portable radios, and buy the newest records at the Music Box record store. 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. Was Cecily Strong On The Office, Where Is Ann Pettway Now 2020, Articles W
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