who was the first black singer on american bandstand
"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. By 1961, The Twist and Checkers follow-up record, Lets Twist Again (Like We Did Last Summer), were an international phenomenon. host and continued as the show became American Bandstand with Dick "Squeaky clean" commercial pitchman and deejay Dick Clark inherited Bob Horn's locally broadcast Bandstand in July 1956 and revamped it for a national audience of teenage consumers as ABC's American Bandstand, which first aired in August 1957. Storer changed WPFH's call letters to WVUE and hoped to move the station's facilities from Wilmington closer to Philadelphia. Delmont, Matthew. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_3', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_3').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); That same year, black students from St. Augustine University and Shaw University staged sit-ins at lunch counters in Raleigh to protest the whites-only policies at Woolworths and other stores.4Jeffrey Crow, Paul Escott, and Flora Hatley, A History of African Americans in North Carolina (Raleigh: Division of Archives and History,North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1992). 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. 1 Billboard spot in September 1960. b. Broadcasting black musical performers on television was more challenging than radio, because television made the performers' bodies visible, and on dance shows like these, put their bodies in close proximity to those of dozens of teenagers. 3. No such thing happened, so the answer is in three parts. this meant trying to attract sponsors to advertise to black television audiences. Image courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont. On race and segregation in Philadelphia, see Countryman, Up South; Countryman, "'From Protest to Politics': Community Control and Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia, 19651984,"Journal of Urban History 32 (September 2006): 813861; Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town; James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Wolfinger, "The Limits of Black Activism: Philadelphia's Public Housing in the Depression and World War II," Journal of Urban History 35 (September 2009): 787814; Guian McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2008); McKee, "'I've Never Dealt with a Government Agency Before': Philadelphia's Somerset Knitting Mills Project, the Local State, and the Missed Opportunities of Urban Renewal," Journal of Urban History 35 (March 2009): 387409; and Lisa Levenstein, A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 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). c. doo-wop Bandstand (TV Series 1958-1972) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Clark first addressed the integration of the studio audience in his 1978 record collection celebrating the shows twenty-fifth anniversary. Who was the first black singer to appear on American Bandstand. Black music and black dances originating in Philadelphia neighborhoods contributed substantially to the success ofAmerican Bandstand; yetAmerican Bandstandsdancefloor and bleachers were racially segregated, and some of the shows most popular dances were adapted without attribution from black neighborhoods. Male country blues resonated with rock's singer-songwriters in a way that the classic blues never could. schools danced on Bandstand starting in 1952 when Bob Horn was the And that says more about our desire to embrace a more comforting narrative of racial progress than it does about Clark's legacy. Gwendolyn Horton recalled, "We would practice all week so we'd be ready on Saturday," while Lena Horton noted, "just to get out there, you thought you were something that could be shown on TV. . Blues enthusiasts often spoke of these men as if they were revenants or creatures from folklore rather than real people, hence the old myth that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. They were the Bobby Brooks fan club. 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. I notice everybody that come are in groups. Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement. The Beach Boys were already the kings of surf pop by their first appearance on American Bandstand in 1964. In rejecting the blues' relationship to big-city showbusiness, the conventional narrative all but erased women's voices and experiences. 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. The classic blues, sometimes known as "vaudeville blues" or "city blues," was a hybrid of rural folk and urban pop, southern roots and cosmopolitan panache. I was sort of a celebrity at local dances. Dick Clark. When I started research six years ago for a book on American Bandstand, I believed, as Clark claimed, that the show's studio audience was fully integrated by the late 1950s. Matthew Delmont, "The Nicest Kids in Town." And that was something for the black kids to really identify with. a. the Ronettes We hope to show interracial activities which are harmonious. d. gentle soul, Ben E. King had been a singer with: Vermont Public Radio. "44Anonymous ("102 Pilot St.), letter to J.D. "41Susan Jordan, letter to J.D. d. they were cover artists, Phil Spector referred to the singles he produced as: . c. King and Goffin Lewis (WRAL), May 29, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; "Nero, the Mad," letter to J.D. None. | On the crossover appeal of black-oriented radio, see Brian Ward, "Teen-Age 'Superiors' Debut on M.T. Clark had Checker simplify the dance step by toning down the hip movement. d. Splatter Platter, The Beach Boys' first number-one hit was: The teens held and drank their sodas while dancing, keeping the sponsor's product in the picture throughout the song. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_24', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_24').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Mitch Thomas hosts Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, Wilmington, Delaware, December 7, 1957, ThePhiladelphia Tribune. 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. It was a little more raucous. 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. By selling an estimated one million copies in its first year, Crazy Blues was like the first geyser of oil in untapped ground, instantly revealing a huge appetite for records made by and for black people. Image courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont. 3. Undoubtedly, one of Clarks biggest coups was his promotion of Chubby Checker (ne Ernest Evans), born in South Carolina and resettled in South Philadelphia, where he attended South Philadelphia High School. In the 15-minute programs, please leave two 60-second cutaways for the Pepsi-Cola commercials which I am advised are all that we have sold in Teen-Age Frolics anyhow. Clarks policy was to restrict American Bandstand to youth aged 14-17. Clark was the host of American Bandstand in the late '50s through the mid-'60s. [1] Larry Lehmer,Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll(Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunberry Press), 55. a. Aldon Music being sold to Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems What the show didn't do was fully integrate its studio audience as soon as he became host, as Clark has claimed. Mapping a partial list of the groups that visited the studio highlights how many young people wanted to appear on the show and participate in its creation of black youth music culture. The Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 226251; Coates, "Filling in Holes: Television Music as a Recuperation of Popular Music on Television,"Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 1, no. The music industry had previously assumed that African Americans wouldn't buy record players, therefore there was no point in recording black artists. Black students from Philadelphia high schools and junior high Why were they then relegated to the sidelines, asks Dorian Lynskey. Kendall Productions Records, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. He popularized the idea that teenagers are an important consumer group. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_59', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_59').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); As Clemmons suggests, Teenarama afforded a level of television visibility for black teenagers and black music that was not found on national programs. 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. c. sympathizing with Civil Rights Like the man WC Handy spotted at Tutwiler station, their alienation guaranteed their authenticity. I brought Ray Charles in there on a Sunday night, and it was just beautiful to look out there and see everything just nice. I was standing there watching them dancing in a line, and after a while I asked them, 'What are y'all doing out there?' c. "I Get Around" We often use the history of popular culture to talk about the history of race in America. Screenshot courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont, The Nicest Kids in Town. Most of his obituary writers have repeated some version of this claim. YouTube video, 31:42. d. Weil and Mann, All of the following are examples of girl groups EXCEPT: Record companies routinely ignored African-American musicianswith only a few exceptions, such as singer Bert Williams and bandleader James Reese Europe. A daily dance show, Bandstand was the first national TV program directed at teenagers and starring teenagers.. 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). Like The Milt Grant Show, Baltimore's Buddy Deane Show,the inspiration for John Waters's Hairspray film and the later Broadway musical and Hollywood film,was officially segregated and only allowed black teens to enter the studio on specific days. A lot of rock and roll today is bordering on what is called 'popular music.'"52Ibid. b. the Shangri-Las The abbreviated (15 minute) programs are necessary because of ABC's scheduling of American Bandstand from 12:301:30 p.m. each Saturday. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 9192. For more information on Dick Clarks rise, see John A. Jackson,American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock n Roll Empire(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chap. Whereas the likes of Ma Rainey travelled to the city to record their music, song collectors moved in the opposite direction, taking their recording devices to the South in order to capture what the leading folklorist John Lomax called "sound-photographs of Negro songs, rendered in their own native element". c. Leiber and Stoller becoming independent producers A century later, however, it's a different story. The show blocked black teens from the studio, though complaints from black viewers eventually led to one show perweek featuring a black studio audience (so-called "Black Tuesday"). Please enable Javascript and reload the page. 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. b. Phil Spector "47Cash Michaels, "Memories of Teenage Frolics," The Carolinian, December 4, 1997. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_47', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_47').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Comparing the show to Soul Train in 1997, The Carolinian, a Raleigh-based African-American newspaper, commented that Teenage Frolics "gave the Hollywood production a run for its money in these parts."48Ibid. Steve's Show, Little Rock, Arkansas, late 1950s. "49"WOOK-TV," 1965 Broadcasting Yearbook,A10. With no need for backing bands or stage costumes, the men were much cheaper, too. In 1957, itwas one of these fan clubs thatmade the most forceful challenge to Bandstand's discriminatory admissions policies.15Art Peters, "Negroes Crack Barrier of Bandstand TV Show," Philadelphia Tribune, October 5, 1957; "Couldn't Keep Them Out [photo]," Philadelphia Tribune, October 5, 1957; Delores Lewis, "Bobby Brooks' Club Lists 25 Members," Philadelphia Tribune, December 14, 1957. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_15', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_15').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Although many of these teens watched both Bandstand and Thomas's show, as Bandstand grew in popularity and expanded into a national program, The Mitch Thomas Show remained the only television program that represented the region's black rock and roll fans. don Cornelius wanted to make a black American bandstand. 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. 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. Hazel Jordan, letter to J.D. Lewis (WRAL), May 8, 1966, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_42', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_42').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Fans also felt free to criticize the format of Teenage Frolics. Otis Givens, interview withauthor, June 27, 2007. d. the Ronettes, All of the following were considered rockabilly pop musicians EXCEPT: Lewis (WRAL), n.d. [ca. With black performers only a few feet away from the white teenage dancers in the studio, the picture-in-picture technique demarcated the racial boundary between performers and audiences and offered one strategy for televising black musicians while maintaining racial segregation. Release Dates These kids are typical of all the kids who are given something to do, some responsibility. Because you would look at Bandstand and we thought it was a joke. And the image Clark presented in those early years was exclusively white. It contains a story line and an epilogue. 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. "It's been a long, long time since a major network has aimed at the most entertainment-starved group in the country," Clark told Newsweek in 1957. How then do we understand Dick Clarks claim that he integrated, One of Clarks contemporaries, Johnny Otis, noted this missed opportunity in a 1960 article. "64Quoted in Ward, Just My Soul Responding, 48. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_64', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_64').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Baker, who appeared on The Milt Grant Show while she was in town to play the Howard Theater, performed "Jim Dandy Got Married" and "Play the Game of Love" on this episode. 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 . Clark. 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. d. "Dead Man's Curve", "Dead Man's Curve" was a splatter-platter hit by: 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. And his nationally televised American Bandstand influenced music, dance and fashion, establishing Clark as one of the savviest businessmen of the 20th century. The Mitch Thomas Show usefully troubles the boundary between the South and the North. Clark's show put African-American music and performers on television every day. One particularly opinionated "Frolic Fan" wrote, "I am very concerned with your show. "Afro-Americans who lived in communities as diverse as Chicago, Norfolk, and Buxton, Iowa, congregatedsometimes along class lines, but always together," Earl Lewis argues. 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). Bessie Smith earned more, and spent more, than anybody else. Otherwise, Clark and his producer, Tony Mammarella, stayed with Horns formula of teens dancing to hit records in Studio B and showcasing the talents of lip-syncing musical guests. The classic blues singers were already in decline when the Great Depression finished them off. Clark revamped Horn's show for national broadcast by ABC. The Milt Grant Show is particularly interesting for how it sought to bring black music performances to television viewers while maintaining a segregated studio audience that would appeal to sponsors.