tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_71', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_71').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Unlike Soul Train, which moved from Chicago to Hollywood after one year, these local shows featured and appealed to black teens from Wilmington, Raleigh, and Washington, and as the opening clip from Seventeen suggests, they influenced American musical cultures in surprising ways. The Video Beat, 2015. Like other white teens that protested the desegregation of Central High, Hazel Bryan danced regularly on Steve's Show. If white teen shows sought to shore up the supremacy of whiteness in youth music culture, the black teen shows visualized black teens as equal participants in the production and consumption of music culture. The Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes wrote that Bessie conveyed "sadness not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter, the absurd, incongruous laughter of a sadness without even a god to appeal to." 1955-1958. Classic TV Shows - Dick Clark's American Bandstand| FiftiesWeb Which folksinger was a member of the Weavers? 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. Broadcast locally during the 1957 school integration crisis, the show featuredexclusively white dancers, includingHazel Bryan. "57"Nation's First Minority Group TV Station to Broadcast Today," Chicago Defender, February 11, 1963. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1562_1_57', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1562_1_57').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); WOOK-TV never assumed a leadership role with regards to the main political issues of its era, but Teenarama showcased black youth culture for Washington viewers. Their teachers asked for volunteers and those who were At age 26, Dick Clark, a native of Westchester County, New York, and a 1951 graduate of Syracuse University, started out at WFIL-TV doing commercial spots. 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. . A playlet is a short song telling a humorous story. It sounded like music from the margins, unloved and misunderstood. J.D. Despite this, Clark claimed for years that he integrated Bandstand by the late 1950s. c. sympathizing with Civil Rights [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. In a long list of reasons why "we find it difficult to wait," King includes, "when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental skythen you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." Over the course of her career, she went on to win a total of 14 Grammys and even received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967. On Valentine's Day 1920, a little over a century ago, a 28-year-old singer named Mamie Smith walked into a recording studio in New York City and made history. Beverly Lindsay-Johnson, interview with author, January 8, 2013. When Clark initially referred to American Bandstand's "integration," he emphasized black musical artists performing on the show. University of California Press. I became interested in these teen dance shows while researching and writing a book on American Bandstand. But all he had to do was lip-sync and wiggle a bit and the screaming would start. 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. Examining Little Rock, political theorist Danielle Allen writes, "Nineteen fifty-seven forced citizens to confront the nature of their citizenshipthat is, the basic habits of interaction in public spacesand many were shamed into desiring a new order. Singer and musician Bobby Rydell sits next to host Dick Clark in the audience of "American Bandstand" around 1958. Sisters Gwendolyn and Lena Horton, for example, regularly walked from the Walnut Terrace neighborhood to appear on the show. We don't need to exaggerate the integration of American Bandstand to appreciate all that Clark did to shape American popular culture. As if their enforced retirement weren't bad enough, these women suffered the double indignity of being retrospectively sidelined. In the midst of the voting rights marches in Selma in 1965, for example, Martin Luther King told marchers and the news media, "We are here to say to the white men that we no longer will let them use clubs on us in the dark corners. WOOK-TV only perpetuates this image. 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. It contains a story line and an epilogue. Bessie Smith earned more, and spent more, than anybody else. Bandstand (TV Series 1958-1972) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to what it meant for young black people to be excluded from these sorts of entertainment spaces. Matthew Delmont, "The Nicest Kids in Town." 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"). Singer adopted the moniker Pop to advertise his connection with the show. 3. 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. . An appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand launched Checker's version of "The Twist" to the No. This video album provides vintage footage from American Bandstands anchorage in West Philadelphia. was more politically and aesthetically adventurous than The Mitch Thomas Show, Teenage Frolics, and Teenarama, these teen dance shows fostered a similar compact between their audiences and performers. Thomas continued to work as a radio disc jockey through the 1960s, until he left broadcasting in 1969 to work as a counselor to gang members in Wilmington. . Mamie Smith retired in 1931. Race and American Bandstand, The Seven-Year Itch: West Philly Loses American Bandstand, Report accessibility issues and request help. Lewis (WRAL), June 24, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140, July 22, 1967; Gwendolyn Gilmore, J.D. Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Virginia. 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". The earliest representative of African-American performers on this site is George Walker ("Her Name's Miss Dinah Fair"). (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 9192. Nationally, American Bandstand blocked black teens from entering the studio during its years in Philadelphia, despite host Dick Clark's claims to the contrary. Lewis (WRAL), May 29, 1967, Lewis Family Papers, folder 140; "Nero, the Mad," letter to J.D. white dancers on the same dance floor. 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." Dick Clarks public persona was squeaky clean, All American, and choir-boyishan image he assiduously cultivated. The Mitch Thomas Show usefully troubles the boundary between the South and the North. 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. "One of the phonograph companies made over four million dollars on the Blues," reported The Metronome in 1922. Bessie Smith was the first African-American singer. "American Bandstand"1956-2007 | The Pop History Dig

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