THROWBACK THURSDAY: American Bandstand Memories

 

On August 5, 1957 -- which wasn't long before I turned four years old -- the ABC network debuted an afternoon teenage dance show hosted by a clean-cut guy from Philadelphia named Dick Clark.

Known as "America's Oldest Teenager," Clark had been with the show's precursor, "Bandstand," which aired on local TV in Philadelphia. (WFIL, now WPVI). The original show had been around since 1952. Clark came aboard in 1956. When ABC asked local affiliates for suggestions for a an afternoon show, Clark lobbied for "Bandstand" to go national.

According to Clark's obituary (he died in 2012 at the age of 82) in the Los Angeles Times, "Clark and “American Bandstand” not only gave young fans what they wanted, it gave their parents a measure of assurance that this new music craze was not as scruffy or as scary as they feared. Buttoned-down and always upbeat, polite and polished, Clark came across more like an articulate graduate student than a carnival barker."

That obit discusses that first national show:

"...from the no-frills Studio B of WFIL-TV on Market Street in Philadelphia, Clark greeted a national television audience for the first time with the backdrop of a faux record store, a concrete floor and crowd of giddy teens in clean-cut mode: Ties for boys, no slacks for girls and no gum chewing were the rules from the first day."

Indeed Clark's innate square demeanor made for a pretty weird show. Most of the time American Bandstand  simply played current hits and showed teenagers dancing. The guest artists who came to th studio never played live. They just lip-synched.

Clark used “Bandstand” as a springboard for various business schemes. He became an artist manager, a music publisher and had his fingers in record-pressing plants as well as a distribution business. America's Oldest Teenager had partial rights to more than 100 songs and, according to the Los Angeles Times, "had his name on the financial paperwork of more than 30 music-related businesses." 

Those wheelings and dealings led him to testify before Congress during the payola scandal in 1960. Though he testified that he never accepted any money to play records on the show, ABC made him sell off his business holdings that some saw as conflicts of interest.

Here are some videos of American Bandstand through the years:

Here's Jackie Wilson. According to the Internet Movie Data Base, Jackie appeared on Bandstand five times between 1957 and 1965. "Lonely Teardrops" was released in 1958, so I expect this clip was from one of his two appearances on the show that year.

I'm thinking the following clip might just be the only Andre Williams song ever to be played on Bandstand. This version is by James & Bobby Purify (which was the first version I ever heard.) I also like Dick Clark's Dr. Pepper commercial that introduces it, though I wonder if the "Proud Crowd" he mentions was a precursor of the Proud Boys.

Dick Clark, as he shows in this 1967 interview with The Jefferson Airplane, was in tune with the far-out youth of the Swingin' '60s. He asks bassist Jack Cassidy a very insightful question: "If you gave $100,000 to a hippie ..."

American Bandstand lasted until 1989. At the beginning of that decade, he had a 19-year-old Prince on the show:

Also in 1980, there was something Rotten on Bandstand.

But one group you never heard on American Bandstand was The Tandoori Knights (King Khan & Bloodshot Bill, who wouldn't be around until about 20 years after Clark's show went off the air.) Here is the Tandooris' lament about that fact:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, August 1, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

La Grange by ZZ Top

Nothing's Easy But You and Me by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

To Sing The Blues You Gotta Be Blue by The William Loveday Intention

Roadrunner by Bo Diddley

Hairy Lula by Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers

Commuter by Danger Cutterhead

Bayou Fever by King Salami & The Cumberland 3

Lipstick Vogue by Elvis Costello

Total Destruction of Your Mind by Swamp Dogg

Chemtrailer Trash by Churchwood

60 Pound Mall Rat by Sicko

Electric Pussycat Lounge by Robbie Quine

Sick to the Bone by Laino & The Broken Seeds

Te Puebes Quemar by Rolando Bruno

Weaver Wear by Quintron & Miss Pussycat

Make it Up by Reigning Sound

Devil Whistle, Don't Sing by The Devils with Mark Lanegan

Vicious Pygmy by John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America

The Salt Mines of Zanzibar by Gloop Nox & The Stik People

Never Been by Degurutieni

Betty by Johnny Dowd

Mausoleum by Manic Street Preachers

Amorous by Brides of Funkenstein

America the Beautiful by Bobby Rush & The Curb Collective

Civil War by Pocket FishRmen

Another Drunken Sailor Song by Chuck E. Weiss

Lavada's Lounge by Martha Fields

High Shelf Booze by Eilen Jewell

Satin Shoes by The Flatlanders

Everything Grows in Her Garden by Southern Culture on the Skids

Muriel by Eleni Mandell

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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WACKY WEDNESDAY: Happy Birthday Weird Frank Yankovic

 Today is the birthday of a famous accordion player named Yankovic. 

No, I'm not talking about Weird Al. I'm talking about "America's Polka King," Frankie Yankovic, who was born on this day in 1915 in Davis, West Virginia, where his parents worked in a lumber camp.

The Yankovic family moved to Cleveland when Frankie was but a small lad. There he became immersed in Slovenian-style polka. According to his obituary in the Chicago Tribune:

After learning to play button accordion from one of the Slovenian boarders in his parents' Cleveland home, Mr. Yankovic got a squeezebox of his own as a teenager and made a name for himself in the region by his early 20s.

In 1943, he left to fight in World War II, where he served in the 1st Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge. The battle proved nearly fatal for Mr. Yankovic and his musical career when he emerged with frost-bitten hands and feet.

"It was a dreadful experience," he said in a 1995 interview. "My limbs were frozen. In Oxford, England, the doctors said they were going to have to amputate my hands and legs. I told them, `No way. I'd rather die.' What good would I be, an accordionist, with no fingers?

"But you know what happened? The gangrene started going away; it started clearing up. Then the doctors told me there was an accordion in the hospital that I could try practicing on, if I wanted to. So that became my therapy."

Frankie died in 1998 at the age of 83

Here is "Just Because," Frankie's first national hit. Elvis Presley recorded this song during his Sun Records period. But Frankie first released it in 1948. (Actually it goes back to the late 1920s when a band called Nelstone's Hawaiians recorded it.)

Here's one called "Tick Tock Polka":

Frankie sings "Julida Polka":

And no, Frankie was not related to Weird Al -- though the parodist has often joked that his parents bought him an accordion as a child because "there should be at least one more accordion-playing Yankovic in the world." The two famous Yankovics combined forces in 1986:

I'm not sure what this video is, but the song is a polka classic by Frankie Yankovic

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 25, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

Steppin' Out by Paul Revere & The Raiders

Manpower Debut by The Fleshtones

Ain't That Lovin' You Baby by Link Wray

Negativity No by Pocket FishRmen

I Saw The Smokestack Fall by Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers

Sally Go 'Round the Roses by Question Mark & The Mysterians

96 Tears by Big Maybelle

Psychotic Reaction by Brenton Wood

Dirty Water by Dropkick Murphys

High Shelf Mama by Martha Fields

Drag Queens on Choppers by The Barbarellatones

Night of the Vampire by Ty Segall

You're Crazy for Taking the Bus by Jonathan Richman

Just Around the Bend by Too Much Joy

Distemper by The Ar-Kaics

Singing the Blues Around Booze by Laino & The Broken Seeds

Listening to Gospel Music on the Radio by The Moonlight 5

You Can Count on Me by Sammy Davis Jr.

RIP CHUCK E. WEISS

All songs by Chuck except where noted

Jolie's Nightmare (Mr. House Dick)

Hey Pendejo

Do You Know What I Idi Amin (with Tom Waits)

Chuck E's in Love by Rickie Lee Jones

Piccolo Pete

Spare Parts (A Nocturnal Emission) by Tom Waits

Luigi's Starlite Lounge

Mama Does the Kangaroo by The Flatlanders

Daddy Was a Preacher But Mama Was a Go-Go Girl by Southern Culture on the Skids

Theme from a Summer Place byRoss Johnson

Just Like a Woman by Richie Havens

I'm Going Home by Slackeye Slim

Time by Pozo Seco Singers

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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Want to keep the party going after I sign off at midnight?
Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this. CLICK HERE

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: From Sea to Shining Sea

 

On this day in 1893, an English professor at Colorado College sat down and wrote a song about purple mountains, amber waves of grain, spacious skies and shining seas.

And thus did Katharine Lee Bates become a one-hit wonder -- though that one hit, "America the Beautiful," was a doozy. 

Bates, a Massachusetts native born in 1859, never got as famous as Francis Scott Key. But I'm not alone when I say I like her song better.

From the Colorado Virtual Library:

Katharine Lee Bates only spent one summer living in Colorado, but that year she wrote the words to one of the United States’ most famous patriotic songs, “America the Beautiful.” At the time she wrote the song, in 1893, she was living in Colorado Springs teaching English at Colorado College. The words, particularly the phrase “purple mountain majesty,” are said to have been inspired by Bates’ stay in Colorado.

Unless she was thinking of the majestic purple mountains of Massachusetts.

Actually, according to her page at the Songwriters Hall of Fame website, it was one purple mountain in particular that inspired bates to write to the song. It quotes an interview with Bates:

 "It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind. When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip. The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895. The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency, that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct."

"America the Beautiful" in its early days was sung to the tunes of several existing melodies. But the one that stuck was a song by one Samuel A. Ward, a "hymn-tune 'Materna,' previously known as 'O Mother Dear Jerusalem,' which was written in 1888."

No, she wasn't Norman Bates' mom

Bates had graduated in 1880 from Wellesley College in her home state. That was a time in which very few colleges in this great nation were open to women. She later taught at Wellesley.

And though she's best known for this song, Bates also published several books, including books of poetry children's literature. She worked as a New York Times reporter covering the Spanish-American War. She crusaded for various social reforms on behalf of women, immigrants and poor people and worked for attempts to establish the League of Nations, which she told the New York Times was "our one hope of peace on earth."

Bates died in 1929.

I have personal experience with "America the Beautiful." One night back in the early 1980s I was onstage at The Forge performing my regular tacky tunes when I was joined onstage by one of my favorite songwriters Butch Hancock. And guess what song we sang. If I remember correctly we did the first verse, which everybody knows, as well as the verse that begins "O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress ..."

It wasn't some random event. I'd met Butch a couple of times before through our mutual friend, artist Paul Milosevich. Both Butch and country star Tom T. Hall were in town for one of Paul's art openings that afternoon and both had come to hear me at The Forge. 

I wish someone would have recorded that duet with Butch. (And I wish Tom T. would have joined us on the stage.)

So let's see how others have covered "America the Beautiful.

Most of us grew up with versions like this one:

However, I like a less pomp and a lot more soul. Ray Charles in the early '70s made it grand without being grandiose.  (The Sunday morning gospel show on WWOZ in New Orleans usually ends the show with Ray's recording of this.)

Here's a blusier, funkier version by Bobby Rush (with the Curb Collective and Eddie Cotton

And The Dictators put some rock 'n' roll into the song

Anyway, have a great Throwback Thursday and may God shed his grace on thee.

For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook