Word: bandstand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...want to know if I was ON "American Bandstand"? No. I can't dance, don't ask me. I came from Northwest Philly, not South or West. And I've never been Italian. But I do remember seeing some of the kids from "Bandstand" occasionally on the elevated train near the show's West 46 Street studio. In real life they looked small, sallow, extravagantly Vaselined, with poofter pompadours and funny shoes. The rest of the country had Elvis lookalikes; we had Frankie Avalon clones. Of course, the kids had to be dolled up - they were in show business...
...fullest sense of the word, a mediator - between the kids watching his show and the adults walking past, seeing this nonthreatening face and figuring everything was OK. He was prematurely middle-aged; it made sense that his show's title and theme song (Charles Alexandrine's "Bandstand Boogie," as played by Les Elgart) evoked an earlier, less dangerous musical era. He didn't talk with eccentric urgency, like so many of the radio DJs of the time - his only coinages were "IFIC" (from "Flavor-ific," to describe Beechnut Gum, sponsor of a Saturday night show he hosted...
...candy sponsors. John Zacherle's horror-novelty song "Dinner With Drac" was toned down for Clark; a record was then issued with the hard and soft versions. Chuck Berry didn't need prompting to insert, in his "Sweet Little Sixteen," the lines "Well, they'll be rockin' on ?Bandstand,' Philadelphia...
...remember "Bandstand" before it was "American..." It started in 1952, when Walter Annenberg, whose Triangle Publications owned the WFIL radio and television stations, suggested an afternoon TV dance party. The hosting job went to a dour fellow named Bob Horn, who had been running the "Bandstand" show on WFIL radio. On Oct. 7, after a two-week summer tryout, "Bob Horn's Bandstand" had its TV premiere. Originating from the station's West Philadelphia studio, it featured kids from the three local high schools. The show was an immediate hit, expanding to an hour 45 min., and benefitting from promotions...
...indictment he drove the wrong way down a one-way street and hit a car; one of its passengers, a little girl, was seriously injured. He had been arrested for drunken driving before and here was again found to have been intoxicated. Horn was fired from "Bandstand," moved to Houston, got a radio job under the name Bob Adams and soon lost it. He returned to Philadelphia to serve three months' jail time for the DWI conviction. In 1966 he died of a heart attack. He was just 50. (This strange tale and others are related at the History...