1960—1
“The Road to Reality”, “The Clear Horizon” and “Full Circle”
The pig in the python reached high school, and Boomer kids faced the same old problems… crowded classrooms and not enough textbooks or teachers. For the ninth consecutive year, we caught the public school system completely by surprise. One would have thought that educators would have picked up on a pattern by now, and plan ahead for our arrival one of these years, but it never happened. The freshman class doubled the size of that of 1959, and from 1961 until the end of the Seventies, Boomers teens made up the majority in every high school in America.
Puberty Pop dominated the airwaves with pimply whines of self-pity like “Puppy Love” (Anka), “Teen Angel” and “Because They’re Young”. Brian Hyland hit it big with “Itsy, Bitsy, Teenie, Weenie, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” (about an insecure teeniebopper who was too embarrassed to come out of the water in her tiny new bathing suit).
The most important social responsibility in the life of most 14-year-olds was to learn the new dance craze on Bandstand. Dick Clark recognized this youthful obsession and created a dance specialist out of ex-chicken plucker, Chubby Checker. Fats Domino must have wondered about the choice of stage name for Ernest Evans, and Dick’s choice of music probably surprised Hank Ballard as Checker appeared on Bandstand to demonstrate “The Twist”. Ballard recorded the original version two years earlier, but didn’t have Clark behind him, and the record saw little action. Now, the whole country twisted.
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Eisenhower certainly twisted on May 1st, as he heard that Gary Powers hadn’t returned from a spy mission over Russia in a U-2 plane. “But surely,” thought Ike, “if a brave American pilot was about to be captured by the Commies, he would have done the right thing… the patriotic thing. After all, Power had been given a chain to wear, with a silver dollar, hallowed out to hold a tiny needle treated with curare poison. One tiny prick and you’re dead instantly.” On May 5th, Khrushchev appeared on TV and accused the USA of “aggressive acts and serious aerial violations” of Russia’s borders. He offered no details. Within hours, our government explained to the world that a “malfunctioning oxygen system probably caused the pilot to black out and fly inadvertently into Russia.” Nikita displayed fragments of the U-2 plane the next day, and released the full details of the spy mission, which Powers had willingly volunteered to his interrogators.
“Candid Camera” (“The show that catches you in the act of being yourself”) became an instant hit. Network schedulers again displayed their amazing historical insight this season as “The Twilight Zone” followed a new show called “Eyewitness to History.”
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With the Quiz Show Scandals out of the way, the American government took aim at payola in Rock & Roll, as they opened hearings on the subject on February 8, 1960. On March 4th, testimony revealed that John C. Doerfer, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, had just returned from a six-day vacation to Florida, courtesy of Storer Broadcasting Company. Ike realized that this was an election year, so he asked for Doerfer’s resignation.
Dick Clark appeared before the Harris Subcommittee in April. The court had ordered Dick to get rid of his shares in record labels and music publishing houses and he sold, at a huge profit, whole or part interest in 33 different music-related businesses. Clark still owned the rights to 160 songs, 143 of which he claimed “had been given” to him. He denied ever plugging any of his own tunes “consciously” on Bandstand. Dick’s company, Jamie Records, had been caught red-handed passing out $15,000 of payola, but Clark said that he never accepted any bribes.
The Committee questioned Dick as to why tunes by little-known artists, like Duane Eddy, received more airplay on his show than King Elvis. Clark admitted that Eddy recorded with one of his labels, and was managed by SRO (a company he owned half of), but stated that those coincidences had no influence on his play list. Dick explained that he always devoted a spot on his program to instrumentalists, like Eddy, and that “there were darn few good ones around”. (Remember, this little piece of quick thinking happened years before Nixon earned the title of “Trickie-Dickie”.)
Clark charmed the Subcommittee. This wholesome, clean-cut TV host couldn’t possibly be out to corrupt the youth of America… he was simply a hard-working entrepreneur trying to turn a nice profit. What’s wrong with that? It’s the American way. Representative Harris called Dick “a fine young man”, and the Committee dismissed Clark.
On May 19th, Joseph Stone’s grand jury in New York subpoenaed only one DJ: Alan Freed. For the next two-and-a-half years, the US government questioned and harassed Freed. Radio and television stations refused to even talk to, let alone hire, Alan during that period. Freed finally stood trial in December of 1962, and pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial bribery. The judge fined him $300, and gave Alan a six-month, suspended sentence. This marked the end of Freed’s career, but the government wanted to play with their mouse a bit longer. On March 16, 1964 (immediately following the British Invasion by the Beatles) another grand jury indicted Alan for income tax evasion. The IRS claimed that he owed $37,920 on $56,652 of unreported income for the years of 1957-9. Freed, already poor, unemployed and unemployable, entered a hospital, suffering from uremia. Three weeks later (January 20, 1965) Alan Freed died at the age of 43.
In 1960, the cruel hand of fate reached all the way across the Atlantic to crush two second-tier Rockers. A taxi accident in London killed Eddie Cochran and crippled Gene Vincent.
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