by Mick Brown
Writing off the cost to promotional expenses, Bedell took Lieb and Spector to Mays department store and bought each a pair of white bucks and matching woolen sweaters, which Bertha dutifully monogrammed with the group’s name. They were then posed for publicity photographs. “We were very clean-cut,” Lieb would later recall. “Remember, we had very short hair, white bucks and weren’t rebellious in any way. We had nothing to say about anything that would lead to any kind of trouble.”
For a month nothing much happened with “Don’t You Worry My Little Pet.” Responding to a deluge of requests orchestrated among her friends by Annette Kleinbard, a couple of local disc jockeys flipped the record and played “To Know Him Is to Love Him” instead. The song quickly fell off their playlists, but the flurry of interest was apparently enough to convince Bedell that he should be promoting that song rather than the notional A-side. By early September, “To Know Him” was being played on heavy rotation on a station in Fargo, North Dakota—hardly a hub of the music business. At around the same time, Bedell got word that the programming director of radio station KDWB, in Minneapolis, Lou Riegert, had fallen in love with Annette’s voice and was also playing the song to death. In the last week of September, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” finally crept into the Billboard charts at number 88.
The Billboard Hot 100 had been inaugurated only a month earlier, proclaimed as “the industry’s fastest and most complete programming and buying guide” to the popular music of the day. Prior to that, a record’s popularity had been measured on three separate charts, showing radio airplay, sales and jukebox plays. The Hot 100, for the first time, combined all these elements to measure a record’s popularity.
The new chart reflected both the extraordinary diversity of pop music at the time, and the rapidity with which rock and roll—barely four years old—had begun to assert itself as a significant commercial and cultural force. At number one in the week that “To Know Him Is to Love Him” entered the charts was the Italian ballad “Volare” by Domenico Modugno. At number two was “Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers. Other artists in the Top 10 included Tommy Edwards, the Elegants, Bobby Day, Jimmy Clanton and Little Anthony and the Imperials.
Number 88 was a respectable enough beginning, but it’s possible that the song might have gotten no further had Lew Bedell not been able to call on a powerful ally—Dick Clark, the host of the television show American Bandstand, the most important platform for pop music in the country.
Originally known simply as Bandstand, the show had been created in 1954 by a Philadelphia disc jockey named Bob Horn who, shrewdly noting the rising storm of rock and roll, devised the simple format of placing performers in front of a camera and having them lip-synch to their current hits, while an audience of teenagers twisted and jived around them—a template that would become the standard for pop shows for decades to come. Broadcast on a local station, WFIL-TV, Bandstand offered a profligate display of the new and deliciously dangerous possibilities of rock and roll, each week featuring doo-wop groups like the Flamingos and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and RB singers such as Fats Domino and Little Richard. A roster of regular girls, always blond and buxom, would give a countdown on the charts and conduct brief, laudatory interviews with the performers. Joe Boyd, who as a teenager was an avid viewer, and who would later become a distinguished record producer himself, recalls the particular frisson engendered by the sight of the Bandstand babes interviewing “dangerous-looking pompadoured black men in sharkskin suits. It was not lost on us that these were probably the only occasions on American TV in 1955 when white girls and black men could be seen in such close proximity (Bandstand dancers being almost entirely white, of course).”
In 1956, Horn’s tenure on Bandstand came to an abrupt halt when he was arrested on charges of statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges, it would later transpire, were a frame-up, seemingly instigated by people who apparently loathed Horn and all his program stood for. He was later acquitted, but by that time Bandstand had passed into the hands of Dick Clark—a man whose clean-cut demeanor and twinkling toothpaste smile was guaranteed to offend no one. Clark was in his mid-twenties and was smart enough to observe his audience closely and listen to their opinions. Renamed as American Bandstand, and broadcast across the nation each Saturday at noon, the show quickly became mandatory viewing for teenagers anxious not only to hear the new records and see their favorite stars but also to keep abreast of new dance steps and the latest fashion trends. Clark, in keeping with the mood of the times, ensured that these were conservative. Girls that appeared on the show were not allowed to wear slacks or tight sweaters and boys were obliged to wear a jacket and tie. Smoking and chewing gum were not allowed.
Members of the audience quickly developed their own fan following, and on the back of the show’s success Philadelphia developed its own music scene of flash-in-the-pan, clean-cut pop idols and forgotten-by-tomorrow dance hits, while Clark himself became arguably the most important man in the record business.
When Clark aired “To Know Him Is to Love Him” on American Bandstand in the third week of September, giving the song immediate national exposure, the joy in the Era offices and among the Teddy Bears was unconfined. Clark would become a controversial figure a year later, when a U.S. House of Representatives committee launched its investigation into payola in the music industry.
The investigation was largely instigated by ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a symptom of the moral panic that swept across America in the wake of the rise of rock and roll. As the longest established performing-rights association, ASCAP held the monopoly on show tunes, Broadway songs and jazz, and had strong ties to the most conservative elements of the music business, not least the handful of major record labels whose dominance had been seriously challenged by the rise of rock and roll. By the late ’50s, independent labels had broken the stranglehold of the majors on radio airplay, and songs licensed by ASCAP’s rival BMI (Broadway Music Inc.) dominated the charts. ASCAP argued that the only way the pernicious and morally degrading music could possibly be getting frequent airplay was because disc jockeys were receiving payola—cash payments or gifts in kind—to play the records, and duly began lobbying the House of Representatives to investigate. In fact, it was not unusual for a disc jockey to find an envelope stuffed with dollar bills left on his desk with a batch of new releases, or to be treated to dinner, with perhaps a hooker for dessert, by a friendly promo man. Strictly speaking, payola was not illegal, but it was considered unethical, and in 1959 a subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, under Judge Oren Harris, launched a far-reaching investigation into record industry practices.
The investigation spread panic through the industry. Disc jockeys all over America resigned or were fired for accepting payola. Among those investigated were Harold Lipsius and Harry Finfer, the owners of Universal Distributors in Philadelphia, one of the principal distributors of “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” Also investigated was Dick Clark. Clark, it transpired, had a share in the copyrights in 163 pop songs, 143 of which had been given to him. Furthermore, the investigation suggested, a high proportion of the records broadcast on American Bandstand were manufactured by companies in which Clark had a financial interest, or were songs published by companies he owned. “Mr. Clark managed to keep an average of 4.1 records owned by [his] publishing, manufacturing or artist management firms in the charts every week between October 1957 and November 1959,” the investigators’ report stated. Among the companies in which Clark had an interest was Jamie, the record label owned by Universal Distributors. Clark admitted that he had invested $125 in Jamie, which had returned him a profit of $11,900. It was also revealed that Jamie had paid out $15,000 in payola, although Clark denied receiving any of it. At the request of his employers ABC-TV, Clark quickly gave up all his business interests, and he emerged from the hearings with the commendation from Judge Oren Harris that he was “an attractive
and successful young man,” albeit one who “took advantage of a unique opportunity to control too many elements in the popular music field.” (The disc jockey Alan Freed, generally acknowledged as the man who coined the term “rock and roll,” was not so lucky. In December 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial bribery and was fined $300. But it was effectively the end of his career. He died three years later, bitter, broken and penniless.)
Clark’s decision to promote “To Know Him Is to Love Him” on American Bandstand was to prove beneficial to all concerned. Two weeks after the song had been broadcast on the program it rose to number 40 in the charts, and by late October it had reached number 4, prompting Clark to invite the Teddy Bears to appear on the program in person. Seizing the opportunity, Lew Bedell booked the group on a whistle-stop promotional tour through New York, Washington and Philadelphia, and in the last week of November, Spector, Annette Kleinbard and Marshall Lieb boarded the plane for New York.
Harvey Goldstein did not make the journey. Even though he had played no part in the recording of “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” Goldstein returned from his army reserve training expecting to resume his place in the Teddy Bears. But Spector and Lieb had decided that he was now unneeded. Before the group’s departure, Spector informed Goldstein that Dick Clark was paying expenses and didn’t want somebody who hadn’t sung on the record. Goldstein was out of the group. It was only later that he would discover that Clark did not pay expenses for people to appear on his show. Goldstein would later file suit against the remaining three members, claiming that he owned 25 percent of the Teddy Bears’ name. The action was eventually settled out of court; bonds were placed in trust for Goldstein and he continued to be paid royalty checks for a decade to come.
On November 28, the Teddy Bears made their national television debut on American Bandstand. The following week, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” rose to number 1, where it was to remain for the next three weeks. (In Britain it went to number 2.) By the time the record finally dropped out of the American charts some four months later it had sold almost 1.4 million copies. As a mark of his gratitude, Lew Bedell reportedly sent Mrs. Dick Clark a mink coat.
For Spector, the success of “To Know Him” was not only a personal triumph, it was a vindication. The small, insignificant, put-upon boy had proved everybody wrong. Success now went to his head like helium.
“Before the song was a hit, Phil used to come in and say, ‘Anything doing today, Mr. Bedell?’” Lew Bedell told Mark Ribowsky. “He was so obsequious, I figured he was half Japanese, this guy. Then, after it was a hit, he walks in and it’s ‘Hey, Lew, baby, we’re doin’ good.’ He starts calling Herb ‘Hey, you.’ You never saw such a complete change in a little fuckin’ Jewish kid.”
Nor were relations improved when it came to discussions about what the Teddy Bears should record next. Spector had brought in a ballad called “Oh Why,” which played on a similar musical theme to “To Know Him.” But Bedell, who as paymaster believed he had the right to decide what the group recorded, disliked the song. In that case, Spector told him, the group would go elsewhere. This was not quite the act of bravado it seemed. Unbeknown to Bedell, Spector had already been approached by Lew Chudd, the head of a rival company, Imperial Records, offering the Teddy Bears a contract at twice the royalty rate they were receiving from Era—three cents a copy. With the group having delivered their four songs for Era, there was little Bedell could do. Cursing Spector and the group for their ingratitude, he washed his hands of them.
Shirley Spector had been watching her brother’s burgeoning career with growing interest and, some thought, a degree of envy. “I met her after Phil had his first hit,” Bruce Johnston says, “and it was like, all of a sudden the kid has the success that she thought she should have.”
While her own ambitions to be a singer had led nowhere, managing Steve Douglas had given Shirley a taste of the music business and a belief that she could prosper in it. She now proposed to Spector that she should manage the Teddy Bears. Bertha too weighed in, insisting that Phil had an obligation to share his success with his sister. Wilting under the two-pronged attack, he reluctantly acquiesced, and in January 1959 Shirley joined the group as they flew to New York for a television appearance on Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall—the first stop on a tour of one-nighters and sock hops in cities across the eastern seaboard.
On the flight to New York, Phil kept Annette amused reciting skits from his two favorite comedians, Jonathan Winters and Lenny Bruce, whose first album, Interviews of Our Times, had been released a few months earlier. “Phil idolized Lenny and knew every line there was,” Annette remembers. “There were things about Phil that were great. He could be great fun, and he was very bright. I was having to take schoolwork with me, and he would correct me on my English grammar. It was Phil who drummed into me that you always have to put that ‘ly’ on the end of an adjective—so instead of saying ‘appropriate,’ you say ‘appropriately.’ I have Phil to thank for that. He and Marshall were very protective of me because I really was so young. They watched out for me. And I remember that they never, never, never ever made a pass at me.”
But what should have been a triumph quickly became an ordeal. Familiar with the fights that had always characterized the Spector household, Annette and Marshall Lieb had swallowed hard when Shirley appointed herself as the group’s manager. Now their worst fears were being realized. Shirley and Phil argued constantly, “screaming fights,” Annette says. And Shirley quickly turned her temper on Annette herself.
“She could be sweet one minute, and then so mean the next. She always had me off balance because I never knew what she was doing or where she was coming from. I think that Shirley wanted to sing, too; in a sense she wanted to be me, and she resented me, even though it was my voice that had started her brother’s career. She made my life pretty terrible, a living hell.”
Embarrassed by his sister’s behavior, Phil constantly apologized. “I think he was very concerned about her, how irrational she was. But I remember one day saying to myself, ‘This just isn’t worth it. I am going to lose my sanity over this,’ because she was so exhausting as a human being and so neurotic, or that is how I perceived her to be.”
It was during this tour that an incident supposedly occurred that was to scar Spector for years afterward. One night, after a performance, some young toughs followed him into the men’s room, held him down and urinated on him. In years to come, this story would become a central part of the Spector mythology, to explain his distrust of the world at large, his obsession with personal security and his subsequent use of bodyguards. Curiously, Annette Kleinbard says she has no recollection of the incident. “I don’t remember that and I would have known that.” But it was a story that Spector himself would recount at various times over the years to friends and intimates.
It is hard to imagine Spector inventing a story that casts him as the butt of such abject humiliation, but his tendency to self-mythologizing was already becoming apparent to those around him. In a hotel in New York, the three Teddy Bears were astonished when Fidel Castro, newly installed as the revolutionary leader of Cuba and on an unofficial visit to the United States, stepped into the elevator behind them, accompanied by a phalanx of bodyguards in combat fatigues. “Phil,” Annette remembers, “was making faces at them behind their backs. He was a real prankster.” In later years, Spector would inflate this fleeting encounter into a personal meeting with Castro, at which the Cuban leader allegedly offered him a job as a translator.
Back in Los Angeles, apparently keen to exaggerate his growing importance still further, he told Kim Fowley that he had produced the Mystics’ doo-wop hit “Hushabye,” and “Come On, Let’s Go” by Ritchie Valens. When Valens’s song “Donna” was a hit, Spector told Donna Kass that he had written the song for her. What is so mystifying is that Spector could easily be found out. On February 3, 1959, Valens died when the small plane carrying him, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper crashed in Iowa. Watching
the news on television, Donna Kass saw Valens’s girlfriend Donna Ludwig, for whom Valens had written the song, weeping, and realized for the first time that Phil had lied to her. But by then, his relationship with Donna was all but over.
Spector now started dating a girl called Lynn Castle, whom he had met through Marshall Lieb. Lynn was seventeen when she met Spector, and like Donna Kass before her fancied she could see in him qualities that most people missed. Lynn had spent her childhood in a Catholic boarding school, and Spector, she thought, was actually as vulnerable and unworldly as she felt herself to be.
“It was like you see in a movie, two lost souls. I felt that. Nobody could see what in the world I ever saw in him. He didn’t look like anything that anyone with an eye for glamour would look at. But he was smart, he was sweet and he was funny. I didn’t know about his bleakness and blackness, because I had bleakness and blackness too. But I could see his vulnerability. That’s what I loved about him. Because he was fragile he was able to see my fragility. And he knew that what would make him feel okay would work for me as well. Water seeks its own level, and that’s what happened.”