Historic Philadelphia

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Right: Mayor Bernard Samuel, an amiable
old-fashioned politician, unwillingly
presided over the demise of the once allpowerful
Republican machine. Dick
Dilworth, major wielder of the Democratic
Party’s “new broom,” liked to point out that
among Barney Samuel’s neighbors,
coexisting in tranquility, were a brothel, a
numbers betting parlor, and a police station.
COURTESY OF THE URBAN ARCHIVES, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY.
Below: The Pennsylvania Railroad added to
the city’s revival by making Thirtieth Street
Station the major rail terminal, and tearing
down Broad Street Station and the blocks of
the Chinese Wall. A crowd of five thousand
sentimental Philadelphians sang Auld Lang
Syne at 9:57 p.m. on April 27, 1952, as the
last train pulled out of Broad Street Station.
On the train’s rear platform, Eugene
Ormandy, maestro of the Philadelphia
Orchestra, waved his right arm high, and
majestically conducted the farewell chorale.
COURTESY OF THE URBAN ARCHIVES, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY.
Then came rock ’n’ roll, and South Philly
became a breeding ground for rockers.
Franklin Avallone, who won a scooter singing
in an amateur contest at age six, was playing
trumpet in a band called Rocco and the Saints
on Steel Pier in Atlantic City at age twelve
when he was “discovered” by Peter DeAngelis
and Bob Marcucci of Chancellor Records, a
local company. They took away his horn,
wrote some songs for him, and turned him
into a recording idol of the teenage girls. A
former Rocco and the Saints drummer, Robert
L. Ridarelli, signed with Kal Mann’s local
Cameo Records in 1958, and became Bobby
Rydell. DeAngelis and Marcucci, in 1959,
seized another South Philly kid, Fabian Forte,
who had never sung, chopped off his last
name and made him a recording star. Perhaps
most bizarre of all, Henry Colt, proprietor of
a South Philly poultry store, came to Kal
Mann and described the singing talent of one
of his chicken pluckers, Ernest Evans.
Inspired by New Orleans singer Fats Domino,
the promoters changed Evans’ name to
Chubby Checker; the lad introduced a song
and a dance called The Twist.
Much of the city’s influence on rock ‘n’ roll
was disseminated by Bandstand, which started
as a radio program on WFIL, featuring disc
jockey Bob Horn. The station’s television
operation at Forty-sixth and Market created a
telecast of Bandstand in 1951. In 1956 Horn
was replaced by Dick Clark. Eventually,
Bandstand became a network program, and
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