Updated: 4/25/2009 11:42:02 PMLeader-Telegram Online
Kal Mann was joined by his wife, Esther, when he was inducted into the Philadelphia music Walk of Fame in 1989. He wrote the lyrics to many of the early rock 'n' roll hits. Contributed photo
Area woman's dad wrote many early rock 'n' roll hits
By Jerry Poling Leader-Telegram staff hen you're a kid, pretty much everything seems normal.
You don't truly know the difference between rich and poor, black and white. You just get up every morning and blithely accept what adventure comes your way. I believe it's what writers refer to as the halcyon days of youth.
At least that's my best guess at why little Betsy Bacon thought her childhood seemed "pretty normal," when clearly it wasn't.
One day, at about age 12, she came home from school in the Philadelphia area and saw her street filled with people. "There were hundreds of people standing in front of my house," she said.
The singer Chubby Checker, one of our first American rock 'n' roll idols, was visiting her home, and some of his fans had gotten wind of it.
Chubby stopped by fairly often in those days. Otherwise, Betsy and her family might see him at the home of "American Bandstand" icon Dick Clark. Betsy and her family visited Clark's house many times.
Betsy also would see Clark on Saturdays. She'd be found sitting with the cameramen on the set of the original "American Bandstand" show and watching a week's worth of shows being filmed. It was better than a front row seat.
At Betsy's house it wouldn't be unusual for her dad to mention names such as Elvis Presley, Nat "King" Cole or Bobby Rydell. Her dad wasn't name-dropping. Those singers were among his friends and clients.
Nearly a half-century later, Betsy, now 58, living and farming near Spring Valley, hears songs like Elvis' "Teddy Bear" and Checker's "Let's Twist Again" and realizes her childhood would be classified by most people as pretty special.
Twisting to the topBetsy's father was Kalman Cohen, a musical lyricist. He went by the name Kal Mann and wrote the words to many of the songs the nation was dancing to in the late 1950s and early '60s.
Actually, Betsy's father was a kitchen manager at a Philadelphia-area adult camp who had ambition. Mann had grown up poor in Philly and began laboring at 16, but "he always wanted to be a writer," said Betsy, who farms with her husband, Joe, between Spring Valley and Elmwood.
So Mann wrote. First, he wrote comedy for Jimmy Durante, Danny Thomas and Red Buttons. Then he and a friend formed Cameo-Parkway Records, and Mann began to write song lyrics.
"He was very creative, but he wasn't musical at all," Betsy recalled. "He had kind of a tin ear."
Mann teamed with another friend, Dave Appell, who wrote the music, and the two of them soon had hit songs for Elvis ("Teddy Bear" was No. 1 in 1957 for seven weeks), Pat Boone and Andy Williams, and they began to work with a young Philly kid named Ernest Evans, a chubby 16-year-old who sang at his family's poultry shop to attract business.
Mann and Appell wrote a follow-up to Hank Ballard's song "The Twist," coming out with "Let's Twist Again" by Checker in 1961. They also helped Chubby develop the butt-twisting dance that went with it, helping the song climb the charts. Chubby and his fans have been twisting ever since.
"Let's Twist Again" won a Grammy Award in 1961, and life in the Cohen household never was the same.
"That was the beginning of the good times," Betsy said. "When I was 13, we moved out of a row house to a nice house in the suburbs."
Her dad and Appell wrote 29 songs that hit the top 10 and had three records reach No. 1 on the charts. Do you remember "Dancin' Party," "The Wah-Watusi," "Butterfly," "Fabulous," "South Street," "Bristol Stomp," "Mashed Potato Time," "Hully Gully Baby," "Kissin' Time" or "Wild One"?
Mann wrote them and many others. He usually wrote lyrics at home in the afternoons, but he wrote "Limbo Rock" in 15 minutes during a taxi ride, Betsy said.
Proud of her fatherThe dance music that swept the country around 1960 changed a few years later with The Beatles and the British invasion. Mann and his partners saw it coming so they bought the rights to release seven Beatles songs in the U.S.
They were flops. The Beatles hadn't caught on yet, so Mann's group gave up the rights to six of the songs, hanging on to "Love Me Do," just in case. It was a good move, said Betsy's husband, Joe.
Gradually Mann's and Appell's success faded, but the universal love for their music never has. Mann and his wife retired, and he played a lot of golf in Florida, where he died in 2001 at age 84 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He often could be seen wearing an "I'm an old rock 'n' roller" sweat shirt in his later years.
Betsy and her lone sibling, a brother, bought the rights to his songs, and they still receive royalties.
In good companyBetsy eventually met Joe, an Ohio kid who had danced to her dad's songs growing up too, and they began to farm. They moved to the Spring Valley area in 1980, farming and operating Arctic Glass stores for a time in Eau Claire and Hammond. They still sell solar panels from their barn.
They have two grown children who live in Philadelphia and can see their grandfather's name on the Philadelphia music Walk of Fame. With Checker, Clark, John Coltrane, Marian Anderson, Frankie Avalon, Pearl Bailey, Boyz II Men, Jim Croce, Patti LaBelle and many others, Mann is in good company.
Betsy and Joe recently attended an event in Eau Claire where they met a 1950s music fan and retired career radio man, Marty Green.
"She told me her dad was a songwriter. I asked her if he wrote any songs any of us ever had heard. Then she named some of them, and I said, 'Oh, my God, his songs sold millions of copies,' " Green said.
Along with happy memories and friendships Betsy still shares with Clark, Chubby and many others from the world of music, she loves to hear her dad's music when she's least expecting it.
"When I catch a song on the radio by chance, it's such a thrill. If I hear a song on Muzak, I'll stop people and let them know that was my dad."
Poling can be reached at 830-5832, 800-236-7077 or jerry.poling@ecpc.com.
