Wildwood rock and roll nights

World War II was over, and America was experiencing unprecedented prosperity. Eve-rything was new, especially the music, and as the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra gave way to the revolutionary sounds of the Fifties and Sixties, Wildwood was there to help it along. The town’s clubs were in many ways a prov-ing ground for the music the world would come to know as rock and roll.
Wildwood was once the place where great entertainers honed their skills. Before Philadelphia’s American Bandstand became the rage, and long before Dick Clark hosted the Miss America Pageant, he was spinning re-cords further south at the Starlight Ballroom in Wildwood.
In those days, marquees flashed big names like Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Mathis, The Drifters, and Fabian. Wildwood was known as “little Las Vegas” then, and caravans of Bel Airs and Thunder-birds, Packards and Chevy Townsman, took to the streets, and crowds with Coppertone tans and money in their pockets drifted along the boardwalk and Pacific Avenue.
According to an article in the Herald’s Shout News in 1978, Chubby Checker “was so sure his Twist would be a hit that he offered to work for free at Wildwood’s Rainbow (Supper Club) at Spicer and Pacific avenues, and the song and dance fad he introduced during the summer of 1960 eventually became so popular that it sparked the creation of New York’s Peppermint Lounge.
Audiences today may have forgotten the humble origins of the Twist, but Chubby Checker never did. He was quick to credit the Rainbow Supper Club (and Wildwood), as the birthplace of his pop phenomenon, and he returned in 2005 to receive a Wildwoods Music Award to mark the occasion.
Wildwood Historical Museum exhibits newspaper ads for dozens of entertainers. Vacationers “found their thrills” while jam-ming to the tunes of Fats Domino and the Dovell’s at the Riptide Club on Oak Avenue near Atlantic. On other nights, Danny and the Juniors got the club jumping with “Let’s Go to the Hop.”
In 1964, Diana Ross and the Supremes performed at the Riptide receiving $3,500 for a 10-day gig, two shows a day. Their song, “Where Did Our Love Go,” soared to the top of the charts that year.
Bobby Rydell’s top-10 hit, “Kissing Time” contained a tribute to fans who were “Wailin’ in Wildwood,” and swooning girls followed the Philadelphia native around town.
Teen idol, Frankie Avalon, another local boy, received similar treatment. Tony Bennett, who played at the Bolero, remem-bers singer Guy Mitchell being trailed around the island by a Life photographer and hun-dreds of female fans.
Sammy Davis Jr. played drums in his father’s band at the Bolero, and fellow Rat Pack member Joey Bishop would eventually become a fixture at Club Avalon.
Bill Haley and his Comets got a job playing at the HofBrau on Atlantic Avenue, and it was there that he first performed his classic, “Rock Around the Clock.” The song had an infectious beat, and incorporated elements of country-western, rockabilly, and R&B. Dick Clark would ultimately dub Haley’s tune the “National Anthem of Rock and Roll.” John Lennon would later credit “Rock Around the Clock” as the inspiration for the direction of his musical career.
The music scene changed in the Seventies and Eighties, but many rising stars still played in Wildwood’s old Convention Hall. Newspaper ads and ticket stubs confirm Wildwood was once a place to see performers as varied as Kiss, The Kinks, Elton John and David Cassidy.
Funchase.com, a treasure trove of Wildwood History, painstakingly maintained by Wildwood Crest resident Ralph Grassi, is a great place to browse memorabilia from Wildwood’s rockin’ past. You can even see the promotional ad to see Sly and the Family Stone’s 1972 concert. Tickets were just $5. (Members of that band will return to Wild-wood on April 26, as the Family Stone Xperience is one of the headliner at the Sensational Sixties this weekend.)
So, while Vegas and New York and Atlantic City claim to be cities that never sleep, and Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was Wildwood’s neon lights in the Fifties and Sixties that drew charmed tourists past its garish hotels and plastic palms into the clubs where some say Rock and Roll was born.
Note: A version of this story was first pub-lished in Wildwood Properties.