Transmission and Transgression. Gary Kenton

clear that the imperatives of television, including a clear preference for White faces, had a significant influence on what was recorded and by whom. Jerry Wexler, producer of R&B artists such as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin at Atlantic Records, identified the sponsors as the faction that dictated policy. “It was mostly the advertisers…they controlled what could sell in a White market. The ad agencies were Jim Crowing the business” (Clavin).

      One Black group that did turn up on television with some frequency in the early years was The Treniers, a group that revolved around the talents of twin brothers Claude and Cliff Trenier. Renowned for their kinetic dancing and contemporary reworking of jazz standards, they were billed as “The Rockin’ Rollin’ Treniers” as early as 1949. Variety described their live act thusly: “They jump all around the room, dance wildly, play their instruments with equal vigor and create a clamor that will appeal to those that like a desperate vein of entertainment.”¹⁴ The Treniers appeared on The Red Skelton Show (CBS 1951–71), The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS 1952–70), The Ernie Kovacs Show (NBC 1951–52, 1955–56, CBS 1952–53), The Steve Allen Show (CBS 1950–52, 1967–69, NBC 1956–60, ABC 1961, Syndicated 1962–64, 1967–69, 1976), and Tonight Starring Jack Paar (NBC 1957–62), among others. On a May 1954 episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour (NBC 1950–55) hosted by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, the brothers performed “Rockin’ Is Our Bizness,” an update of Jimmie Lunceford’s 1930s jazz swing hit “Rhythm Is Our Business,” a clear symbol of the passing of the torch from swing to rock.¹⁵←36 | 37→

Figure 2.1: The Treniers in Don’t Knock the Rock. They were frequently on TV in the pre-rock era, but were not perceived as a threat.

      Source: Don’t Knock the Rock. Directed by Fred F. Sears. Clover Productions, 1956. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq6PcZRWDVM

      In addition to the fact that The Treniers put on a terrific show, their histrionics could be tolerated on television because they were perceived more as a novelty, in the neo-minstrelsy mode of Cab Calloway, than as a harbinger of greater musical havoc to come. Consequently, they were able to bring some of the most frantic, unalloyed rock ‘n’ roll that has ever been shown on television. As Jake Austen puts it, “Because the teenage girls weren’t clamoring for Cliff Trenier, his wildness could be read as peppy instead of virile” (9).

      By comparison, there were more openings for Black music on radio at this time. In 1949, a survey conducted by the Research Company of America appeared in Sponsor magazine (a trade magazine for radio advertisers) revealing the untapped potential of the African American consumer market. Shortly thereafter, numerous radio stations in cities with substantial Black populations, led by WDIA-AM in Memphis, which had an all-Black roster of DJs as early as 1949,¹⁶ reoriented their programming to capitalize on the popularity of rhythm & blues and gospel music. Most of these stations were owned by Whites, but by 1952, William Barlow estimates that there were over 100 Black DJs and a handful of stations under at least partial Black ownership (cited in Gomery 154). By comparison, television was a closed shop.←37 | 38→

      But even on TV, absolute segregation policies could not be maintained across-the-board; too many of the most popular and influential pop and rock artists were Black and their songs increasingly demonstrated “crossover” appeal (selling to mixed audiences). In 1947, the multi-talented Lorenzo “Larry” Fuller became the first African American performer to be given his own television series, a 15-minute show on NBC called Man about Music, which he reprised on the Dumont network in 1951. Fuller got his first media exposure at the age of 8, playing the harp on the radio show of radio pioneer and charlatan John R. Brinkley. More than two thousand people came out to hear his solo senior recital at the University of Kansas. After moving to New York, he appeared on Broadway in Kiss Me Kate and Finian’s Rainbow, and played the role of Sportin’ Life in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. He performed opera alongside Leontyne Price, composed music, and played multiple instruments. He also co-starred with Rosamond Vance Kaufman in a local New York TV show called Van and the Genie (WPIX-TV 1950), perhaps the first television show with a Black male to star opposite a White female.

      In the fall of 1949, CBS aired an all-Black variety show that used three different names over the course of five episodes, going from Uptown Jubilee to Harlem Jubilee to Sugar Hill Times. Hosted by Willie Bryant, the show provided a brief showcase for Harry Belafonte, Timmie Rogers, Maxine Sullivan, and Don Redman and his Orchestra. Several local stations aired all-Black revues around this time, evoking the atmosphere of a nightclub, a setting in which Black performers were valued for providing entertainment for an audience presumed to be majority White. On Club Ebony, broadcast in 1949 from St. Louis (WAVE-TV), host Odell Baker doubled as bandleader and nightclub waiter, with Lionel Hampton appearing on the premiere. In Newark that same year, Club Caravan (WATV-TV 1949–54) aired weekly, hosted by Bill Cook and featuring several up-and-coming doo-wop groups such as The Orioles and The Ravens, as well as established artists such as Dinah Washington and Roy Hamilton. In 1951, the first all-Black female show, The Cats [or Chicks] and a Fiddle, was shown briefly on KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. In New York, an “all-Negro variety show” show called 11:30 Club Mantan debuted in 1953 (WOR-TV), hosted by well-known actor/comedian Mantan Moreland. The show featured the dynamic Slim Gaillard and the bi-racial Claude Hopkins jazz combo but was roundly criticized for the broad, vaudevillian antics of Moreland (the name of the show was changed to 11:30 Revue before it went off the air in 1954).

      Because it was a decided underdog to NBC and CBS, the Dumont network was more adventurous than the established competition. In New York, Amanda Randolph became the first Black woman to host her own daytime program when Dumont aired Amanda on WABD-TV in 1948. A multi-faceted talent, she record←38 | 39→ed blues and jazz piano rolls for the Vocalstyle company in the 1920s; appeared in several Broadway musicals, including Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s The Chocolate Dandies in 1925; and made records for the Gennett and Bluebird labels in the 1930s. Before hosting Amanda, she became the first African American actress to appear in a recurring role on a series in the role of Aunt Martha, the family maid on The Laytons situation comedy (Dumont, 1948). When Amanda was cancelled in 1949, she returned to roles as a domestic on Beulah and Make Room for Daddy.

      Hazel Scott was another Black artist whose talents were so prodigious that a modicum of television exposure was inevitable. Known as the “Darling of Café Society” in New York in the late 1930s for her sophisticated jazz and classical repertoire, she made her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 20, scandalizing some by starting Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a traditional mode but shifting into an up-tempo jazz rendition. In February 1950, The Hazel Scott Show debuted in New York (WABD-TV) and was so well received that Dumont began airing it nationally three nights a week that June. But Scott was married to the activist pastor Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and was associated with civil rights causes in Harlem, leading the editors of Red Channels, the notorious pamphlet that named names of entertainment industry performers with supposed “communist sympathies,” to include her (along with Paul Robeson and others) on its list of undesirables. Her show was cancelled in September.

      On the strength of numerous cabaret successes and his million-selling version of “That Old Black Magic,” Billy Daniels became the second African American performer to be given a national television series in 1952.¹⁷ Another 15-minute affair, The Billy Daniels Show (ABC) enjoyed the sponsorship of Rybutol vitamins. One of Daniels’s frequent accompanists was Nat King Cole, who made the transition from jazz pianist to popular crooner and, in 1956, followed Daniels to become the third (but by far best known) African American to host a network music program, The Nat King Cole Show (NBC 1956–57). But, despite Cole’s substantial crossover appeal, a majority-White guest list, and a repertoire that rarely strayed from the middle-of-the-road, he was unable to attract a sponsor, and the show was cancelled after one season. Cole was widely quoted as saying that “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark” (Gates). Frequent guest Eartha Kitt suggested that it was the very sophistication of the show that made it unpalatable to White audiences. “At that time,” she said, “I think it was