Bobby Rydell Articles: Crooning a Hometown Tune

The star dressing room at Resorts International was packed and the line snaked down
the hallway. It was a cold, rainy Monday night and 1,200 people had just paid $35 each
to see Bobby Rydell, his sixth straight night filling the cavernous Resorts Superstar Theatre.

Part of the deal with the star dressing room is holding court after the show. Mostly you smile at somebody's important client or the manager's sister's neighbor or maybe some other performer who wants to know why you're getting a thousand bucks a week more than he is.

There is none of that this night for Rydell. On the couches are his mom and her relatives and friends, some smoking, all schmoozing. There's Louie Cioci with his wife, chatting with a Ridarelli cousin or two. A couple of former American Bandstand dancers, a little grayer than in the old days perhaps, but still trim enough to jitterbug. Several women long past
bobby socks and saddle shoes, showing off T-shirts sporting Rydell's mug.

No accent in the crowded room seems more than a block or two from 10th and Moyamensing. A lot of the folks using the Resorts dressing room as if it were Cousin Annie's living room grew up there, and to them, a Bobby Rydell concert is home.

Rydell was one of the cadre of South Philadelphians who defined rock music before the
Beatles. By some measures, he was the most successful of a group that included James Darren, Frankie Avalon, Fabian Forte and Chubby Checker. Though he never had a No. 1 hit like Avalon ("Venus," "Why") or Checker ("The Twist," "Pony Time"), Rydell had more top 25 songs than any of them, 19. In fact, between 1959 and 1963, only Elvis Presley had more Billboard Top 25 songs than Bobby Rydell.

Philadelphians love to talk about stars who grow up here, go away and never return. But while most of the early Philadelphia rockers - and their Bandstand mentor, Dick Clark - parlayed their musical success into TV and movie careers and fled for California, Rydell opted out.

At the height of his singing fame, he spent six months in Hollywood playing the almost- cuckolded boyfriend in the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie. The film made a star out of Rydell's on-screen flame, Ann-Margret, and propelled Dick Van Dyke to TV prominence. But Rydell said bye-bye to Hollywood after Birdie and came back for good to the house he had bought for his parents with his first big singing money.

"It wasn't home. This is," Rydell says. He's in the living room of that same Penn Valley house - where his parents still live, where he and his wife, Camille, raised a son and a daughter, now grown.

Rydell's a cabaret singer now, much in the style of his two heroes, Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, a friend from the '60s club scene who died in 1973.

"You know, maybe things could have been different. But then, I've had a real life," Rydell says. He is sitting on a comfortable yellow print couch in the sunroom. "It's not Frankie's or Jimmy Darren's or Fabe's out in Hollywood. But maybe they missed something, too."

World War II is over and Philadelphia is hopping. Al Ridarelli has a day off from the machine shop and he's taking 5-year-old Bobby to his first jazz show. The ride uptown on the No. 23 trolley from Moyamensing to Market Street with Dad would be joy enough. But there at the imposing Earle Theater is the Benny Goodman Band, with wild man Gene Krupa on drums.

"I want to be him, Dad. I want to be Gene Krupa," little Bobby tells his father.

That Christmas, Al bought a cardboard set of drums; Bobby quickly wore them out. Next was a miniature snare drum with a cymbal. Soon after, Al injured his hand at work. The insurance money bought Bobby a proper set of drums - a William F. Ludwig, black with oyster pearl, the model Ringo Starr would later use.

Weekends and nights, Al took Bobby to the clubs - the Two-Four, Palumbo's. Sometimes the club owners let Bobby do a quick routine, drumming, doing imitations of entertainers like Jimmy Durante or the young Sammy Davis Jr.

Al even thought of a stage name. Roberto Luigi Ridarelli became Bobby Rydell.

"My dad sacrificed everything for me. I think that's the way it was after World War II in our
neighborhood. Everyone wanted something better for their kids," Rydell says.

It's 1951. Al takes Bobby, now 9, to "Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club," a WFIL-TV knockoff of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour."

"Once I was up there and people applauded, I said, 'Gee, that's all I have to do?'"

He wins an RCA TV, an RCA 45-r.p.m. record player and a crate of Tootsie Rolls. Whiteman, a big band leader credited with discovering Bing Crosby, sees some of the same flair in young Rydell. Bobby becomes a regular.

The announcer for Tootsie Roll commercials is a fellow named Dick Clark. The piano player, Bernie Lowe, is a wannabe songwriter with dreams of his own record label.

Al uses overtime money for vocal and drum lessons. Almost fifty years later, Sam D'Amico of Sam D'Amico Music Drummers Headquarters on Moyamensing still remembers.

"I never had a student like him," D'Amico says. "When my students performed, everyone asked about the left-handed drummer. That was Bobby.

"Soon, there was nothing more I could teach him."

In South Philly, you are your street corner. At 10th and Moyamensing, Bobby and Fat Joe and Black Donny and Andy Animal and the rest ordered sundaes by their numbers at George's and played half-ball. They sat on stoops, cutting up and throwing fake punches until moms yelled them indoors. Once inside, Bobby kept going.

"I don't know how the neighbors took it," says Cioci, who lived next door. "Bobby on drums and me on the trumpet through those paper-thin rowhouse walls."

The neighborhood also fed a dream. There was Frank Avalone, soon to be Frankie Avalon, who drafted the younger kid drummer to pinch-hit at a Shore gig with Rocco and the Saints. Or Frankie Day, a local music guy who would become Rydell's first manager.

By the time he got to Bishop Neumann High, Rydell was a regular at local clubs and at dances from South Philly to Cheltenham. He played with bands like the Skylarks, the Strollers, or Cioci's group, Bobby Borda and the Be-Bops.

One day, an old connection surfaced: Bernie Lowe. He had gotten his label - Cameo - and he had a song for Bobby. Lowe took "Kissin' Time" straight to former coworker Clark, whose American Bandstand had become a teen TV phenomenon. Poof! Skinny little Bobby Rydell, 17, with the mile-wide smile and hair to match, was on his way to becoming a teen idol. The year was 1959.

Like a latter-day Rat Pack, Fabian, Avalon and Bobby Rydell - who's just turned 57 - clown around on the stage of Caesars Atlantic City, as if the audience were just old drinking buddies and their wives. Rydell does impressions, occasionally riffs on the drums, and ribs Avalon about his height, while Fabian laughs and looks as handsome as any
middle-aged man on earth.

Avalon sings "Venus" and "Why," scenes from his Beach Blanket movies rolling on the screen behind him. Fabian grinds through "Tiger" and "Turn Me Loose" to ancient black- and-white footage of screaming girls ripping off his shirt. Rydell sings a medley as the crowd ogles him ogling Ann-Margret in Birdie.

Rydell's manager came up with "The Golden Boys" in the mid-'80s.

"We thought it would be a few one-night stands, good for a year, two at most," Rydell says.

If anything, the act, now in its 14th year, has grown. The Golden Boys play Vegas and Atlantic City three weekends a year each, and do a dozen one-nighters in the Northeast and Midwest.

"It's an absolute ball. The audience senses we're not trying to prove anything. We want to have fun and want you to have fun." Rydell's description is characteristically modest.

"The only thing is, it doesn't give Bobby a chance to do everything he can," says Fabian from his Los Angeles home. "He's definitely the most talented guy to have come out of that South Philly crew. My God, he can sing. And then he knows orchestration, dancing, comedy, drums. . . . I only wonder what he could have become had he just stayed out here."

They're kissin' in Cleveland, Kansas City, too, they're kissin' in Wildwood, back in Waterloo . . .

"Kissin' Time" hit the charts in midsummer. Rydell had just finished his junior year at Neumann and, with Cioci and a few other guys from the neighborhood, was down the Shore crashing at his grandparents' summer boarding house in Wildwood.

"We were all heading out," he recalls, "and my grandmother is yelling at me, 'Bobby! Dick Clark! He's playing your song!' I said, 'Yeah, Grandma, great. But we're going to the Boardwalk.' I guess I just didn't know what was coming."

What was coming was a ride you won't find on the Boardwalk. During what would have been his senior year, Rydell recorded four singles that reached No. 6 or higher on the Billboard charts - including "Wild One" and "Volare" - and toured the nation in a whirlwind of sock hops, concerts, special appearances.

And Prom Week at the Copacabana, Manhattan's premier nightclub. Rock acts didn't
play the Copa; Rydell and the club were both taking a chance. Day hired a choreographer and a comedy writer. They fine-tuned in Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

"Thank God, the reviews I got were unbelievable," Rydell says.

One night, the Copa's manager escorted Rydell and Day upstairs to a private room. There,
surrounded by friends like songwriter Sammy Cahn and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, sat The Man himself.

"Sinatra stood up and put out his hand. 'How are you doing, Robert? Would you care to join us? What do you drink?' I told him Coke, since he probably would have killed me if I ordered Scotch. I was 19. How much better could life get?"

Even better. Rydell took Al out of the machine shop and took him on the road. They toured
Europe, Australia. Rydell made four more Top-25 records in 1961; another three in 1962. Six months in California for Bye Bye Birdie were followed by a tour in England with a command performance for the royal family and the recording of a song that would go gold. Its title: "Forget Him."

Back home, his manager had his next career move mapped. Fabian, Avalon and Darren were making it big in Hollywood. With Birdie already under his belt, it was time for Bobby to go, too. But Bobby balked.

"Forget Him" peaked at No. 4 in mid-January 1964. Two weeks later, the Beatles' first American hit, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," rocketed to No.
1.

At 21, Bobby Rydell was yesterday's news.

"This house is getting too big for just the four of us," says Rydell, walking through the living room. "My mom, I don't know, she might just like to go
back to the rowhouse in South Philly."

The house sits up on a bluff looking out on ultra-large modern stone mansions on other bluffs. It is modest in comparison, a low rancher with a carport; convenient, not showy. Cozy, not grand.

There is almost no blank wall space in the living room and the bright yellow sunroom. Both are chock-full of photos and paintings of every member of the Rydell/Ridarelli clan. A wedding here, a cute kid there, full family portraits all around.

There's Rydell at the Copa with Sinatra, who has the Rydell at the Copa album under his arm. There's Rydell on black velvet, thin as the signpost at 10th and Moyamensing, his famous hair jutting over his forehead a good four inches.

Camille Rydell comes into the sunroom, says a quick, smiling hello and vanishes into the kitchen. Al Ridarelli, hobbled a bit by a stroke, comes in and sits close to his son. Rydell looks sidelong at him fondly as he talks. Robert Jr. calls to check in. Daughter Jennifer, a college student, drops by for a visit. Like their father, they have stayed close to
home - Robert graduating from Waldron Academy and Villanova, Jennifer a Merion Mercy grad now at St. Joe's.

"You see him with his family and you know he made the right move," says James Darren from his Los Angeles home.

"His mom knew my mom from before we were born. He's never lost the neighborhood thing. He was the most talented among us. We've discussed it. But he knew what he wanted then. And now, guess what, he's got it all again."

But first, life imitated art. Rydell was just back from England when, like Conrad in Bye Bye Birdie, he got his draft notice. The draft board was unimpressed by the fact that he was his parents' sole support, and soon he was tethered to Fort Dix, doing the occasional one-nighter.

By the time his Army stint was up, the Beatles and their imitators had a firm grip on the Top 40. For Rydell, there were no big hits to carry a tour. His manager had departed for Hollywood.

He became a singer for a revived Milton Berle show, but that died quickly too. He was lampooned in the 1970s musical and movie Grease, whose raucous school was Rydell High.

Rydell had once starred at Cherry Hill's Latin Casino, where a young comedienne named Totie Fields had opened for him. Now he was opening for her in Cherry Hill and for George Burns in Vegas.

Through the '70s, he honed his own act at local venues like Palumbo's and at the newly opened casinos in Atlantic City where a hometown crowd was always eager to hear him.
He decided that cabaret was his surest vehicle. "I knew this is what I was going to do for my life," he says, "and just worked harder."

Rydell gazes at the trees in the backyard. "I can't say I haven't had second thoughts.

"I liked making Birdie, but I found too many people who weren't straight with you, too many phonies. I didn't have that back in Philly."

The musician in him is philosophical about it now. "The Beatles changed everything in pop music. I was already changing my style, but it became clear that things were going in a completely different direction. There was nothing bad about that, but both the rock songs I did earlier and the things that I sing now were never going to be in competition with the Beatles and what they were doing."

Back then, he says, "in some cases, it was a blur. I'm in high school, then I'm a rock star, then it's the Beatles and who knows how it all happens. Few people are the Beatles or Elvis or Frank Sinatra, and even they had down times in their careers. "Maybe if I did make the move out to California, I'd be more involved in motion pictures. There were friends out there. I just didn't like it.

"They have a lot of smog, too, out there." He starts to catalog the pros and cons of Philly. There's snow, "but you can turn the heat up"; the airport is 20 minutes away, New York a train ride. He gives up. "I just love the area. I really, really love it."

It's mid-show at Resorts when Rydell starts snapping his fingers to a medley of songs that
predate his audience: "When I Take My Sugar to Tea," "My Baby Just Cares for Me" and "Walking My Baby Back Home" - all written in the 1930s.

As he holds the last syllables, he leans back, squeezing his eyes shut, holding the mike with his right hand and bringing his left hand up with each perfectly sounded note. It is a Sinatra/Darin move.

"Even as a little kid, it was his dream to be a jazz drummer," says best buddy Cioci. Then he laughs. "It only took him 30 years to get there."

This year, solo and with the Golden Boys, he will do at least eight weeks in the casinos. Then there are the five-figure corporate evenings for such industrial giants as IBM and General Motors, at least one cruise a winter, and a plethora of local benefits.

"A few years back, I was working at Palumbo's and a priest came backstage," Rydell says. "He asked if I would do a benefit to help raise money for Bishop Neumann High, how much would it cost? I said, Father, I don't want any money. Me, I want my diploma and my graduation ring. I never got to graduate. I was on the road with a tutor. So they made up a ring, Class of 1960. It was great."

It was prom time for Camille Quattrone, St. Maria Goretti '61, but her boyfriend was off somewhere in Australia.

"Bobby said for me to take her to the prom. I guess that's what best friends do," says Cioci, who runs the hair-styling shop at the Wyndham Plaza Hotel.

"I remember when we first saw Camille. I told him I had never seen anything so beautiful. He agreed, and within weeks he was dating her."

Camille remembers it a little differently.

"I used to see him on the trolley car when he went to Bishop Neumann, and wait for him, but he never gave me a second look. I gave up on him, but he eventually asked me out.

"Six months later, he became famous."

It wasn't easy. "They frowned on him having a girlfriend. I guess they didn't want his fans to think he was taken. So if I did get a chance to go anywhere with him, they said I was his cousin. I kept having different names.

"I dated some, but I really loved him." Camille and Bobby finally married in 1968 in Stella Maris Church at 10th and Bigler, with 1,000 adoring fans out front. After the wedding, Rydell told the press the couple might finally head to California.

"But this is where he really wanted to be. And that was fine with me," she says.

"Downtown people are always downtown people, I guess. It's hard to take them away from what they know."

Downtown hasn't turned its back on Rydell, either. In 1995, Linda Hoffman - president of the Bobby Rydell Fan Club since she was 12 and helping Bobby's mom answer his teen-idol sacks of mail - got City Council to designate the 2400 block of South 10th Street "Bobby Rydell Boulevard." Last year, the town of Wildwood renamed Wildwood Avenue at Pacific Avenue after him.

Rydell, being Rydell, plans to spend his Golden Boy golden years within shouting distance of these places.

"I went to Louie Cioci's daughter's wedding and I got up and sang and then played the drums and he got his old flugelhorn out," he says, leaning back on the couch. "I said, 'Louis, you really sound good. Maybe we should put a band together. We'll do weddings and bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs.'

"I wasn't kidding. Not right now, but when I want to ease down a little bit," he said. "You know, put a nice band together, get a couple of singers.

"And we'll be home in Philly, where we belong, every Monday night."