From:   "Dik de Heer"  
Date:  Mon May 6, 2002  1:15 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Kal Mann
 
KAL MANN

Born Kalman Cohen, 6 May 1917, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died 28 November 2001, Pompano Beach, Florida

Songwriter (lyricist), co-founder of Cameo-Parkway Records

Mann began his show business career in the 1940s and '50s as a comedy
writer for Danny Thomas, Red Buttons and Jack Leonard. In 1956 his friend
and songwriter Bernie Lowe convinced Mann that if he could write comic
parodies he could also write lyrics. The results of their collaboration were,
among others, "Teddy Bear" (a # 1 for Elvis Presley) and several of
Charlie Gracie's classic recordings : "Butterfly" (under the pseudonym
Anthony September), "Ninety-nine Ways", "Just Lookin'", "Wanderin' Eyes"
and "Crazy Girl". Gracie recorded for Cameo, a label that Mann and Lowe
had founded together in late 1956. Though not a co-owner of Cameo Records,
Mann was a major stockholder in the label and the owner of Cameo's publishing
arm, Kalmann Music. Lowe and Mann launched a sister label, Parkway, in 1959.
An important addition to Cameo-Parkway was Dave Appell (born 1922),
a Philadelphia guitarist with a feel for jazz. With his band The Applejacks,
he had appeared in the film "Don't Knock The Rock" and scored a few
instrumental R&R hits on Cameo, like "Mexican Hat Rock" (# 16 in 1958).
It was with Appell that Kal Mann would co-write most of Cameo-Parkway's
hits. Among them: "Kissin' Time" and "Wild One" (Bobby Rydell), "Let's
Twist Again" (Chubby Checker), "Bristol Stomp" (The Dovells), "Mashed
Potato Time" (Dee Dee Sharp) and "South Street" (The Orlons). These
artists owed much of their success to the label's close links with Dick
Clark's "American Bandstand,'' which gave them instant national TV exposure.

Jim Dawson writes about Mann's attitude toward rock and roll: "Cameo Parkway
was a creatively corrupt operation. Kal Mann, Bernie Lowe , and even Dave
Appell never fully concealed their contempt for rock and roll, the Twist, or the
gullible youngsters who bought their records. They were products of an earlier,
very different generation, musically and otherwise. Mann, who nominally
produced the recordings, admitted that while writing some of Checker's
songs he was thinking of vaudevillian Eddie Cantor, whom he considered
to be the cat's meow, if not the bee's knees." (Jim Dawson: The Twist : The
Story of the Song and Dance That Changed the World. Boston : Faber &
Faber, 1995. Highly recommended! The quote is on page 82.)