Bye Bye Bobby Rydell

A Talented Teen Idol Leaves the Room

The last time I saw Bobby Rydell was less than two years ago, in a Zoom meeting July 14, 2020. He was the special guest at the ninth birthday celebration for the Gift of Life Family House, which offers help with food, lodging, and support to families going to Philadelphia for organ transplants. Rydell, after years of alcohol abuse, had life-saving kidney and liver transplants in 2012. Rydell died Tuesday at age 79 of pneumonia in Abington, Pa., a Montgomery County township that borders on north Philadelphia.

In 1995, when she was nine months old, my daughter Jackie had a liver transplant in Philadelphia. We got involved with the Gift of Life Family House in 2012, the same year as Rydell's surgeries. Jackie was one of 10 or so transplant recipients  to receive a college scholarship from the Jessica Beth Schwartz Foundation of the Gift of Life Family House at a luncheon gala in King of Prussia, Pa.

I was two years sober. It was one of those moments when the enormity of what my family, and all of these families, had overcome, and the hope that lie ahead, cut through all my social stress resistors. The gratitude, and hope, the audacity of science, the faith and the art of surgery, that made pediatric organ transplants possible, overwhelmed me emotionally to the point that I spent most of the afternoon either sobbing quietly into my wife's Maureen's shoulder or crying with almost primal scream abandonment. It felt good; I felt real and whole. It was by the grace of god that we arrived early and I just happened to buy a new pair of sunglasses at the King of Prussia Mall.

I enjoyed that afternoon Zoom meeting with the Gift of Life Foundation, and listening to Rydell share his memories as he spoke from his kitchen. My feelings for his music go deep as well. If you gave me a word association test and said "sixth grade," I might answer, "Bobby Rydell." This was the year of after-school sock hops and weekend night parties for our group of friends, still in touch with many, at Willow Road School in Franklin Square, L.I., and Bobby Rydell's songs were always part of the soundtrack: "Kissin' Time" (by playing spin-the-bottle) and "Swingin' School," "Wild One" and "We Got Love," and his Italian-American roots renditions of "Volare" and "Sway" that showed his crossover potential, from teen idol to mainstream entertainer. He was not quite Dion, or Bobby Darin, but he had more than the requisite good looks.

His records were just a little better recorded and quite a bit better sung than the hits of his fellow Philly teen idols of the era, Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Cameo Parkway's Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe crafted material for him; Dave Appell produced and arranged much of Rydell's material. Appell, with Hank Medress of the Tokens, would by 1971 be producing the chart-toppers by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Dee Dee Sharpe was one of the many local singers who sang backup on Rydell's records. And having been inspired by inspired by the incomparable Gene Krupa, the former Robert Ridarelli, under the watchful eye of his dad, was sitting in at drums at local clubs as early as age seven. There's no question: Bobby Rydell could swing.

There's much good information in Jeff Tamarkin's liner booklet for the 2005 CD release The Best of Bobby Rydell: Cameo Parkway 1959-1964. That is not to be confused with what was, for its time, the lavishly packaged Bobby's Biggest Hits, which peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard album chart in 1961 on the Cameo label. That LP came with a portrait of Bobby that could be removed for framing; when you removed that portrait, there would be a similar one behind it, with a different background. Think of it as a precursor of Andy Warhol's banana cover for the first Velvet Underground and Nico album. I always wondered how many people peeled back the banana. I didn't, until I bought a used copy. Then I peeled back the yellow banana. Beneath it is a pink banana. ICMYI!

The Beatles and company slammed the door on the American teen idol music industry. But it's not that Rydell could not compete. His last chart hit was "Forget Him," written, produced, and arranged by Tony Hatch and recorded in London in 1963; it hit number four in the U.S. and number 13  in the U.K. in early 1964. Rydell remained immensely popular in Australia. And if it were not for Peter & Gordon getting it first, Rydell's version of Lennon and McCartney's "A World Without Love" might have brought Rydell to another rung. The music industry was so short-sighted. Listen to “A World Without Love” and tell me an album of "Bobby Rydell in Swingin' London" in 1964, a dozen tunes by British songwriters, might not have turned a few heads around. John and Paul might have given him another song. So might Tony Hatch, who wrote and produced the biggest solo pop song of the early British Invasion, Petula Clark's "Downtown."

Bobby, Fabian, and Frankie performed for many years together as "The Golden Boys," a favorite on cruise ships and casino stages. Rydell had an excellent shot at crossing over to movies or TV. He appeared as the high school boyfriend of Ann-Margret in the movie Bye Bye Birdie, until Conrad Birdie steals her heart. And he is immortalized as one of the eminent symbols of the pre-Beatles rock era in Grease, musical and movie, where the students will forever go to Rydell High School.

But Rydell didn't like Hollywood or show business, even though he played the Copacabana at 19, and had an ease and comfort with standards and had a minor hit with "That Old Black Magic." He did not want to live in L.A., where the opportunities were; he was a Philadelphia guy from beginning to end.

Streets are named after him in South Philly, where he grew up, and in Wildwood, N.J., a South Jersey beach resort town and magnet for Philadelphians from blue collar neighborhoods, about which Rydell rhapsodized in "Wildwood Days."

Not only did he not let stardom go to his head, but he may have been too humble to take advantage of some of the other opportunities that might have come his way. But it's the kissin' time at swinging school I'll always remember. And the idea that only swooning girls liked Bobby Rydell is totally false. Every guy I knew in the early 1960s strived to emulate Rydell's perfect pompadour. He was the embodiment of the only ambition I had when I was in sixth grade: to be a teenager.

The Gift of Life Family House is at 401 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123. https://www.giftoflifefamilyhouse.org/