Idolizing Avalon

Young Chang

With the nightclub circuit fizzling and his teen idol legacy betrothed

to boy bands and pop queens, Frankie Avalon passes time nowadays

celebrating the No. 1s of others.

The vocalist and actor just completed a PBS special titled “Let’s Do

It Again,” which is now airing around the country, about hit makers young

and old, including B.J. Thomas and Gary Puckett.

Figures that the Philadelphia native should do this. After all, it

takes one to know one.

Though he now plays golf during the time he would’ve spent playing

trumpet decades ago, though casinos have replaced his nightclub stage,

Avalon remembers what it’s like to be the object of screaming, manic

adoration.

He remembers what it’s like to be idolized.

“The kids reacting to some of the songs we were singing in those days

-- it was kind of getting a little hysterical and yelling, tearing at

clothes,” said Avalon, who will perform Saturday at Orange Coast College.

“It was a very exciting time in my life.”

He acknowledges that his life has slowed down -- his greatest fans now

consist mostly of his eight children and six grandchildren -- but at 61,

the Thousand Oaks resident still has his 1950s fans swooning.

Fan Melanie Higgins expects the audience of the OCC show will be a

middle-aged club.

“It’s the resurgence of the ‘50s mood,” said Higgins, who works in

OCC’s personnel department and saw Avalon perform last year. “It seems to

be a very popular time period now. People are enjoying looking back to

the past and enjoying music.”

Avalon did some personal looking back over the phone this week,

chuckling specifically about the whirlwind that was his life during his

late teens.

“You were constantly kept busy,” he said. “I had no social life at the

time. I had concerts, films, interviews and traveling to do, and so you

know your time was really taken up but you didn’t care about it because

you were doing something that you loved.”

He started performing as a trumpet player at the young age of 9. His

father taught him to play, and his first gigs were at the CR Club in

Philadelphia. He remembers practicing between five and eight hours a day,

and never leaving home without the horn.

“And if not the horn, I had the mouthpiece,” he said.

He performed on the Jackie Gleason Show and Perry Como’s television

show as an up-and-coming trumpet protege. He began singing with local

bands too.

By age 17, he had signed up with two Italian songwriters who later

became his managers -- Peter De Angelis and Robert Marucci. His first

songs, sung in the nasal, teeny-bopper style, included “Cupid,”

“Teacher’s Pet” and the hit single “Dede Dinah.”

At the highlight of his career during the tail-end of his teens,

Avalon enjoyed the success of seven top 10 hits, including “Venus” and

“Why.”

Though Avalon’s singing career declined in the ‘60s, his popularity

continued with such films as “Muscle Beach” and “Beach Blanket Bingo,”

cementing his place with co-star Annette Funicello as America’s on-screen

sweethearts. A new generation was exposed to him in 1978, when he played

the role of Teen Angel, singing “Beauty School Dropout” to Frenchy in

“Grease.”

The pace has significantly slowed for the once-idolized Avalon, but

Higgins, who listened to him as a teenager stationed in Germany with her

military family, can vouch for how the performer has retained his

heartthrob look.

“He’s to die for,” the 53-year-old laughed. “This man has not aged. He

looks like he has just stepped out of the ‘60s, and he’s extremely

personable with the audience.”

FYI

* WHAT: Frankie Avalon

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

* WHERE: Orange Coast College’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, 2701 Fairview

Road, Costa Mesa

* COST: $37-$43

* CALL: (714) 432-5880