Let’s get the phrase out of the way right now.
Teen idol.
You’ll see those words on any story dealing with one of 16 Magazine’s greatest salesmen of all time: Bobby Sherman.
It was long before social media, when publicists for David Cassidy, Donny Osmond and other young men battled for space in Tiger Beat and every other publication aimed at teenaged girls. There you could learn Mark Lindsay’s super secrets, or the food Davy Jones found yucky.
Sherman’s initial fame came from Jimmy O’Neill’s Shindig, ABC’s attempt to grab teen eyes with a pile of guest musical artists packed into a half-hour (a syndicated story by Charles Witbeck in September 1964 doesn’t even mention Sherman). Staking out fame was a little difficult because, at the same time, there was a stand-up comedian with the same name.
But he must have stuck out. 13-year-old Lucie Arnaz gave her opinion to the Los Angeles Times of Sept. 18, 1964: “Bobby Sherman was the best thing in it,” she proclaimed, then chastised confused columnist Cecil Smith. “EVERYONE,” she said, “knows Bobby Sherman!!”
This would have been quite an accomplishment because Sherman was plucked out of nowhere with Donna Loren to be the regular singers. We learn about Sherman from columnist Harrison Carroll, who wrote on June 18, 1963 about a 16-millimeter art film being produced and funded by Sal Mineo.
A new young singer, Bobby Sherman, will play the lead. They are locationing in Sacramento at the La Sierra High School.How Mineo and Sherman met isn’t clear. But it certainly wasn’t at the beach party given by Mineo for the cast of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Columnist Harrison Carroll wrote on August 21, 1963:
Bobby Sherman, the boy who plays the lead in Sal’s independent movie, was a hit singing at the party. Sal is putting him under contract to his record company.It took a year before Sherman was hired for Shindig. This is from the Women’s News Service, appearing in papers around May 15, 1965.
Bobby Sherman Shuns Beatles, Aims to Revive ‘American Sound’
By JEANNE SAKOL
NEW YORK (WNS) — Bobby Sherman may bring back the "American Sound" to popular music.
The tall, slim, fair-haired singing star of television's "Shindig" began his career July 4th when he was discovered at a California beach party given for Hollywood's younger set by movie star Sal Mineo.
Bobby refuses to wear the Beatles-style haircut that has become uniform among rock 'n' roller performers. Instead, he wears his hair "American-cowboy" style, short on the sides, longish in back and leaving the forehead bare. It is possible that he is the only teenage favorite who does not shake his head from side to side when he sings.
* * *
"The 'Liverpool sound' is fading," Bobby predicted during a three-day stay in New York.
"The old rock 'n' roll is coming back — only with some differences. The kids will love it. After all, the English pop music is all based on old rhythm and blues and gospel music from America in the first place.”
The young singer's strong American feelings may be tied to the trick of fate which took him to Mineo's party last Independence Day. Bobby didn't know his famous host but was brought along as the escort for a girl who had been invited.
Famous faces were all around him, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Roddy MacDowell [sic] among them. While the Peppermint West band played, the guests danced in the sunshine, swam in the Pacific and played beach games.When his date led him up to the bandstand and insisted he help entertain by singing, the gates of stardom began to open. By the time the party ended, Mineo had arranged to have his own manager meet Bobby.
* * *
About that time, auditions for "Shindig" were being held in Los Angeles, Bobby Sherman, again keeping in mind the American sound, belted out his own version of "Back Home In Indiana," and got the job.
Not that Bobby comes from Indiana.
Now 19, he was born in Van Nuys, Calif., where his father, Robert Sherman, owns a dairy. Bobby is a graduate of Birmingham High and spent a year at Pierce College, Canoga Park, taking physics and electronics courses.
His Russian is sketchy, he admits, but he does know enough to get the gist of Russian speeches at the United Nations and Russian commentators on news reports of space flights.
Electronics interest him far more than languages.
He plays eight musical instruments and makes his own sound tracks with a home studio fitted out with recording devices.
That way, he can record drums, trumpet, French horn, trombone, bass guitar, harmonica and piano at one time and blend them together for a one-man orchestra accompanying his own voice.
* * *
He's built his own closed circuit television system at home, too. He televises himself and sees the results on his own monitor.
"This isn't as crazy as it may sound," Bobby said.
"Television is far more demanding than records, movies or personal appearances. I have to see how I look and how I sound — on television — before I actually appear. Teen-agers are a very hip audience. They don't want you unless you're right in there. With it."
The first teen personality to be created by television alone, Bobby would appear to be very much with it. He will star in the "Shindig" movie being filmed this month and is signed to top billing for next season's program. Some 500 letters a week ask for his autograph, advice and picture.
Girls ask mostly for pictures, boys for fashion tips.
“I guess you’d call my clothes 100 per cent U.S.A., too,” the singer smiled. “I believe in wearing a conservative suit and a tie for meeting people and doing business, turtle-necks and velour pullovers for casual wears.” His favorite actor is Marlon Brando and, like his hero, Bobby Sherman may often be seen driving a motorcycle, wearing black pants, motorcycle jacket, boots and goggles.
Pop culture changes as people age. Teenagers become adults, kids become teenagers and they find their own stars. If they didn’t, today they’d be listening to Rudy Vallee.
Here’s a feature story from about May 4, 1980. Sherman appears to taken his fall from a life of constantly coping with screaming girls fairly well. The writer is playing up Sherman’s status on Here Come the Brides. David Soul didn’t come out too badly.
Bobby Pays the Kids Back
By NANCY ANDERSON
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD — "God less the kids!" Bobby Sherman cried piously. "They made it all happen."
What the kids did was, first, make Bobby a teen idol by way of “Shindig” and “Here Come the Brides.” Then, more or less concurrently, they made him prosperous and experienced enough to become a successful record and film producer and a director.
"There's nothing in show business I don't enjoy doing," Sherman declared. “But I'm not one of those people who feels that he always has to be in the limelight."
Possibly because of this modesty, Sherman hadn't worked as an actor for a while before he was cast as an insecure rock star in the Operation Prime Time production, "The Gossip Columnist."
He referred to the casting is "a comeback if you can call it that."
Yet, though he's been off screen, Sherman has never been away from show business, because, unlike less fortunate former teen idols, he was prepared to shine behind cameras once he and his groupies grew up.
The first personality to star in three television series before he was 30, Bobby made his initial impact as a singer in "Shindig" when he was 18. Then, for two years, as a Bolt brother he was the superstar of "Here Come the Brides," though his status hadn't been anticipated. But it was Sherman who stirred female viewers to mania and who, when the brides had come and gone, got his own series.
The weekly attraction produced post-"Brides" to star Sherman was "Getting Together."
However, it failed to get enough rating points together to become a television staple.
Sherman survived this disappointment nicely, since he had a 16-track recording studio in San Fernando Valley where he was helping other young artists get their sounds on discs and where he was also making his own music. He's still doing both. "I'll find a group with no record contract and no demos," he says, "and take them into the studio and help them cut something. Then I'll try to get them a record contract."
So far, none of his proteges has set the music world on fire, though Bobby hopefully describes some as "up and coming."
Through his Phase I Productions Co., Sherman has developed a mobile unit which he's used in the production of commercials and industrial films.
He's also into television and motion picture production having produced the "ABC Movie of the Week," "The Day the Earth Moved," for which he composed and performed the score.
Further, he has "a couple of things in development, one for Universal."
Holder of a dozen gold records. Bobby enjoys writing music but not under pressure.
"I can't just sit down and say I'm going to write a song," he says. "I wait until something triggers an idea for one. Writing music is easier when it's done by chance."
He is on the board of directors of the San Fernando Valley Child Guidance Clinic and has generously underwritten cancer research through the Bobby Sherman Cancer Research Fund.
The fund came about through his appreciation of his fans.
"I'd done a concert in Memphis," Sherman explains, "and was packing to leave town when a pair of the city's finest knocked or my hotel room door.
"The policemen told me that they'd brought someone who wanted to meet me, the mayor."
The mayor told Bobby that he wanted him to go or a mission and that, if he declined, he'd have him arrested.
"So, since he put it that way, I went," Bobby laughs. The mission, as it turned out, was no laughing matter, for Bobby's escorts took him to the bedside of a fan, a girl who'd missed his concert, because she'd just lost a leg to cancer.
Bobby was so moved that he determined to learn more about the disease which hi discovered was a major killer of young people.
“Young people had done so much for me that I wanted to do something for them,” he says.
And thus was born the Bobby Sherman Cancer Research Fund.
When Sherman exclaims, “God bless the kids,” he’s not just talking.
He puts his money where his mouth is.
The sad irony is Sherman’s wife announced he had Stage 4 cancer in March.
Sherman had been helping young people for a long time. In 2011, he set up a foundation in Ghana, which provides education, health, and welfare programs to children in need. Before that, he trained as an emergency medical technician and was a reserve officer for the Los Angeles Police and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Whatever you think much of bubble gum music, Bobby Sherman entertained. And when the bubble gum ran out of flavour, he helped the community at large. That’s a pretty good legacy.
