It Has a Great Beat and You Can Dance to It

American Bandstand, television's first series devoted to rock and roll, premiered on this date in 1957, hosted by the ever-youthful Dick Clark.

Our Bandstand doesn't have a thing to do with rock and roll, and that certainly isn't Dick Clark conducting the carved wooden band.

The roof of this miniature bandstand, complete with a five-piece brass band and conductor, lifts off to reveal a storage compartment. The bandstand's shape echoes simple styles built in small towns throughout America from the 1870s until the beginning of World War I. Most were purely functional, but others were elaborate constructions in outlandish and whimsical styles. Brass bands, or "military bands" as they were called, usually were clad in styles similar to the army and navy bands that served as models for later community, social, or ethnic-sponsored amateur bands. These band members' tall, plumed hats and gold epaulettes were typical of band uniforms of the period.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Unidentified artist, n.d., Bandstand, about 1890, carved, turned, and painted wood with metal and glass beads, overall: 17 1/2 x 10 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.