Rant #2,684: You Go Your Way

We often profile people who have passed that had a major impact on our lives, and we also look at people who may have had their 15 minutes of fame and then faded into the framework of society.
 
In today’s Rant, I am going to talk about someone in the latter category, someone who had some level of brief fame and then simply became one of “us.”
 
Tina Mason died last week. I believe she was 76 and succumbed to a long-running illness.
 
Who is Tina Mason, you are probably asking?
 
Well, she was one of the girl singers on Dick Clark’s “Where the Action Is” TV show, which ran on ABC afternoons in the mid-1960s.
 
Along with “Dark Shadows,” the show—which profiled some of the hottest rock and pop acts of the 1965 to 1967 era—helped ABC, then the third network behind CBS and NBC, to create a block of programming geared toward pre-teens and younger teens.
 
The show also catapulted its original house band—Paul Revere and the Raiders—to incredible heights, making them pop/rock superstars into the early 1970s.
 
And WTAI was certainly one of the templates used for “The Monkees” TV show and pop/rock group, and thus, it is also one of the forefathers of rock videos and MTV.
 
But all of that does not explain who Tina Mason was.

 
Mason was one of the most popular of the girl singers who appeared on the program, with the looks and the talent to make an indelible mark on viewers, both male and female.
 
Mason was a singer who had a few singles out as the leader of Tina and the Mustangs, and had also done some acting … with one uncredited role as one of the background players on “Dark Shadows” as a patron of “The Blue Whale,” the Collinsport hangout where much of the action of early shows of the series revolved around.
 
Anyway, when a girl singer was needed on the show, she was one of the finalists to land a role on WTAI, and she won the competition pretty handily.
 
And it was that show where she met Phil “Fang” Volk of the Raiders, and began a romance that culminated in marriage, a union that lasted for decades.

 
Once Mason was firmly ensconced as a cast member of the show, she put our a few singles and one LP as a solo, and while they didn’t set the world on fire, listening to them today puts Mason right in with the popular female singers of the day, like Petula Clark, Lesley Gore and Lulu, and her music is really is a lost relic of the time.
 
When WTAI ended, Mason and Volk started a family, and while Volk continued as a musician apart from the Raiders in numerous bands from then until now, Mason took a backseat with her career, although she was part of some of the acts that her husband was part of.

 
As the moderator of the Facebook site “Where the Action is: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” I was saddened to hear of her passing, although I had heard through the grapevine that she had been in ill health for some time.
 
She made an indelible mark on my childhood during the WTAI years, and evidently, most of our 2,000-plus members feel the same way, with accolades coming from all sides.
 
True, some of our members had never heard of her, because by the time she came on board, the daily show had been completely taken over by the Raiders, and honestly, when you think of that show, they are part of your over-riding thoughts.
 
But she was a cast member of the show—more of a supporting player—and she often performed with the Raiders on the show trying to make her presence known amidst their funny bits.
 
If you are interested in finding out more on the show, please visit the Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/groups/598790963991601/?modal=false&should_open_composer=false&hoisted_section_header_type=notifications&show_migration_preparation_dialog=false&show_migration_onboarding_dialog=false.
 
There are also a few videos from the show that feature her on YouTube, including this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gJ7xDd131w
 
And her music is also all over YouTube, so you can hear her full LP on that site.
 
Now for some more news …
 
As for the rest of the week, I might be in and out of here.
 
I have several major doctor's appointments early in the day, and I don’t know yet what days I will be writing this column and which days I will have to take the day off, so please, just check back here and there to see if I have a new post for that particular day.
 
Speak to you soon … ?