Dick Clark, R.I.P.
Dick Clark was cool—as in unflappable, not hip. That was key in an American 1950s where, for much of the nation, the latter condition was basically synonymous with “longhaired Commie fag degenerate.” But Dick Clark—that nice boy? No way was he any of those things, not in 1950s America, not for six decades as a TV presence as fixed and permanent as late-night infomericals, still to this day, thanks to GSN.
Clark’s a game-show titan second only to Merv Griffin, but that’s TV. Clark’s role in musical history is both more and less ambiguous. Make no mistake—American Bandstand, which Clark hosted from 1956 to 1989, did as much to legitimize rock & roll for Ma & Pa America as anybody before the arrival of the Beatles’ “Aeolian cadences.” Though the show existed for four years on local TV in Philadelphia before Clark became host, it was under him that it went into national syndication, and under him that it became one of the most copied programming formats ever devised—the direct model for everything from local record hops real (e.g. this Idaho TV show, Seventeen, featuring a line dance to the Diamonds’ “The Stroll”) and imagined (The Corny Collins Show, from John Waters’ classic 1988 film Hairspray). And, of course, it was the basis of Don Cornelius’s Soul Train, which promptly began beating Bandstand’s ratings in major cities around the U.S.
On the other hand, Clark also helped foist a series of crappy Philadelphia teen idols (Fabian, Frankie Avalon) on the public while managing to escape the hounding of his Cleveland-bred opposite number, Alan Freed, who received a suspended sentence for payola. The charge against Freed had merit—he was credited, falsely, as a co-author of Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” among others. Clark, who had shares in a distributor that sold records he played on his TV show, escaped legal penalties by divesting his interests. Freed was a schlub; the toothy Clark—27 years old when he began hosting Bandstand—was, and would remain for quite some time, “America’s Oldest Teenager.” Never let anyone tell you that looks don’t matter.