Dick Clark (1929-2012): Rocking The Culture

Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82 after years of health problems, wasn't the first to bring rock and roll music to network TV in the 1950s.  Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan all had Elvis Presley and others on their variety shows before anyone had ever heard of Clark.

Clark also wasn't the first to host what became "American Bandstand", either.  He was a Philadelphia radio DJ when WFIL-TV (now known as WPVI) chose him to replace the previous host on the weekday afternoon show, where he had been filling in from time to time.

Then "Bandstand" moved to ABC in August 1957, and the whole country (or those that could get ABC at the time) tuned in weekday afternoons to watch teenagers dance to the music and performers lip-synch their latest hits.

Clark, with his boyish looks and wholesome image appealing to parents, did plenty to advance the course of societal change through "Bandstand".  Not only did he make rock and roll safe for mass consumption, but he also did his bit to help integrate African-Americans on the show, who after all made this music possible.  So long as they danced among themselves and not with the white kids, because in the Jim Crow era, folks in the South didn't cotton to things like that.

Thanks to "Bandstand", Clark had either hosted and/or produced thousands of hours of entertainment on radio and TV:  "The (fill in the dollar amount) Pyramid", "TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes", and the American Music Awards.  And he still looked younger as his audience grew older.

"American Bandstand", which had been rolling through the musical changes for three decades, finally left TV in 1989.  By then, Clark was becoming known as "Mr. New Year's Eve", covering the annual ball drop from New York's Times Square since 1972 through the annual "New Year's Rockin' Eve" telecast.

Then Clark had a stroke in 2004.  He made few public appearances after that, but he continued to co-host "Rockin' Eve" with Ryan Seacrest, doing the countdown from inside a TV studio instead of freezing on a Times Square perch.  Clark deserved points for putting himself out there, but his slurred speech made him hard to understand.

Dick Clark may have been a ubiquitous presence on TV for decades.  But without him, many of the biggest stars in music who made their first appearance on "Bandstand" would never have been heard from.  There would be no "Soul Train", no music videos, and no mp3 players.  Rock and roll would be just a footnote beyond Elvis, quickly put down by fearful parents and other "right-thinking" people.

In fact, what happened in the studios of WFIL in Philadelphia in the late 1950s and early 60s just might have been the start of a cultural revolution in America that's still happening today, in the same town where the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Not to put Clark in the same category as Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock, but he was a Founder in his own right.

In the immortal words of "Rate-A-Record", Dick Clark's life and career had a beat, and you could dance to it.