Dick Clark passed away from a heart attack this morning at the age of 82. As a TV host and producer, Clark is known for a number of shows such as New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and the game show The 10,000 Pyramid. But he forever will be considered one of the early great promoters of rock and roll with his show, American Bandstand. Clark originally started out as a substitute host on a local Pennsylvania show Bob Horn’s Bandstand, taking over full time in 1956 and then renaming the show American Bandstand when it moved to ABC in 1957. The show ran regularly — first every weekday and later weekly — through 1987 and then a few more years in syndication. As Clark himself described the show, “I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.”
In this interview from several years ago on Up Close with Patsy Smullin, Clark talks about his career.
I’d like to think that somewhere Clark is sitting in a crowd of teenagers holding up a record album and introducing Buddy Holly. RIP gentlemen.
As reported extensively in the press about the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, Axl Rose wanted nothing to do with the induction of Guns N’ Roses due to his differences with the band members. But the show must go on, and it did last night in Cleveland. So here are Guns N’ Roses — Slash, Duff McKagan, Steven Adler, and Gilby Clarke — tearing it up on “Sweet Child O’ Mine”with Myles Kennedy (of Alter Bridge) on vocals.
Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstong inducted Guns N’ Roses, saying, “The thing that set them apart from everybody else was guts, heart and soul. Most important, they told the truth.” At the ceremony, though, none of the band members mentioned Axl Rose by name.
What do you think about Axl Rose rejecting the honor — childish snub or understandable choice not to appear with former band mates? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On April 12, 1954, Bill Haley & the Comets recorded the rock and roll classic, “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.” During the recording session, the band spent most of the time on another song. It would be in the final forty minutes of that three-hour session where the band would make history, with a little later help by a 10-year-old kid.
The Rushed Recording Session
The band went in the recording studio for Decca Records that day and worked on the song “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)” for most of the three-hour session. Finally, with forty minutes left, they turned to “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.”
At the start of that forty minutes, the group played “Rock Around the Clock” one time. Then, because the first recording of “Rock Around the Clock” did not sound right, they then ran through a second take, leaving Sammy Davis Jr. in the hallway waiting for his turn in the studio.
Time was running out. So, an engineer was able to put together the two takes to make the classic record we know today.
The Guitar Solo
Because of the rushed nature of the recording of “Rock Around the Clock” the guitarist for the session, Danny Cedrone, did not have time to put together a unique guitar solo for the song. So he stuck in a solo he had used two years earlier with Haley on a song called “Rock This Joint.”
You may hear the familiar solo that Cedrone took from “Rock This Joint” in the video below.
The B-Side Release and Modest Sales
That spring, Decca released “Rock Around the Clock” as the B-side to the song on which the Comets spent most of the recording session, “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town).”
The single “Thirteen Women” and B-side “Rock Around the Clock” had modest sales that year. Perhaps the record would have remained a modest hit if not for a little boy.
Glen Ford’s Son Saves the Song
A 10-year-old named Peter Ford fell in love with the B-side of his new record. Peter eventually played the song for his father, the actor Glen Ford.
Ford was preparing to star in a movie called Blackboard Jungle (1955). Ford took the record, along with some others, from his son’s collection to the movie’s producers (or some accounts have the producers hearing the song at Ford’s home).
“(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” was selected to be played over the opening credits of the film about juvenile delinquency that also starred Sidney Poitier. With the boost from the movie, “Rock Around the Clock” sold more than a million copies in one month in 1955.
“Rock Around the Clock” Lives On
Twenty years later the song was familiar for another generation when it appeared on the soundtrack of American Graffiti (1973) and was used as the opening of the TV series Happy Days (1974-1984) for its first two seasons.
Funny how a rushed job, a 10-year-old kid, and a little luck created one of the most memorable records of the early rock era. It also helped send the late Bill Haley to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And on April 14, 2012, a few days after the fifty-eighth anniversary of the recording of “Rock Around the Clock,” the Comets were finally inducted too.
What do you think of “Rock Around the Clock” and inducting the Comets into the Hall of Fame? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In popular culture, most references to Moses focus on the high points of his life. These include him leading the Israelites to freedom by parting the Red Sea and his trip to Mount Sinai to bring forth the ten commandments. But in the final scene of the film The Ten Commandments (1956), the film ends with a less celebratory scene. The movie ends with Charlton Heston’s Moses left behind, paying for what seems like a minor transgression.
I remember watching the movie as a kid, seeing the low-key ending as a letdown after the excitement of the action of the parting of the Red Sea. I also found it confusing because the entire movie shows Moses as special to God and then all of a sudden God is punishing him.
Perhaps my confusion about the ending of the movie is one of the reasons I immediately fell in love with Bruce Springsteen’s “The Price You Pay.” Springsteen captures the tragic sadness of that moment in his song from The River (1980).
Little girl down on the strand, With that pretty little baby in your hands, Do you remember the story of the Promised Land? How he crossed the desert sands, And could not enter the chosen land, On the banks of the river he stayed, To face the price you pay.
Similarly, in “Adam Raised a Cain,” he explains that the notion of sin and punishment is so deep that paying for our own sins is not enough: “You’re born into this life paying / For the sins of somebody else’s past.”
But Springsteen, who both embraces and rebels against his Catholic upbringing in his songs, does not let the story of “The Price You Pay” end there. Although there is nothing Springsteen can do about the story of Moses (or Cain and Able), in “The Price You Pay” the singer rebels against the rules that say we must always be paying for sins. But just across the county line, a stranger passing through put up a sign That counts the men fallen away to the price you pay; And girl before the end of the day, I’m gonna tear it down and throw it away.
In some ways, “The Price You Pay” is a sequel to Springsteen’s “The Promised Land” from Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). In that song, the singer sang of faith in a promised land and a coming twister that will “blow away the dreams that break your heart.”
The idea of escape from punishment for sin is present in much of Springsteen’s music. In “The Price You Pay,” though, he connects the past and present in a way where the present-day hero is not crushed by old rules. Instead, he rises up and rebel not only for himself, but for the sinners of the past, including Moses. It may be nothing more than tearing down a sign, but he rejects the notion that life is about paying for sin.
Whether or not you celebrate one of the holidays this month, may you have a year free from the haunting of past sins. And at the same time may you tear down the sign and forgive others for their burdens.
What do you think is the meaning behind “The Price You Pay”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On April 7 in 1915, Eleanora Fagan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young 13-year-old girl, Eleanora learned songs and began singing while working in a brothel. After getting arrested and serving time in a workhouse, the girl began seeking a singing career and adopted her new first name from the actress Billie Dove and her last name from a jazz guitarist who was her father, Clarence Halliday (although that name later transformed into “Holiday”).
By 1946, Billie Holiday was so well-known for her singing that she appeared in the film New Orleans with Louis Armstrong, where she sang “The Blues are Brewin’.”
After a lifetime of facing racism, drug abuse, drinking, and abusive men, Holiday died in 1959 suffering from liver and heart disease. She was only 44. While she was in the hospital dying, police raided her room and arrested her for drug possession. Despite her troubled life, she had a unique influence on American music, much like Louis Armstrong. Thanks Eleanora.
Dick Clark passed away from a heart attack this morning at the age of 82. As a TV host and producer, Clark is known for a number of shows such as New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and the game show The 10,000 Pyramid. But he forever will be considered one of the early great promoters of rock and roll with his show, American Bandstand. Clark originally started out as a substitute host on a local Pennsylvania show Bob Horn’s Bandstand, taking over full time in 1956 and then renaming the show American Bandstand when it moved to ABC in 1957. The show ran regularly — first every weekday and later weekly — through 1987 and then a few more years in syndication. As Clark himself described the show, “I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.”
