The King of Rock 'n Roll, Elvis Presley.

The recent passing of Dick Clark reminded us of the early days of rock music—back when it was alternately called “rock and roll” and The End of Civilization.

Though we remember Clark as a perennially nice, inoffensive guy, he was a force for change in the ’50s. Not only did he play the teen music that parents disliked so much, he insisted on welcoming black teens into his studio audience, and traveling through the South in a racially mixed tour. His “Caravan of the Stars” bus was often denied service and even threatened by armed segregationists.

Just as significant, though, was his promoting of rock ‘n’ roll, which helped integrate black and white traditions and audiences.

When it emerged unexpected in the 1950s, many Americans were shocked and suspicious of this strange, energetic new sound.They were accustomed to “pop” music. But rock ‘n’ roll was, in fact, true “pop” music if the word is meant as an abbreviation of “popular.”

Up to that time, the musical tastes of Americans had been largely shaped by a big industry with a few record labels, which determined much of the music America heard.

As a 1959 article reported, however, the predominance of these companies fell when a few small, independent studios, with little budget and no advertising, produced enormous hit records.

Up until a few years ago there was a fairly orderly sequence that took place in the launching of a new “pop” record. Everything was done big. Whenever one of the major recording companies came across a catchy tune, the company assigned it to a big-name singer, backed him up with a big-name band, then unleashed a barrage of publicity.

Today the popular-record business… is dominated by the smalls and the unknowns.

Knowledgeable men in the field agree … the record revolution started on a hot day in 1953 when a slim high-school boy, with his hair nearly down to his shoulders, fidgeted with a beat-up guitar below the windows of the newly opened Sun Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

The boy, who had taken time off from his after-school job at the Crown Electric Company, spent an hour of indecision out on the sidewalk before he got his courage up and walked one flight up to the small one-room studio. When Sam Phillips, [Sun’s] owner, approached, the boy gulped and said, “Please, mister, I’d like to make a record for my mother.”

“Sure, buddy, just relax and we’ll give it a try,” Phillips said encouragingly.

Phillips was impressed, “the boy was just a raw kid with no training, but he had an interesting sound.” Phillips eventually found the “right song” for Presley —“Without Love.” As Phillips told the reporters, they “had to work hard to get the best out of his style”.

And even when we got something that sounded right, we had a terrible time getting any disc jockey to play it. The only place we got his records played at first was in the Negro sections of Chicago and Detroit and in California.”

Buddy Holly.

But the sound eventually drifted into the hearing of America’s teenagers, where it struck a resounding chord.

After Presley’s overwhelming success [selling 35 million records by that year], unknown studios and artists were eager to try their luck, completely bypassing the big record labels.

Buddy Holly was another star-out-of-nowhere. Throwing together a few songs with a combo he’d assembled in Lubbock, Texas, he drove with his band—The Crickets—out to a tiny recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico—as far from the heart of the recording industry as you can get in the lower 48 states. By the time of his death, 30 months later, he had sold 6 million records—most of which had been recorded in the shadow of the big grain elevator in ‘downtown’ Clovis.

[Inspired by these successes,] youngsters with dreams of glory and gold pooled their talents. A singer would write his own song, hunt up a couple of instrumentalists, and they’d bang out tunes in rumpus rooms, living rooms or basements until they had something they thought was worth recording. Then they’d try to peddle their tapes. If a producer thought they had a “sound,” some unusual quality, either instrumental or vocal, that might drive the teen-agers wild, he’d take a gamble and make records.

This pattern, repeated over and over, revolutionized the popular-record field.

Today 70 to 80 per cent of the hits are being turned out by youngsters you never heard of a month or two ago, and who may disappear from the public scene just as abruptly as they came.

The major companies [are]… still turning out many records, but their hits don’t come as easily as they used to.

The biggest [obstacle] is the inflexibility of the major record companies. The independents are able to adapt quickly to any shift in teen-age tastes; the big organizations, saddled with protocol and chains of command, can’t move as fast.

Many record companies have found, too, that it’s a risky business to buy a new hit and re-record it with big-name singers and musicians. The teen-agers almost always prefer the original recording… [they] refuse to be impressed by the big-name approach.

The Everly Brothers.

As the early sounds of rock music poured out of teenager’s radios and record players, adults who were accustomed to ‘big name talent’ (Tony Martin, Jo Stafford, Kay Starr) created their own ‘new sound’: a strident, continual chorus of complaints about that ‘gawdawful music.’

As the Post authors noted, their criticism could actually ensure the survival of rock ‘n’ roll.

According to many teenagers, rock ‘n’ roll never would have got as popular as it is if their elders didn’t hate it so violently. It’s something to think about. The young parents of today compose the generation that went all out for swing against the noisy objections of their parents; and their parents used to get all giggly over ragtime. And so on and so on, back to the day some Neanderthal father listened in outrage as his son got off some hot licks with matched dinosaur-bone drumsticks on the family tom-tom. It must have seemed to that early man that the kids were going absolutely to the dogs.

Today the budding Elvis or Buddy doesn’t even need a small-town recording studio. They can put together their own hit in front of their computer, launch it on YouTube, then sit back and wait for the agents and record companies to show up.

The no-studio viral-marketing approach might have given us Justin Bieber, or any number of other rising artists you don’t like, but if the music industry was still controlled by a few record labels, we might still be listening to Frankie Laine and Rosemary Clooney.

The Rock Revolution in the Dick Clark Days The Saturday Evening Post

Rock’s greatest defender in those days was Dick Clark — a young (29), polite, well-groomed spokesman who was successfully defending the future of popular music.

As we say goodbye to him today, here are excerpts from his interview with Post writer, Pete Martin.

He firmly and continuously defends that amorphous group known as “teen-agers.”

He is quiet, smooth-voiced, neat in appearance. Obviously he has been brought up to be polite.

In spite of his mannerly attitude, he has had applied to him such titles as The Czar of the Switchblade Set and The Kingpin of the Teen-age Mafia

He has also been labeled The Elder Statesman of the Young People.

“Unfortunately,” he told me, “as we grow older our minds close in certain areas, music among them. The real truth is that adults are more preoccupied with rock ‘n’ roll than the teen-agers.”

“To [adults], short hair means cleanliness, neatness and honesty— obviously the right kind of young man for a bank to hire. The minds of older people are inclined to run in grooves. One of those grooves is that a ducktail haircut means its wearer is a potential juvenile delinquent; a crew cut means that a young man is likable, dependable, bound to succeed.

“As far as the kids are concerned, rock ‘n’ roll is just a portion of their musical knowledge. Youngsters today have a widely varied musical background. Someday they’ll sift some things and be more discriminating. In the meantime they’re having a little bit of everything. I think it’s a very healthy situation.

“A teenager can turn on a phonograph and listen to any kind of sound he wants during one sitting. You can have a Fats Domino record, a Perry Como record, a Frank Sinatra record, or he can listen to the Chordettes, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Mathis, Ricky Nelson, a Tony Martin or a Dean Martin record.

Dick Clark. July, 1995.

“[American Bandstand] originated locally at an ABC station, WFIL in Philadelphia. It was invented to use up some afternoon time. Somebody asked, ‘What can we do to fill a couple of afternoon hours?’ Two guys in the studio got together and decided to play games, show short films of musical stars and persuade people to telephone in and request their favorite recordings. They also thought it would be a good idea to invite an audience in to watch them. The only audience conveniently located were highschool kids on their way home from school. They discovered that when they played recordings, the kids got up and danced. It became apparent that the show’s future lay in getting on with the dancing. That’s how the Bandstand was born.

“Shortly after I took over it started climbing und soon achieved ratings it had never reached before. That helped make me solid with the studio.

“In about a year’s time the station executives and I persuaded the American Broadcasting Company, who was affiliated with our Philadelphia studio, to let the Bandstand go national on a network basis. The ABC had been running old English movies during that afternoon time slot, but, being young and impetuous, I told them, ‘Put us on for four weeks and if we don’t better those ancient British films, toss us into the ash can.’

“They said O.K., but they made it clear that the only way I could fill that time satisfactorily was by not costing more than the old English movies. Fortunately I met their qualifications.

“I’ve never been able to understand why people who’ve never met me write unkind things about me in their columns or in their newspaper or magazine stories. I’ve tried to get used to criticism, although it’s not the easiest thing in the world to bear, but I am always puzzled as to why anybody should dislike me apparently because I am associated with young people, and because I defend teen-agers’ musical likes and dislikes. The only way I can explain it is that controversial writing, which is usually destructive, must have more newsstand appeal than constructive writing.”

Dick Clark: Rock’s Clean-Cut Champion The Saturday Evening Post