(ThyBlackMan.com) “Dick Clark bridged a color gap at a time when there should not have been one, giving musical life to black artists that may not have had a chance. He gave music freedom — equal opportunity,” Stevie Wonder said in a statement following the news that the legendary host of American Bandstand had died at age 82, after suffering a major heart attack. Today, when black artists readily rise to pop acclaim, it’s difficult to understand Dick Clark’s pioneering significance in making this the norm.
But make no mistake, The Five Heartbeats was far from fiction in recounting how white artists would routinely take songs originally recorded by black artists as their own and sail to the top of the charts. Pat Boone had a thriving career refashioning such hits as Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” for white audiences.
Because black artists had virtually no outlets to reach white teenagers, in particular, their music was largely limited to black audiences. Very few black artists even played to white audiences.
From the onset of his career, which began in earnest when he became the sole host of the Philadelphia show Bandstand in 1956, Dick Clark included black artists as guests. Chubby Checker, the man whose version of “The Twist” is deeply ingrained in American pop culture, was one of his earliest guests.
“Being on Bandstand was like getting a Nobel Prize,” Checker told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “From 3 o’clock in the afternoon until 5:30, nobody was on the street. They were watching Bandstand. Can you imagine that?”
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