Wednesday, April 18, 2012

America's Oldest Teen Dies

Talk about the end of an era! I just saw the breaking news that Dick Clark has passed away. This never aging icon of the pop music world will no longer rock in another New Year.

Clark was one of those people, some we know personally, but in this case a celebrity figure, who was a fixture.

Now that I think of it, Don Cornelius just passed away as well, just this past February. Two hosts of two iconic music shows of the type, gone.

May they both rest in peace.

2 comments:

Mark said...

Who is Don Cornelius?

Marshal Art said...

Don Cornelius was the producer and host of Soul Train, which was a show based on the same basic format as American Bandstand. Some referred to it as a "black version" of AB, but I enjoyed it in the same manner (meaning "sporadically"). More soul, funk and such than pop rock music of Dick Clark's show. I remember Elton John being on the ST years ago, possibly before he came out. I recall wondering why he was on, as the song he "performed" (lip sync) was not especially Mowtown-like. One unique aspect was at the end of the show, they would do that thing where two lines of people would face each other and from each line a couple would dance their way from one end to the other. They also had a "Scrabble Board" where two kids would unscramble the letters to form the name of the song or artist being played (or in answer to a trivia type question). Chicago Bear legend Walter Payton was a kid on the show during his college years and there are clips of him dancing. I believe Rosie Perez was a dancer on the show once as well.