Dick and Don - The Eternal Veejays

The popular music biz in 2012 sufferred a major loss with the passing of entrepreneur entertainers Dick Clark and Don Cornelius. Although their names don't exactly resonate with the rap/hiphop/alternative/whatever audience, there is no question that the recording industry would never have reached its' zenith without their help as the frontmen of music television.

Dick Clark always looked like he was having a great time, right up to his final "Rockin New Years Eve" appearances when you could tell he was struggling. I never made fun of him even then - I admired him for having the courage to be himself. That's all Dick Clark ever did , which is probably why so many American TV households felt comfortable letting him into their homes in the 50s and 60s. He was clean cut, polite, respectful and constantly promoting clean cut and respectful white and black artists, who played to clean cut and respectful black and white teenaged couples. Clark was so earnest and so acceptable, a cheerleader who glossed over the paranoia about race music and the "evils" of rock and roll to attract a wider audience and sell more records. The amazing thing was that he stayed that way throughout his long career as if dipped in Teflon around 1959, to the extent that the "world's oldest living teenager" line began to seem like a description of a pop music vampire. Bottom line: he sold the music earnestly and tirelessly through the original music video: "American Bandstand."

Don Cornelius I recall most clearly from being in the Midwestern college I attended , catching "Soul Train" on the common room TV in my freshman dorm. His big voice and bigger hair set the stage for true Motown royalty, the early days of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, Junior Walker, even Aretha Franklin. The music was hipper and funkier than "Bandstand", but the packaging was eerily similar - decent cleancut kids dancing to decent clean cut artists - designed to be culturally accessible to the average American living room. Unfortunately, my image of Don Cornelius is more or less frozen in that time and place, which may very well be a good thing based on some of the stories I read after his death. It was through his channeling soul music into the mainstream that I developed a lifelong appreciation for it.

Dick Clark and Don Cornelius played their maestro emcee roles extremely well, effortlessly promoting a new generation of black and white performers to an awakening and growing audience that embraced civil rights, no longer threatened by the spectre of "race" music. They were the original "promo" guys - they may not have witnessed the birth of rock and roll but they certainly helped guide it through its formative years.