Eddie Cochran

Hank Cochran Documentary from http://www.theboot.com/2012/04/26/hank-cochran-documentary/ Hank Cochran Documentary Spotlights Songwriter's Legacy Posted Apr 26th 2012 5:10PM by Vernell Hacket Nashville Film Festival Hank Cochran was one of the most prolific and successful songwriters to call Nashville home. The man who penned "Make the World Go Away," "The Chair," "I Fall to Pieces" and "Don't Touch Me" was celebrated Wednesday night (April 25), with the premiere of "Hank Cochran: Livin' For a Song" at the Nashville Film Festival. The documentary includes the last interviews with the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member who died in 2010 at age 74. Lee Ann Womack, Mark Chesnutt, Jeff Bates, Mandy Barnett and songwriter Dean Dillon walked the red carpet for the event, as did Hank's wife, Suzi. "I'm not very good at this," Suzi cautioned as she stopped to chat with The Boot. "All I did was collect letters and papers and pictures to help them put things together for the film. His first wife, who he was married to twice, gave me some of his old letters. One was talking about being somewhere with [early rock 'n' roll legend] Eddie Cochran when they were together as the Cochran Brothers." The film details Hank's hardscrabble early life growing up in Mississippi, and the musical partnership he shared with Eddie Cochran (no relation) before making his way to Nashville and pursuing songwriting and recording in his own right. Suzi, who says her favorite Hank song is "Don't You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me," admits of the film that, "I couldn't watch for a long time. Then I finally got to where I could, but the first two times it was hard for me. Then I realized what a gift of life it was for Hank." Lee Ann Womack points out that everyone knows what a great songwriter Hank was but, "Sometimes we don't realize that he loved the business. He loved being around it; being around new artists and new writers and his friends from way back when. He was a publisher, a song plugger, a songwriter and an artist, so he encompassed everything that was great about Nashville." Growing up in Texas, Lee Ann heard a lot of Hank's songs on the radio. Once she started coming to Nashville, looking for songs to record, she got to meet him and be a part of that circle of writers. "It was so wonderful that Hank was there during what I consider the glory days. I would get to hear stories straight from the horse's mouth. I would hear about Willie Nelson and all the things they did and all about how he and Dean Dillon wrote those great songs. I was like a kid in a candy store getting to hear Hank's old stories." Jeff Bates, who was the narrator on the film, told The Boot, "Here's what intrigued me about Hank. He had the ability to walk in both worlds; the world of the common everyday peple like us, and the world of the songwriter and the famous people we all look up to. He could write a song and say how we feel in that song." Jeannie Seely and Hank met in California and he was so impressed with her that he encouraged her to move to Nashville. Once Jeannie moved to Music City, he began pitching her to record labels for a deal. She recalls that Fred Foster at Monument Records told Hank that he would put out a record on her if they could find the right song. Hank wrote "Don't Touch Me" just for her. "There were so many artists who heard it that wanted it, he could have given it away but he didn't," Jeannie said. "Buck Owens wanted it but Hank told him, 'No I wrote it with Jeannie in mind and I promised her a song and this is it'." Jeannie, who later married Hank, went on to say, "Hank was one of the writers who laid the groundwork for Music City, for writing songs that encompassed any genre of music. When you think of his songs, they could be written today. 'Make the World Go Away' is such a classic as was 'Don't Touch Me.' Anybody could identify with the. He wrote simple melodies but the melodies could be performed any way you wanted to do it ... you could put fiddle and steel or an acre of violins. It didn't matter. Hank's songs would fit." Mandy Barnett sings "I Fall To Pieces" in the film, which she notes is special to her because of her connection to the "Always Patsy Cline" musical. "Hank wrote many wonderful songs. I would consider him to be a singer's best friend, or a song's best friend. His contribution in music is undeniable." Dean Dillon was six or seven years old when he first heard "Make the World Go Away" and, in spite of his age, he recognized the magic of a song. "It bowled me over even though I was so young," the songwriter says. "Then as I got older, and the more in tune I became with, the more I realized, 'Damn, why wasn't I there, too, when he wrote that one?'" Dean calls Hank a "cornerstone of country music," and continues: "There have been few to have done for the songwriting world what Hank did for his generation. Those names are few and far between. I am fortunate enough to be a small part of what he accomplished in his lifetime." For a young writer in town, meeting one of their heroes can be intimidating but Dean says Hank never wanted to come off as an intimidating person. "I think his friendliness is what drew me to him and kept me writing with him for all those years. We reached the point where we were like father and son. It was some great times, some great days and great nights. Knowing and being around Hank, and getting to write with him, is a huge part of who I am." Once Hank arrived in Nashville, he hooked up with the Pamper Music publishing company, working with fellow writers (and future legends) Willie Nelson, Harlan Howard and Roger Miller. In addition to his writing, he became a valuable song plugger and mentor to many of the new people who came to Nashville through the years. He was a wealth of information about writing and the business and almost always took time to talk to the newcomers who sought him out. The two-hour film, directed by Wes Pryor and written by Greg Welsch, also features stories about the many parties Hank hosted aboard his boat, The Legend, and the people who crossed his path through the years. Others interviewed in the film include Jamey Johnson, Merle Haggard, Brad Paisley (pictured above with Hank), Elvis Costello, Hank's ex-wife Jeannie Seely, and his three sons and stepdaughter. Several Hank songs are performed throughout the film in their entirety.

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The Man Who Made Rock 'n' Roll Safe Enough for America from The New York Times, 20 April 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/arts/television/dick-clark-understood-the-american-teenager.html?_r=1#h [] An Appraisal The Man Who Made Rock 'n' Roll Safe Enough for America Associated Press Dick Clark, at podium, and young rock 'n' roll fans on "American Bandstand" in 1958. More Photos » By STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: April 19, 2012 Before Ryan Seacrest became the inescapable prince of all media, there was Dick Clark. More soft-spoken and suave than Mr. Seacrest, Mr. Clark was in the right place at the right time at the right age. When he acquired his moniker "America's oldest teenager," the concept of a teenager was still a little exotic and even slightly racy; he helped make it a bit less intimidating. Dick Clark, 1929-2012: TV Emperor of Rock 'n' Roll and New Year's Eve Dies at 82 (April 19, 2012) As an early promoter of rock 'n' roll he was the opposite of Alan Freed, the passionate radio wild man who could get so excited he would shout and sometimes ring a cowbell. Mr. Clark remained cool and detached and at times could seem almost robotic. From the beginning Mr. Clark, who died on Wednesday at 82, embodied the stereotype of a certain kind of neutral broadcasting personality skilled at occupying the foreground while remaining in the background. A low-key ringmaster in the rock 'n' roll circus, he kept his opinions to himself and made sure to offend no one. If he had a public personality, it was the genial but sexually nonthreatening affability of an efficient executive determined to get the job done and to get rich doing it. Before the invention of teenagers there had been bobbysoxers in the 1940s but no generational tag for adolescence. The cultural deluge of all things "teenage" as the first wave of the baby boom reached puberty made products created for teenagers, from pimple creams to soda pop, big business. Mr. Clark was one of the first show business entrepreneurs to leap onto the bandwagon and ride it for all it was worth. He instinctively understood that the best way to capitalize on the emerging market was to pose as a kind of older brother, a safe-as-milk intermediary who kept the peace between worried parents and their restless children. His youth made him just hip enough to be plausible as a plugged-in pseudoteen. As the host of the television after-school dance program "American Bandstand" he made an ideal surrogate chaperone: a wholesome, polite, honorary adolescent. Although he was 27 when the program was first broadcast nationally on Aug. 5, 1957, he could have passed for 17. At the time he seemed the sort of mild-mannered superannuated boy who might once have served on the school safety patrol and been elected class treasurer. In fact he had been the president of his high school student council in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Below his unfailingly polite exterior was a canny businessman who played his cards close to the vest. His underlying wariness was palpable in a 1959 segment of "This Is Your Life," when he was toasted by the host Ralph Edwards and fawned over by grateful stars he had helped create like Connie Francis, the Chipmunks' creator David Seville and Frankie Avalon. As a progressive cultural force "American Bandstand" was a mixed bag. It showcased rock 'n' roll acts both black and white, and it gave the kids on the dance floor an illusion of power by having them rate new records. "It's got a good beat" became the much-mocked cliché response. But the program, which originated in Philadelphia, was also a reactionary force in its promotion of local teen idols like Mr. Avalon, Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker. During the lull between rock 'n' roll's initial upsurge and Beatlemania the show's support of such wrapped-in-plastic talent helped delay the rock onslaught. In his interview with Elvis Presley on the first day that "American Bandstand" went national, Mr. Clark could have been a stand-in for Pat Boone, the clean-cut white-bucks-wearing pop star who was the antithesis of the gyrating, wet-lipped Elvis with his pompadour and bedroom eyes. Mr. Clark's well-scrubbed appearance and air of modesty undoubtedly helped him escape being seriously tainted during the Congressional payola investigations when he voluntarily divested himself of his profitable pop music enterprises and signed an affidavit denying his involvement in payola. Mr. Freed, not so comely, was also not so lucky. Once Mr. Clark was in the clear, "American Bandstand" became the platform on which he built a television-based entertainment empire similar to the one Mr. Seacrest is creating. He was free to soar. But Mr. Clark has had his detractors. Shawn Swords, an independent filmmaker whose 2008 documentary "The Wages of Spin" examined the Philadelphia music scene in the late 1950s and early '60s, in a 2009 interview with Reuters called Mr. Clark "an alpha villain" whose kingdom was "built on ill-gotten gains." In exchange for exposure on the air singers were expected to sign away their copyrights and all future royalties. It should be noted that such things were common practice in the music business at the time. "I'm not saying this man was consummately malevolent, just his business practices and the depth of his avarice and self-enrichment," he added. "I really think the man's place in pop music history needs to be re-evaluated." A key to Mr. Clark's appeal was his utter lack of grandiosity. He was perfectly happy to be the messenger rather than message. His most revealing quotations say a lot about this businessman who never seemed to care that much about the artistic aspects of the music. Content to monitor the tastes of a mass audience and sell to it as an agreeable, mild-mannered pitch man, America's oldest teenager played the role impeccably. "My business is teenagers," Mr. Clark once said. "I don't set trends. I just find out what they are and exploit them." Dick Clark Understood the American Teenager - NYTimes.com Dick Clark, content to be the messenger, presided over the rise of rock and capitalized on the wave of all things "teenage."

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TV Host and Icon of New Year's Eve Dies at 82 from The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/arts/television/dick-clark-tv-host-and-icon-of-new-years-eve-is-dead-at-82.html Dick Clark, the perpetually youthful-looking television host whose long-running daytime song-and-dance fest, "American Bandstand," did as much as anyone or anything to advance the influence of teenagers and rock 'n' roll on American culture, died on Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 82. A spokesman, Paul Shefrin, said Mr. Clark had a heart attack Wednesday morning at Saint John's Health Center, where he had gone the day before for an outpatient procedure. Mr. Clark had a well-publicized stroke in December 2004, shortly before he was to appear on the annual televised New Year's Eve party he had produced and hosted every year since 1973. He returned a year later, and although he spoke haltingly, he continued to make brief appearances on the show, including the one this past New Year's Eve. With the boyish good looks of a bound-for-success junior executive and a ubiquitous on-camera presence, Mr. Clark was among the most recognizable faces in the world, even if what he was most famous for — spinning records and jabbering with teenagers — was on the insubstantial side. In addition to "American Bandstand" and "New Year's Rockin' Eve," he hosted innumerable awards shows, comedy specials, series based on TV outtakes and the game show $10,000 Pyramid" (which lasted long enough to see the stakes ratcheted up to $100,000). He also made guest appearances on dramatic and comedy series, usually playing himself. But he was as much a businessman as a television personality — "I get enormous pleasure and excitement sitting in on conferences with accountants, tax experts and lawyers," he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1961 — and he was especially deft at packaging entertainment products for the small screen. Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Clark built an entertainment empire on the shoulders of "Bandstand," producing other music shows like "Where the Action Is" and "It's Happening" and eventually expanding into game shows, awards shows, comedy specials and series, talk shows, children's programming, reality programming, and movies. His umbrella company, Dick Clark Productions, has produced thousands of hours of television; it also has a licensing arm and has owned or operated restaurants and theaters like the Dick Clark American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Mo. Over half a century, Mr. Clark made millions as a producer or executive producer, shepherding projects onto the airwaves that even he acknowledged were more diverting than ennobling: awards shows like the Golden Globes, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the American Music Awards; "TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes" and other omnibus shows featuring collections of clips; and television-movie biographies and dramas, in either uplifting or lurid mode, that targeted devotees of camp, kitsch or B-list celebrities. He wasn't high-minded about his work. "I've always dealt with light, frivolous things that didn't really count; I'm not ashamed of that," he said during a 1999 interview for the Archive of American Television. "There's no redeeming cultural value whatsoever to 'Bloopers,' but it's been on for 20 years." He added: "It's a piece of fluff. I've been a fluffmeister for a long time." But none of it would have been possible without "American Bandstand," a show that earned immediate popularity and had astonishing longevity. It was broadcast nationally (and for several years daily) from 1957 to 1989, and the list of well-known performers who were seen on it (many of them lip-synching their recently recorded hits) spanned generations: from Ritchie Valens to Luther Vandross; from the Monkees to Madonna; from Little Anthony and the Imperials to Los Lobos; from Dusty Springfield to Buffalo Springfield to Rick Springfield. Mr. Clark was around for it all. The right man at the right time, Mr. Clark was a radio personality in Philadelphia in 1956 when he stepped into the role of host of what was then a local television show called "Bandstand" after the regular host was arrested for drunken driving and fired. By the following October, the show was being broadcast on ABC nationwide with a new name, "American Bandstand," and for the next several years it was seen every weekday afternoon by as many as 20 million viewers, most of whom were undoubtedly not yet out of high school and tuned in to watch a few dozen of their peers dance chastely to the latest recordings of pop hits, showing off new steps like the twist, the pony and the Watusi, and rating the new records in brief interviews. It's got a good beat and you can dance to it" became a catchphrase. Handsome and glib, Dick Clark was their music-savvy older brother, and from that position of authority he presided, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, over a grass-roots revolution in American culture. Not only was "American Bandstand" the first show to make use of the new technology, television, to spread the gospel of rock 'n' roll, in its early years introducing a national audience to teen idols like Fabian and Connie Francis, first-generation rockers like Bill Haley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and singing ensembles like the Everly Brothers, but it also helped persuade broadcasters and advertisers of the power of teenagers to steer popular taste. "At that moment in time, the world realized that kids might rule the world," Mr. Clark once said. "They had their own music, their own fashion, their own money." By early 1958, "American Bandstand" was a big enough hit that delighted network executives installed a new show in a concert format in its Saturday night lineup, "The Dick Clark Show," and in June of that year sent it on the road, broadcasting from a number of cities. In October, when "the Dick Clark Show" originated from Atlanta, both black and white teenagers were in the audience — it amounted to one of the first racially integrated rock concerts — and, with National Guard troops present, it weathered threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The nighttime "Dick Clark Show" lasted only until 1960, and "American Bandstand" reduced its schedule from every weekday to every Saturday afternoon in 1963, but Mr. Clark was nonetheless one of the biggest success stories in the early days of television. In spite of his success, though, Mr. Clark, who never hid his desire for wealth, wasn't getting rich as a network employee, and he had begun investing shrewdly and voluminously in the businesses that "American Bandstand" supported: talent management, music publishing, record distribution and merchandising, among others. But his bank account and his clean-cut image were damaged temporarily when Congress convened hearings into payola, the record company practice of bribing disc jockeys to play their records on the air. In late 1959, with the hearings pending, ABC insisted that Mr. Clark divest himself of all his record-related businesses, which he did. He was called to testify before the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight in April 1960, and though he denied ever taking money to play records, he acknowledged a number of acts that exposed what many Congressmen deemed the cozier than ethical relationship that disc jockeys in general, and Mr. Clark in particular, had with the music industry. For an investment of $125 in one record company, for example, Mr. Clark received, over two years, $31,700 in salary and stock profit. He admitted that some songs and records might have been given to his publishing and distribution companies because of his affiliation with "American Bandstand." He also acknowledged accepting a ring and a fur stole from a record manufacturer. Mr. Clark was never convicted of a crime, but he said that having to comply with the network's divestiture request cost him millions "I never took any money to play records," Mr. Clark said in his 1999 Archive of American Television interview. "I made money other ways. Horizontally, vertically, every which way you can think of, I made money from that show." Richard Wagstaff Clark was born on Nov. 30, 1929, in Bronxville, N.Y., and grew up in nearby Mount Vernon. His father, Richard Augustus Clark, was a salesman who commuted to New York City until he was hired to manage a radio station in Utica, N.Y. Young Richard's older brother, Bradley, was killed in World War II. As a boy he listened often to the radio, and at 13 he went to see a live radio broadcast starring Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore. From then on, he wanted to be in broadcasting. His first job, at 17, was in the mailroom of his father's station. He often said he learned the most important lesson of his career from listening to Arthur Godfrey. "I emulated him," Mr. Clark said. "I loved him, I adored him, because he had the ability to communicate to one person who was listening or watching. Most people would say, in a stentorian voice, 'Good evening, everyone.' Everyone? Godfrey knew there was only one person listening at a time." Mr. Clark studied business administration at Syracuse University, where he was a disc jockey on the student radio station, and after graduating worked briefly as an announcer for his father's station before getting his first job in television, at WKTV in Utica, as a news announcer. In 1952 he was given his own radio show on WFIL in Philadelphia, "Dick Clark's Caravan of Music," an easy-listening afternoon program. A few months later, the station's television affiliate began an afternoon music show called "Bandstand," with Bob Horn and Lee Stewart as hosts, which at first showed films of musical performances for young studio audiences but evolved into a dance show, as Mr. Clark recalled, when audience members got bored with the films and started dancing to the music. As the show grew in popularity, the station changed the name of Mr. Clark's radio show to "Bandstand" as well, even though his playlist remained uncontroversial and palliating fare for a relatively small audience of middle-aged housewives. It was in the summer of 1956 that Mr. Horn, by then the sole host of the show, was arrested and subsequently dismissed, and the station turned to young Dick Clark. "I was 26 years old, looked the part, knew the music, was very comfortable on television," Mr. Clark recalled. "'They said, 'Do you want it?' And I said, 'Oh, man, do I want it!' " "American Bandstand," a cultural touchstone for the baby-boomer generation, gave rise to the Top 40 radio format and helped make rock 'n' roll a palatable product for visual media — not just television but also the movies. It was influential enough that ABC broadcast a 40th-anniversary special in 1992, three years after the show went off the air, and a 50th-anniversary special 10 years later. Of course, Mr. Clark, who had long since been popularly known as "the world's oldest teenager," was the host of both. The show's influence waned somewhat after it changed to a weekly format and the next year moved its base of operations to Los Angeles. And as the psychedelic era took hold in the late 1960s and rock 'n' roll fragmented into subgenres, the show could no longer command a central role on the pop music scene. Indeed, the show was criticized for sanitizing rock 'n' roll, taking the edge off a sexualized and rebellious music. But it was also, in important ways, on the leading edge of the culture. Mr. Clark and his producer, Tony Mammarella, began integrating the dance floor on "American Bandstand" shortly after he took over as host; much of the music, after all, was being made by black performers. "I can remember, a vivid recollection, the first time ever in my life I talked to a black teenager on national television; it was in what we called the rate-a-record portion of 'Bandstand,' " Mr. Clark recalled. "It was the first time in a hundred years I got sweaty palms." He was fearful, he said, of a backlash from Southern television affiliates, but that didn't happen. From that day on, he said, more blacks began appearing on the show. And as time went on, the show's willingness to bridge a racial divide that went almost entirely unacknowledged by network programming was starkly apparent, "providing American television broadcasting with the most visible ongoing image of ethnic diversity until the 1970s," according to an essay about the program on the Web site of the Chicago-based Museum of Broadcast Communications. "We didn't do it because we were do-gooders, or liberals," Mr. Clark said. "It was just a thing we thought we ought to do. It was naïve." Mr. Clark's first two marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Kari Wigton, and three children, Richard, Duane and Cindy. Mr. Clark won five Emmy Awards, including a Daytime Emmy lifetime achievement award in 1994, and in 1993 was inducted into both the Television Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He owed his success, he said, to knowing the mind of the broad audience. "My greatest asset in life," he said, "was I never lost touch with hot dogs, hamburgers, going to the fair and hanging out at the mall."

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On this day in 1960, Rockabilly idol and Rock & Roll trailblazer Eddie Cochran died while on tour in the U.K. at the age of 21. On the night of April 16, Cochran was in a taxi when it blew a tire and crashed into a lamppost. Cochran was reportedly thrown from the vehicle when he dove on his girlfriend, songwriter Sharon Sheeley, to shield her and went out the car door that had been flung open. He died in the hospital the next afternoon. Also in the car was fellow rocker Gene Vincent, who survived the crash but suffered serious injuries. It's hard to overstate how influential Cochran was in the development and increasing popularity of Rock & Roll. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Rockabilly Hall of Fame, Cochran is responsible for such indispensable Rock staples as "Summertime Blues" and "C'mon Everybody," and influenced and/or was covered by artists like The Who, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, T. Rex, Hendrix, Rush, The Sex Pistols … pretty much the entire first decade of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Legend has it that Paul McCartney elbowed his way into John Lennon's The Quarrymen because his future bandmates were dazzled that he knew the chords and lyrics to Cochran's"Twenty Flight Rock." It's rather stunning that someone who didn't live to see 22 could have such a profound effect on music. Here's a bit of Cochran ​ ​ ​ ​ ..

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Rockin' tribute to Eddie

​Rockin' tribute to Eddie​ from http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/towns/chippenhamheadlines/9641670.Rockin____tribut...

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