NOT THE SODA FOUNTAIN TYPE

Clay Cole's Clean Teens, 1960

BY DAVID HINCKLEY

TUESDAY, MAY 4TH 2004

IT HAD taken a couple of years, but by the summer of 1960, grownups saw some encouraging indications that they had finally tamed this rock 'n' roll menace.

Rock 'n' roll had, frankly, not made a very good first impression on adult America. A number of folks encountered their first blast of rock 'n' roll at the opening of the film "Blackboard Jungle," where Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was followed by a frightful parade of sneering juvenile delinquents who honored no laws or rules.

For many others, the first jolt came from Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan's TV show in 1956, and those wild gyrations were enough to shock a respectable singer like Frank Sinatra, who declared rock 'n' roll to be "the martial music of every juvenile delinquent in America."

The one hope of adult America was that this would be another passing youth fad, like swallowing goldfish. And sure enough, in a few years, things started to calm down. Elvis went into the Army. Chuck Berry went to jail. Jerry Lee Lewis went off to marry his 13-year-old cousin. Little Richard found the Lord. Payola took some of the big deejays out of the game, and record companies started pushing nice, young, unthreatening stars, like Frankie Avalon and Annette.

Rock 'n' roll was still hanging around. But it felt like it might be less dangerous now. The music might still be "trash" to the big-band generation, and those dances might still look crazy - but maybe, just maybe, the kids were all right.

THE REASSURING view was reinforced for many by televised rock 'n' roll shows, whose standard was Dick Clark's "American Bandstand." Dick played records, the kids rated them and then the kids danced to them. Mom and Dad could see for themselves everything was OK.

Most cities also had local versions of Clark's program. In New York, this at first had meant Alan Freed and Jocko Henderson, though both favored rhythm and blues music that was still considered awfully rowdy.

But on Sept. 10, 1959, things took a turn for the wholesome.

Here was Clay Cole, clean-cut new host of the daily "Rate the Records" show on Channel 13.

PATTERNED AFTER "American Bandstand," Cole's show was more than just another local knockoff because he had the whole New York music industry to draw on, and to watch him.

Also, in contrast to most music-show hosts, Cole was introduced as a teenager himself. He was 19, he said.

He was no showbiz rookie, though. Born Albert Rucker in a tiny Ohio suburb, he had talked himself into a job as host of a weekly half-hour dance-party show while he was still in high school. After graduation, he moved to New York and worked as a page at NBC. Then he landed a weekly dance show in Providence, R.I., but it paid only $50 a week, so he commuted from the city, where he worked as a stock clerk at Bloomingdale's.

"Rate the Records" changed all that, quickly establishing Clay Cole as a presence on the New York rock 'n' roll scene.

HE WAS soon on Channel 13 seven days a week, and every rock 'n' roll kid in town knew him. When the twist craze broke in 1960, there was Chubby Checker on the air with Clay Cole, and there were the youth of New York, twisting in a new decade. Exuberant, yet responsible.

They liked Clay Cole. He liked them.

"The cruelest thing said about today's maligned teenager," Cole told Bob Lardine of the Daily News, "is that he's fanatic about rock 'n' roll. It just isn't true. Certainly music is a part of his life, but his home, church, school and other recreational activities take up a great deal more of his time."

Some people label teenage music as "junk," Cole told Lardine. "I say baloney! In most instances the songs are well-constructed. The kids like so-called rock 'n' roll because adults don't. It's a kind of rebellion, I guess. I think it's a natural, healthy feeling. It will stand them in good stead when they're older and will have to bear responsibility."

Part of the goal of his show, he added, was to convey this reassurance to parents and adults.

"We want the kids to look like the Sunday-school type, not the soda-fountain type. We want them to show up as ladies and gentlemen, not mugs."

"Rate the Records" ran for about 2 1/2 years, until Channel 13 was sold. Cole scrambled until October 1963, when he landed a similar program, "The Clay Cole Show," on Channel 11. Then the Brits invaded, rock 'n' roll exploded all over again and Clay Cole was your local host. He welcomed the Rolling Stones, the Who, Simon and Garfunkel, the Supremes.

The Beatles were "wholesome," he admitted. As for the Stones, he said he was "was appalled at their grubby long hair and grimy appearance."

GRADUALLY HE began to feel that he'd taken the teen dance show as far as he could. In the summer of 1967, an interviewer pointed out to him that his crew of kids these days had long hair and miniskirts. In October of that year, a few hundred thousand of them marched in Washington against the Vietnam War.

In December, Clay Cole did his final show as a New York teenage music dance host. 

(C) NY Daily News