In 1959, New York City was still the epicenter of rock ‘n’ roll – The Brill Building song-writers, subway a cappella groups, mom-and-pop record labels, the Apollo and the Copa.
I signed on to host of 'Rate the Records" on September 10, 1959, WNTA Ch 13 -
(now PBS-WNET), but that rigid format was quickly abandoned to accommodate a more free-wheeling style, on a program called 'The Record Wagon'. Within two months, the show's popularity prompted Ch 13 to add a Saturday night hour, a timeslot I dominated for the next nine years.
In the summer months, the show was expanded to a full hour, six nights a week, live from Palisades Amusement Park, where Chubby Checker first performed and danced
The Twist, Brian Hyland introduced The Itsy-Bitsy Bikini and the first of many annual Miss American Teenager was crowned.
1960 was a busy year; I was now on-the-air "live" seven days a week, the first to take
a rock 'n' roll show" to the Catskills (Dion and Linda Scott at the Concord), recorded my first Roulette single, appeared in Columbia Pictures "Twist Around the Clock," sang and danced in a stage productiuon of "Flower Drum Song," headlined the first of many shows
at the Apollo, and broke box office records with my ten-day, all-star Christmas Show at
the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre.
When WNTA's licence was sold to a public broadcasting foundation, the show moved to WPIX-Ch 11, where for the next five years it was wildly successful, thanks to first-time guest appearances of the Rolling Stones on a program with one other group, the Beatles, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick, Simon & Garfunkel, Richie Havens, Tony Orlando, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lovin' Spoonful, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, the Young Rascals
and a full-hour with just one guest, Tony Bennett.
In the mid-Sixties, the Clay Cole Show became the first stop for the British Boy Bands; the Moody Blues, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark 5, Yardbirds, Animals, Who, Doors, and Herman's Hermits were among the many groups who stopped by.
"New York was home to The Ed Sullivan Show and The Clay Cole Show and when we first came to America, we were told we must do Clay Cole and Ed Sullivan," said Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits. "Trouble is, we didn't know which was which."
I was also first to introduce stand-up comics such as Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Fannie Flagg to a teen audience; the first to produce a full hour of all African-American performers (our historic Salute to Motown); first to introduced music video clips and disco.
(Clay Cole’s Disk-O-Tek aired in 1965, a full twelve years before Saturday Night Fever).
At the height of the show's popularity, I walked away in 1968. Channel 11 erased all the historic tapes in a cost-cutting move; only one tape is known to exist, from a 1958 show, "Al Rucker & The Seven Teens" broadcast on WJAR-TV, Providence, RI.
The Early Years: I was a New Year's baby, born in the early hours of January 1, 1938
in Youngstown, Ohio as Albert Rucker, Jr. I bcame a juvenile radio and stage actor, and
in 1953, at 15 became the host of a long-running (1953-1957) Saturday night pop-music television show on WKBN and WFMJ. In 1957 I came to New York City, first as an NBC Page, then a production assistant on the troubled quiz show Twenty-One and a TV host at WJAR-TV in Providence, RI. In 1959, when I was contracted to Ch 13, producers changed my name to Clay Cole, a distant relative.
