Clay Cole Biography

          Clay Cole was a New Year's baby, born January 1, 1938 in Youngstown, Ohio as

Albert Rucker, Jr. He became a juvenile stage and radio actor, then in 1953, at age 15, became the television host/producer of his own Saturday night teen music show  Rucker's Rumpus Room, first on WKBN-TV, then, until 1957 on WFMJ.

Arriving in Manhattan in 1957, he worked first as an NBC Page, then as a production assistant on the troubled quiz show Twenty-One. In 1958, he continued his Saturday night television legacy, launching Al Rucker and the Seven Teens, a Saturday night

pop music program on WJAR-TV, Providence, Rhode Island. 

In New York City in 1959, Clay signed on to host Rate the Records on (WNTA Ch 13 - now PBS-WNET). In 1959, New York City was still the epicenter of rock ‘n’ roll –

The Brill Building songwriters, subway a cappella groups, mom-and-pop record labels, the Apollo and the Copa. When his producers asked him to change his name, he chose Clay Cole, a distant cousin. Within a few weeks, the rigid format of Rate the Records  was quickly abandoned to accommodate Clay's 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 he 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 were crowned.

1960 was a busy year; Clay 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 the first of many singles, appeared in Columbia Pictures Twist Around the Clock,  sang and danced in a stage productiuon of Flower Drum Song, headlined the first of many week-long stage shows at the Apollo, and broke box office records with his 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, Percy Sledge 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. Clay 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 (his 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). In 1968, at the height of his show's popularity, Clay, unhappy with the shift in pop music to psychedelic acid rock and heavy metal, simply walked away.

Following his departure, Clay became a television writer - producer, involved in the production of over 3500 broadcast television shows. He is twice winner of the Emmy Award (NATAS) as "producer of outstanding television programming." He returned briefly in 1974 as the host of the very first HBO-produced music special Clay Cole's 20 Years of Rock and Roll,  a two-hour event taped at Rockland Community College.

"The Clay Cole Show was unique among early television rock 'n' roll studio dance shows; it was witty and stylish with a sophisticated New York point-of-view.

It was Clay's youth (21), his dancing ability and his fully-integrated studio audience that set him apart."