Dick Clark, the rock 'n' roll music promoter and television host of American Bandstand, has died at age 82.
Publicist Paul Shefrin said Clark suffered a heart attack Wednesday and died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Clark was one of the country's best-known television personalities and the long-time host of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve broadcast from Times Square in New York City. He had continued performing on the broadcast even after he suffered a stroke in 2004 that affected his ability to speak and walk.
Clark was dubbed ``the world's oldest teenager'' because of his boyish good looks. He was a successful businessman who started his career as a teenage disc jockey in the state of New York. He also earned a business degree from Syracuse University.
By 1956, Clark started a teenage dance show in Philadelphia called Bandstand. He told people the show wiped out the competition because it used "a universal language" that would "work everywhere." Network executives picked up on the the idea, and the rock 'n' roll show American Bandstand was born.
The original American Bandstand was one of network TV's longest-running series, airing on ABC from 1957 to 1987. It hosted stars including Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Madonna.
"I was a very young fellow," said Dick Clark. "That show was getting huge audiences in Philadelphia. Sixty-five per cent of the people watched the Bandstand when it was in Philadelphia. It wiped out all the competition. I said, 'It doesn't matter. It isn't just Philadelphia, this is a universal language. It will work everywhere. Trust us, it will work. Give us 5 weeks.' And in August of 1957 they did, and, as they say, the rest is history."
"People say, 'Why do you work so hard? You made enough money to retire on when you were a kid.' And I say, everybody always should be this lucky to live out the fantasy of their youth. I wanted to be in the radio business when I was 13 [-years-old]. I started working on it when I was 17, and I don't want to stop," said Clark.
"I think Dick's [contribution] has been very massive, in that he was the first and one-of-a-kind who allowed all of us that conduit to the public; who not only was a very viable force then, but stayed very contemporary through all of these years and uniquely kept everything that he was about very special," said singer/songwriter Paul Anka.
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