Facing the Music

"Don't make the mistake of thinking those TV cameras are branches of the United States Mint. Dollar bills don't come out of them like bread from a bakery oven." This advice by Disk Jockey Dick Clark appears in a new book, Your Happiest Years (Rosho Corp.; $2.95), aiming sound moral advice at teenagers. Yet in a mere three years, ever since he took over the local Philadelphia show that grew into ABC's American Bandstand, Dick Clark has found plenty of bread in the oven. Among the loaves: three other ABC shows, an advice-to-teeners column in This Week magazine, interests in record-and music-publishing companies and other items, all adding up to an estimated annual income of $500,000. In the general uproar about payola, the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight last week inevitably got around to Dick Clark, the nation's most powerful disk jockey.

So far there has been no testimony; two committee investigators have merely talked to Clark about his business affairs. But even before the subcommittee took a hand, ABC confronted him with a significant decision: he must get rid of his outside music interests or else quit TV. The companies involved: Swan Records, Sea Lark Enterprises, January Music, Arch Music. (Entrepreneur Clark also has an interest in Drexel Productions, a TV packaging firm, and may have connections with Jamie Records, other record companies, a talent agency, a record-pressing plant, and a production company named Clarkfeld.) Faced with the ABC ultimatum, Clark decided to "divest" himself of his interests in various music firms (he did not specify how). His TV producer and partner in Swan Records, Tony Mammarella, decided to quit ABC in order to stay with the Clark company.

Doll or Trust? With virtually every other pop music figure holding pieces of music-publishing firms, why did ABC take action against Clark? Obviously, to avoid the charge that Clark was "riding" or "hyping" songs published and recorded by his firms on the Bandstand program. Although Bandstand played some of Clark's own tunes that became hits (Tallahassie Lassie, Okefenokee), he and Mammarella insist that they were played only because they were popular already. But Clark has also spun his Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, which is just now beginning to climb into the big time. Clark insists that he has never taken payola in any form, and many support him, including ABC. Says a Philadelphia record distributor: "Dick is a living doll. I've offered him pieces of songs and gotten turned down cold."

Some people think less of him. Says Arnold Shaw of the music-publishing firm of E. B. Marks: "Someone like Clark is a one-man trust." Adds Marty Mills of Mills Music, Inc.: "People know that Clark will lay it on [i.e., plug a song] if he's got any stake in it."

Widening Search. While the subcommittee was trying to get the facts on Musicman Clark, investigators were widening their search. New York County D.A. Frank Hogan subpoenaed the financial records of eleven record companies; one owner immediately announced that he had a pile of canceled $100 checks endorsed by disk jockeys. The story would take some time to unfold. "The last thing most people in this industry want is to clean it up," admitted one musicman. "It's too lucrative for too many people."

Rock 'n' Roll Champion Alan Freed, nearly as popular as Disk Jockey Clark, was fired last week by ABC's New York radio WABC for refusing to sign a statement that he had never taken payola. The statement was, said Freed, "an insult to my reputation for integrity."

Another disk jockey fired last week: Detroit's Tom Clay (WJBK-Radio), who admitted taking payola--but only when it was urged on him. Said he: "It is part of the business."

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