“It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.”
A younger generation won’t have a clue what this means, but millions of other people of a certain age will know instantly to what it refers, and who said it.
Between 1956 and 1989, American Bandstand was a music and dance TV show broadcast from Philadelphia that introduced new musical acts to generations of American teenagers. It made superstars out of its musical guests. Simon and Garfunkel made their debut on the show, as did Ike and Tina Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Doors, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, Aretha Franklin, Dion, the 5th Dimension, and a 12-year-old Stevie Wonder. Chubby Checker introduced the Twist on American Bandstand, and the first time Michael Jackson performed solo was on that show. National attention was brought to fashions and fads, new dance moves, and most importantly, to racial integration.
For much of its run, the ageless Dick Clark, a former radio DJ, hosted the show, and the “rate-a-record” segment of the show eventually lead to a running joke even decades after American Bandstand ended. Three kids would hear a new release and give the song a grade from 35 to 98. Invariably, kids would say that the tune had a good beat and that “you can dance to it.”
Dick Clark passed away in 2012 looking much the way he did when we all first met him, and that’s not really an exaggeration. He was a devoted dog lover, all purebreds as far as we can tell, and many of them were often named after Top 40 hits. Daily fixtures in the Dick Clark Productions corporate offices, the dogs were free to roam the office, and even knew to wait by the elevator to be let in. Among the Clark dogs were “Mrs. Jones,” a Pug, “Henry VIII,” a 110-pound Weimeraner and “Lucille,” a Dalmatian that’d been a gift from Gloria and Emilio Estevan and who had been named after comedienne, Lucille Ball. The dogs were well loved, always had their birthdays celebrated, and were pampered with weekly baths in a special dog-sized shower (though we’re not sure the dogs saw it as pampering). Friends of the Clarks always said that when they died and went to heaven, they wanted to come back as Dick Clark’s dog.