Lloyd Price was always ahead of his time.
He was rock 'n' roll before there was rock 'n' roll. He was a music entrepreneur before there were African-American music entrepreneurs.
Maybe that's why the singer of "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," "Personality" and "Stagger Lee," who died Monday at age 88, always seemed a little old for the crowd he was running around with on "American Bandstand."
"I remember seeing him on 'Bandstand' as a kid," says Tommy James, a later-generation hitmaker. He could tell, he says, that Price was somehow more mature than the other 1960s pop stars on that teen-centric show.