© MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images amazon's dave clark with barack obama

1. Dave Clark Five Biography
2. Dave Clark Of Dave Clark 5 Biography
3. Dave Clark Wife
4. Dave Clark Biography

Dave Clark, Soundtrack: Catch Us If You Can. Dave Clark was born on December 15, 1942 in London, England. Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger For a very brief time in 1964, it seemed that the biggest challenger to the Beatles ' phenomenon was the Dave Clark Five. Presently, Dave Clark occupies the position of Senior Vice President-Worldwide Operations at Amazon.com, Inc.

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Amazon’s new retail chief, Dave Clark, has an unusual nickname: the Sniper.

1. The Dave Clark Five Biography by Richie Unterberger + Follow Artist. One of the most popular British beat groups of the mid-'60s, especially in America, with 24 charting singles and 13 albums in just three years. Read Full Biography.
2. Dave Clark was a working-class north London lad, born in 1942 (or 1939) and raised in the rubble and opportunity of the post-war years, an amateur sportsman (a Black Belt in mixed martial arts) and movie obsessive.

Underlings gave Clark, who has worked at Amazon during almost all of his career, that moniker after he told them that early in his tenure he would hide in the shadows at warehouses seeking to catch lazy workers slacking off who he could fire.

Clark, 47, has come a long way since those days as a lurker. Amazon announced on Friday that he will replace Jeff Wilke, one of the most trusted lieutenants of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, when he retires early next year. The news surprised some analysts, who thought Wilke may be in line to run the whole company if Bezos ever left.

Shares of Amazon, which had been up 78% this year, lost less than 1% on Friday.

“Those of you who have worked with Dave know his incredible passion for serving customers and supporting our employees,” Bezos said in an email to employees announcing the change. “I am excited for him to lead our teams and continue innovating for customers.”

Amazon said no executives were available for an interview on Friday.

Clark grew up in Georgia and Florida and got early exposure to life in the retail business working in his parents’ carpet store (where he liked to drive the forklift) as well as at a Publix Supermarket and a Service Merchandise store during high school.

But in college at Auburn, he studied music and played the tuba and baritone sax. After graduating, he spent a year as a junior high music teacher before heading to business school at the University of Tennessee where he studied logistics and transportation.

The experience as a music teacher still comes in handy, Clark has said. “I often tell people I learned everything there is to learn about leading people from 250 seventh graders,” Clark said in an interview with Auburn University’s alumni association in 2017. “Once you’ve taught 250 seventh graders to play instruments in unison, everything else is pretty straightforward.”

While Clark was going to business school in Tennessee, then scrappy startup online book seller Amazon was exploring the state for the location of one of its first warehouses. The company’s head of operations visited Clark’s class and the MBA student impressed the exec as part of a team presenting on improving warehouse schematics.

Graduating from business school in 1999 at the height of the Internet bubble, the next step was obvious. The day after graduation, he flew to Seattle and started in Amazon’s “Pathways” leadership development program, He’s been with the company ever since.

It’s quite a different path to Amazon than that of Jeff Wilke, 53, the man Clark is replacing.

Wilke grew up in Pittsburg, where he loved to tinker with computers and write software code. He attended Princeton University, majoring in chemical engineering, before getting an MBA from MIT. Though Wilke joined Amazon the same year as Clark, 1999, he had already had a varied career including writing software at Andersen Consulting and as a vice president and general manager of pharmaceutical fine chemicals at AlliedSignal.

Despite the lack of Wilke or Bezos’s Ivy League pedigree, Clark quickly moved up the ranks of Amazon’s logistics operation, from being the operations manager of a fulfillment center in Kentucky in 2001 to general manager of all Northeast warehouses in 2003. By 2010, he was vice president of North American operations and in 2013 was promoted to his current job, senior vice president of worldwide operations.

That same year, Clark gave President Barack Obama a tour of a giant Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga. But he also stopped to give workers a pep talk. “It’s work you do which makes this possible,” he told them.

The job means Clark is in charge of Amazon’s entire supply chain, delivery, and customer service. Amazon’s stores and its Prime membership program also fall under his purview. Clark was a big proponent of Amazon’s $775 million acquisition of warehouse robot maker Kiva in 2012 and helped Amazon create its own air delivery network in 2016.

While those areas have experienced tremendous growth under Clark, they have also had challenges.

Reports have criticized unsafe working conditions in Amazon warehouses and some workers in Minneapolis even went on strike on Prime Day last year. But after John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight show, highlighted warehouse problems last year, Clark shot back on Twitter, where he frequently defends the company’s reputation. Oliver was “wrong on Amazon” which offers a “safe, quality work environment in our facilities,” he tweeted.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

David Clark (born 15 December 1939)^[1] is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and entrepreneur. Clark was the leader, drummer and manager of the 1960s beat group the Dave Clark Five, the first British Invasion band to follow the Beatles to America in 1964. In 2008 Clark and his band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[2]

Career[edit]

Clark was born in Tottenham, then lived in Middlesex. Clark left school without qualifications at the age of 15 and became a film stuntman, performing in over 40 films.^[3][4][5] In the late 1950s Clark bought himself a set of drums, taught himself how to play them, and formed a skiffle band to raise funds so that his football team could travel to the Netherlands. The skiffle band grew into the Dave Clark Five with Clark their leader, co-songwriter, manager and producer.^[5][6]

The Dave Clark Five grew in popularity in the UK. They unseated the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' from its number one spot in the UK singles charts in January 1964 with 'Glad All Over'. The British press, briefly, called them the Beatles' 'most serious threat'.^[7] The Dave Clark Five were the first British Invasion band to follow the Beatles to America in 1964,^[7] where they achieved 14 top 20 hits, 8 of which were consecutive.^[8] They also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show more times than any other English group.^[7] Dave Clark became a popular name for babies in the 1960s.^[9]

Andrew Loog Oldham, former manager of the Rolling Stones, said of the band's early success as rivals to the Beatles:

Dave Clark Five Biography

If the Beatles ever looked over their shoulders, it was not the Stones they saw. They saw the Dave Clark 5 or Herman's Hermits.^[10]

The band broke up in 1970 and in 1972, Clark stopped drumming after he broke four knuckles in a tobogganing accident.^[3]

He later wrote a science fiction stage musical, Time, which debuted in 1986. It played for two years in London's West End, starring Cliff Richard (replaced later by David Cassidy).^[5] The musical also launched a concept album called Time which featured Richard, Freddie Mercury, Leo Sayer, Stevie Wonder and Dionne Warwick. Two million copies were sold and it spun off several hit singles.^[11]

Business career[edit]

Clark is an entrepreneur and a multi-millionaire. He owns a £12 million house in West London.^[3][12] From the outset, Clark owned the rights to all the Dave Clark Five music masters.^[5] In the late 1960s, in addition to managing his band, Clark began directing and producing for television. In 1968 he made a television production, Hold On, It's the Dave Clark Five.^[5] In the 1980s he acquired the rights to the 1960s UK music show Ready Steady Go!.^[13]

On the release of a (DC5) British hits album in the mid-'70s, Clark resided in the US for a year, thus avoiding paying UK taxes in Britain on the proceeds of that release. The British government challenged this but lost the case in court.^[14]

In 1993, Clark released remastered versions of all the Dave Clark 5 singles on a CD, Glad All Over Again.^[5]

Companies House lists him as director of several companies.^[15]

Personal life[edit]

Clark was a close friend of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, whom he had known since 1976. Clark had taken over the bedside vigil of Mercury when Mercury died on 24 November 1991. Others who were by Freddie's bedside were partner Jim Hutton (1946-2010), personal assistant Peter Freestone and one time partner and friend, Joe Fanelli.^{[citation needed]}

Honours and legacy[edit]

In 2008, marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band, the Dave Clark Five was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[2][16] Clark, making a rare public appearance, and the two other surviving band members at the time accepted the award on behalf of the group.^{[citation needed]}

In 2014 Clark wrote, produced, appeared in, and partly presented, the 115-minute documentary The Dave Clark Five and Beyond: Glad All Over.^[17]

References[edit]

1. ^Stuart Rosenberg, Rock and Roll and the American Landscape: The Birth of an Industry and the Expansion of the Popular Culture, 1955-1969, 2009, p.73
2. ^ ^ab'The Dave Clark Five'. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
3. ^ ^abcPierce, Andrew (10 December 2008). 'Dave Clark: Why I turned down a gong from Harold Wilson'. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
4. ^Green, Graeme (13 October 2008). 'Beatles rival on sex, drugs, rock'n'roll'. Metro. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
5. ^ ^abcdef'The Dave Clark Five'. Classic Bands. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
6. ^'The Dave Clark Five'. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 8 November 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
7. ^ ^abcClark, Rick; Unterberger, Richie. 'The Dave Clark Five'. Allmusic. Retrieved 6 January 2010.
8. ^James, Gary. 'Interview with Dave Clark'. Classic Bands. Retrieved 6 January 2010.
9. ^'Dave Clark Five – DaveClarkAnkeny'. Sites.google.com. Retrieved 15 December 2012.
10. ^Sharp, Ken (27 September 2014). 'Andrew Loog Oldham dishes on rock's biggest movers and shakers'. Goldmine. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
11. ^McCormick, Neil (14 February 2015). 'Dave Clark: inscrutable pop mastermind'. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
12. ^'Biography: The Dave Clark Five'. Tune Genie. Archived from the original on 4 April 2010. Retrieved 2010-01-06.
13. ^Fiddy, Dick. 'Ready, Steady, Go! (1963-66)'. Screenonline. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
14. ^'Dave Clark Five'. taxationpodcasts. 21 October 2011. Retrieved 18 November 2015.
15. ^Companies House: Dave Clark. Retrieved 15 August 2020
16. ^'Dave Clark Five'. British Invasion Bands. Archived from the original on 13 January 2009. Retrieved 6 January 2010.
17. ^'BBC Two - The Dave Clark Five and Beyond: Glad All Over'. BBC. Retrieved 14 February 2015.

Dave Clark Of Dave Clark 5 Biography

External links[edit]

Dave Clark Wife

• Dave Clark interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)

Dave Clark Biography