Bill Haley (July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was an American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets (inspired by Halley’s Comet) and million selling hits such as “Rock Around the Clock”, “See You Later, Alligator”, “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, “Rocket 88”, “Skinny Minnie”, and “Razzle Dazzle”. He has sold over 25 million records worldwide. (More from Wikipedia)
Everyone knows about “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, the 1954 classic that is likely regarded by the general public as the first rock and roll record. The inclusion of the song in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle (starring a young Sidney Poitier) is what truly made it a hit. However, Bill Haley’s rock roots actually go much deeper and much earlier than that.
Bill Haley has told the story of crafting a simulated guitar out of cardboard when he was just a child; his parents then bought him a real guitar. In about 1940, when he was 15, Haley left home to become a professional musician; two years earlier, Bill Haley was already landing paid gigs at $1 a night. Haley got his start in country music and became one of the top cowboy yodelers under the name Silver Yodeling Bill Haley in the 1940’s; he later formed a band called The Four Aces of Western Swing.
Sometime in the 1949 to 1952 period, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen were formed; this was the band that would later evolve into Bill Haley and His Comets. This band recorded a cover version of “Rocket 88” on Holiday Records that was released on June 14, 1951, barely two months after the original release of this song by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm (though this original record was actually credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats).
Now, Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88” is named by many rock critics and music historians as “the first rock and roll record”; what’s more, “Rocket 88” as recorded by Bill Haley and the Saddlemen is one of the very earliest recordings in what would later become known as “rockabilly”, the musical style pioneered by Elvis Presley and others. The Saddlemen’s follow-up single, “Rock the Joint” is yet another contender for the first rock record, that is, the version of “Rock the Joint” as performed in 1949 by Jimmy Preston.
The changing nature of Bill Haley’s music made the band name “Saddlemen” increasingly incongruous, and by the fall of 1952, the band had changed its name to Bill Haley and His Comets. The idea for “the Comets” came from the common mispronunciation of Halley’s Comet that persists to this day. (Edmond Halley’s surname actually rhymes with “Sally”; Halley concluded that three especially bright comets that had been observed over the preceding two centuries were actually the same object that appeared every 76 years and correctly predicted the return of the comet in 1758).
In 1953, “Crazy Man, Crazy” by Bill Haley and His Comets became the first rock and roll song to be televised nationally when it was used in the soundtrack of a television play that starred James Dean. “Rock Around the Clock” was their next record, and the band continued with a string of hits in the mid-1950’s that included “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, “See You Later, Alligator”, “Skinny Minnie”, and “Razzle Dazzle”.
Following Bill Haley’s death in 1981, there were at least six bands using the name The Comets that claimed (with varying degrees of authority) to be the continuation of Haley’s band. Three were still touring as late as 2008 according to Wikipedia.
(June 2013/1)
* * *
Items: Bill Haley
