Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley’s death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley’s Comets (and variations thereof), was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of white America and the rest of the world. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group placed nine singles in the Top 20, one of those a number one and three more in the Top Ten. Although several members of the Comets became famous, Bill Haley remained the star. With his spit curl and the band’s matching plaid dinner jackets and energetic stage behavior, many fans consider them to be as revolutionary in their time as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones were a decade later. (More from Wikipedia)
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).
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.
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