REMEMBERING BILL HALEY & THE COMETS
Bill Haley was a country singer who loved to play Western Swing music. Bill Haley and his Comets had existed in an earlier, more country-flavored form as The Saddlemen but by the time they were ready to rock, they changed their name as Bill Haley & The Comets in 1952. Their front-man (Bill Haley) was already a veteran of many years of showbiz striving, paying the bills any and every way, including as a western swing showman.
As time went on, Haley and The Comets suddenly had an unlikely phenomenon in the delivery room of rock’n’roll. In terms of the mark they left on popular culture and the fondness with which they are remembered, Bill Haley and the Comets will always be remembered by rock & roll fans around the world.
Bill Haley was 30 years old when Rock Around The Clock (which was his signature song), suddenly became a gigantic hit in 1955 when the song was part of the soundtrack for the juvenile delinquent movie Blackboard Jungle. In short order, Haley appeared in another movie called Don't Knock The Rock which featured Haley as he appeared on the screen alongside Little Richard. Overnight, Rock & Roll had suddenly appeared on all of the teenage radio stations across the USA!
When Rock Around the Clock appeared as the theme song of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the rock era and the music industry that preceded it. Billboard separated its statistical tabulations into 1890–1954 and 1955–present.
After the record rose to number one, Haley became widely popular by those who had come to embrace the new style of music. With the song's success, the age of rock music began overnight and ended the dominance of the jazz and pop standards performed by Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Eddie Fisher, and Patti Page. Rock Around the Clock was also the first record to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany.
The following year, Haley would quickly appear in the first real rock'n'roll film Don't Knock the Rock alongside Little Richard.
Haley went on to have a worldwide hit with Shake, Rattle and Roll, another rhythm and blues cover in this case from Big Joe Turner, which went on to sell a million copies and was the first rock 'n' roll song to enter the UK Singles Chart in December 1954, becoming a gold record. He retained elements of the original (which was slow blues), but sped it up with some country music aspects into the song (specifically, Western swing) and changed up the lyrics. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as Rock and Roll to a wider audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre.
Bill Haley and the Comets were the first rock and roll act to appear on American musical variety series the Ed Sullivan Show on August 7, 1955, on CBS in a broadcast that originated from the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Connecticut.
Later on in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Sadly, Bill Haley's popularity was soon being eclipsed in the United States by the younger Elvis Presley, but Haley and The Comets continued to enjoy great popularity in Latin America, Europe, and Australia during the 1960s.
Eventually Bill Haley was surpassed by the popularity of Elvis Presley. Even though Bill Haley wanted to get back to country music, Haley was obliged to keep churning out his hits and, worse, writing and singing generic rock'n'roll songs with anonymous Comets (about 100 in total can claim to have been in his backing band).
From Texas Monthly: "Twenty-five years later, he was holed up in a pool house in Harlingen, drunk, lonely, paranoid, and dying. After three decades of silence, his widow and his children told the story of Bill Haley's years in Texas and his sad final days.
In the last desperate months of his life, Bill Haley would come into the local restaurant at all hours of the day and take a seat, sometimes at the counter and other times in one of the back booths. He was always alone. He wore a scruffy ball cap, and behind his large, square glasses there was something odd about his eyes. They didn’t always move together. More often than not he would order coffee—black—and sometimes a sandwich, maybe turkey with mayo. Then he’d light up a Pall Mall and look out the window or stare off into space.
After a while, though, Bill Haley would start to shift in his seat and look around. And then he’d start to hum (We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock), the best-selling rock song of all time. Haley was hoping that people would hear him and say, ‘You’re Bill Haley, aren’t you?’
Eventually Bill Haley would turn to the person next to him or even rise and walk over to a nearby table. The patrons would look up at the tall stranger looming over them. ‘You know who I am?’ he’d ask. ‘I’m Bill Haley!’ Then he’d take off the cap and they’d see the curl, and he’d pull out his driver’s license and they’d see his name. Sure enough, there it was: William John Clifton Haley. Soon Haley would be lost in thought, looking like any other 55-year-old man passing the time in downtown Harlingen.
Twenty-five years before, just about everyone in the Western world had known his face. In fact, for a period of time in the mid-fifties, he had been the most popular entertainer on the planet. He had sold tens of millions of records. He had caused riots. He had headlined shows with a young opening act named Elvis Presley and had inspired John Lennon to pick up the guitar. Bill Haley had changed the world.
…and the band played on
